Data-Stealing? Battery-Draining? An Anti-VPN Campaign Sweeps Russian Social Media
04/08/2022. Category: Media. Topic: Internet.
A decade ago, 261 websites were blocked by the Russian government. Last year, that number surpassed 70,000, Internet-freedom activists say, while more than 5,400 sites have been blocked since Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine in late February.
In response, a growing number of Russians have turned to VPNs – virtual private networks that mask Internet users’ locations and enable them to view blocked websites. According to The Times of London, 24 million Russians – about one-quarter of all adult Internet users — employed a VPN in May, up from a pre-invasion figure of 1.6 million.
Read more…How China built a Twitter propaganda machine then let it loose on Coronavirus
29/03/2020. Category: Media. Topic: Twitter.
ProPublica analyzed thousands of fake and hijacked Twitter accounts to understand how covert Chinese propaganda spreads around the globe.
Kalen Keegan, a college student at the University of Nebraska Omaha, immediately noticed when her Twitter account unleashed a torrent of posts in Chinese. “My other account got hacked??,” the soccer player posted on a replacement account. The new author tweeting as @Kalenkayyy had strong views on geopolitics — all aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. It was obsessed with the protests in Hong Kong, offered uncritical praise of the Hong Kong police and accused demonstrators of fomenting a “color revolution” backed by an “anti-Chinese American conspiracy.”
Read more…Products sold via social media links
05/04/2017. Category: Media. Topic: marketing.
Operating an online shop is hard work. To get products moving you’ll have to do a bit better than competing stores. Especially in the marketing department.
You’ll have to throw some money at Adwords, Facebook ads and the many other advertising platforms. You’ll also have to invest a lot of time in marketing on social network. But with little time on hand, on which social networks should you invest most of your time? The answer might surprise you.
Read more…Super Bowl 50 top TV ads
11/03/2016. Category: Media. Topic: commercials.
50 is a big number but the 2016 Super Bowl just couldn’t match its magic. The game was lame and the halftime show was the worst in Super Bowl history.
So, thank goodness for those $5 million TV ads. And though none of them brought the house down – most were rather lame compared to previous years – they did bring interesting statistics to light, in particular the use of second screen usage.
Second screen, as you know, refers to the use of a smartphone or tablet to look up information about what is being shown on TV at that moment. Read more…
Making operating systems safer and faster with unikernels
17/02/2016. Category: Media. Topic: computers, Internet.
Technology to improve the security, speed and scale of data processing in age of the Internet of Things is being developed by a Cambridge spin-out company.
Specialised computer software components to improve the security, speed and scale of data processing in cloud computing are being developed by a University of Cambridge spin-out company. The company, Unikernel Systems, which was formed by staff and postdoctoral researchers at the University Computer Laboratory, has recently been acquired by San-Francisco based software company Docker Inc. Read more…
Facebook data suggests people from higher social class have fewer international friends
22/01/2016. Category: Media. Topic: Facebook.
New study using Facebook network data, including a dataset of over 57 billion friendships, shows correlation between higher social class and fewer international friendships. Researchers say results support ideas of ‘restricting social class’ among wealthy, but show that lower social classes are taking advantage of increased social capital beyond national borders.
A new study conducted in collaboration with Facebook using anonymised data from the social networking site shows a correlation between people’s social and financial status, and the levels of internationalism in their friendship networks – with those from higher social classes around the world having fewer friends outside of their own country. Read more…
The cloud isn’t as robust as we think
05/10/2015. Category: Media. Topic: Facebook, Google, Internet.
It’s not just Facebook that goes down: the cloud isn’t as robust as we think
The computing cloud we have created supports much of our day-to-day office and leisure activity, from office email to online shopping and sharing holiday photos. Even health, social care and government functions are moving towards digital delivery over the internet. Read more…
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics live reporting
10/02/2014. Category: Media. Topic: Google, newspapers, olympics, sports.
Coverage of the Winter Olympics is better than ever. The latest technology development in television broadcasting and online live reporting by the newspapers brings the latest results literally to your fingertips.
Television broadcasts now have more camera angles, crisper viewing and instant playback. And if you can’t watch the Winter Olympics live on TV from where you are, you can still keep an eye on not only the results but on the actual events as they are reported live by most of the major newspapers. Read more…
Facebook pages – work less, pay more
07/02/2014. Category: Media. Topic: Facebook.
You absolutely MUST HAVE a Facebook page. If you have a website, a blog or any business for that matter, you simply cannot do without social marketing and, in particular, a Facebook page.
In fact, back in April 2013 Facebook published a post titled “The Importance of being ‘Liked’ On Facebook, stating –
Read more…When someone clicks your page and likes it, that also flows out to their feed to all their friends. So 1,000 people like your page, and if each of them has a 100 friends then multiply that and you get 100,000 people that could see your page.
2nd most popular Super Bowl ad 2014
04/02/2014. Category: Media. Topic: commercials, sports, Woman of the month.
The Seattle Seahawks beat the Denver Broncos by a whopping 43 to 8 at Super Bowl XLVIII. The game was watched by more than 160 million people; a record 111 million being American football fans. But collectively, more people watched the commercials.
Take the game’s 160 million TV viewers, minus those who went to the loo during the ad breaks but plus those who only watched the commercials (yes, there’s so much hype about the Super Bowl commercials that some rush to the telly to only watch the commercials) and then add all the views the commercials had on YouTube, Vimeo, newspaper sites and many, many blogs. Read more…