Tech Brief
On Tech Brief today: Facebook's new features, zombie satellites, why Twitter is the "wildfire of the web" and robots that just need a little TLC:
• Already addicted to Facebook? The social network is about to embed even itself further into our lives, if a is anything to go by. Trawling through the code for the site, he came across what he says is a new feature called Places:
"Based on the code, this is what it seems that Facebook is about to launch: A mobile version of the site using the HTML5 location component to grab your location information from your phone. Once it does that, you're taken to this new Places area of Facebook that presumably will have a list of venues around you. From here you can click a button to check-in. Yes, there will be check-ins."
• That means that Facebook could soon be competing with other real-world social networks, such as Foursquare. A , tagged in Delicious by Tech Brief readers and , suggests that the detective work paid off:
"As I said earlier tonight, code doesn't lie. Facebook has now confirmed their location-based feature, which is apparently due to launch shortly if the code found on their touch.facebook.com site is any indication."
• In the UK, the fall-out from the general election continues. that technology might have helped alleviate some of the problems on polling night. But a picked up by suggests that e-voting systems may not be the panacea some claim:
"[S]tudents at the University of Michigan took only about a week to build a replacement display board that lies about the vote totals, and the team also built a pocket-sized device that clips onto the memory chips, with the machine powered on, and rewrites the votes."
• that is running amok in orbit, threatening to bite other satellites and convert them to the undead. Well, it might cause problems if it wanders into the "geostationary orbital slot occupied by another C-band satellite":
"An attempt to shut down the electronics payload of the out-of-control communications satellite Galaxy 15 has failed, leaving the satellite - which ceased responding to ground commands last month - still in its uncontrolled 'zombiesat' drift toward orbits occupied by other spacecraft."
• Twitter makes the world smaller. Stanley Milgram's famous experiments suggest that any two people on earth were usually separated by 'six hops' amongst friends and acquaintances. All Hollywood actors can in a similar number of steps. But Twitter, it seems, is even smaller than Hollywood. that suggests most people are only separated by four steps:
"Next to traditional, few-to-many broadcasting, Twitter is the fastest way to spread news and information. In fact, it's the nearest thing the web has to wildfire. And the key mechanism that enables that is retweeting."
• Last week, German researchers reported what happens if you give a robot a sharp knife and put it in the vicinity of a human. Ouch! This week, the humans strike back. which has been making robots cry:
"Callo stands about 9 inches tall, and his face, which is a cell phone display screen, shows human facial expressions when he receives text-messaged emotions. When he receives a smile emoticon, Callo stands on one leg, waves his arms and smiles. If he receives a frown, his shoulders slump and he will cry. If he gets an urgent message, or a really sad one, he'll wave his arms frantically."
• And finally, of the Pixar website as seen on an iPad. The site relies heavily on Flash, a technology Apple boss and Pixar director .
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