Wired Threat Level ran a piece this week about how malware is becoming a growing threat in the URL’s that get posted on Twitter.As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets.

The spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a …

Filed under: Google, Social Software

If you haven’t heard of Google Wave yet — a) wake up! and b) watch this tech demo. It’s long, but if you’re a nerd, or someone who uses the Internet a lot, you’ll find it more exciting than the latest Harry Potter film. And at only 80 minutes, it’s not a potentially-bladder-exploding endurance event, unlike the bespectacled wizard wannabe.

And with that said, the goodies: Download Squad are giving away Google Wave invites. We’re going to start giving away invites whenever we have them to give away and today, to get the ball rolling, we’ve got 20 up for grabs! If things heat up, we’ll scrounge under the couch cushions until we find more!

Wave is just starting to pick up steam, with more gadgets and gizmos and robots appearing every day. With reports of Google Wave server federation (the ability for anyone to run a Wave server) coming soon, and the sandbox walls being torn down, now’s your chance to get in on the action.

Continue reading The great Google Wave invite giveaway!

The great Google Wave invite giveaway! originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Google, Social Software

If you were hoping the title meant I had gotten wind of some kind of Microsoft-sponsored sabotage, I’m sorry to disappoint you…

Even though there are thousands and thousands of Google Wave users now, it seems like the number of available invites isn’t keeping pace with demand. I barely mention Wave, and yet I’ve still had people hounding me on Twitter for a spare invite. They’re even being sold on eBay, for crying out loud.

While I don’t have any to give out, I do have some encouraging news. Those of you who want access might not have to wait for Google to pony up more invites.
TheNextWeb is reporting that Google could well be on the verge of announcing the federation of Google Wave. Yep. You may just be running your very own Wave server on your own hardware sometime soon.

Google’s been talking about Wave at eComm Europe. They’ve demoed a terminal-based wave client and and hinted that the Wave sandbox environment will be opened up later today to allow federation. The Wave protocol code is already available for developers to tinker with.

Will today be the day Google opens up the floodgates? We’ll keep you posted.

Google Wave coming to a server near you: YOURS. originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Microblogging

Though Twitter seem to be having some stability issues, at the time of writing, almost every active Twitter user should now have access to the new Lists functionality.

We covered it briefly back when the beta started, but here’s a quick guide on how to make them — and how to get the most out of them, because really… this might be exactly the change we social media addicts have all been waiting for.

It’s really quite easy. In three steps:

1. Visit the Twitter homepage. If you see the Lists box (as seen at the top of this entry), then you’re good to go — if it’s not there, you’ll have to wait until you’re included in the testing, which should be really soon now.

• The Twitter Team — good for up-to-the-minute news from the developer team itself. They can be quite funny too, from time to time…
• Baseball Writers — The Huffington Post have compiled this great list of sports-tweeters. Worth following if you’re into baseball!
• The Huffington Post also have an Iran list, a Democratic Rep. list, a Republican Rep. list… (you can view all their lists here.)
• Musicians and Labels — This one has a comprehensive collection of every record company and music magazine, and some bands/artists too.

If you have some great, comprehensive lists, please let me know, and I’ll get them added — there doesn’t seem to be a List directory or search yet!

Update — masterful fellow DownloadSquad blogger Lee has just discovered a Twitter Lists site called Listorious. It’s really rather good.

Twitter Lists finally unrolled to the masses — get your lists here! originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Video, News, Windows, Macintosh, P2P, Social Software, Web

A colleague and I gave the app a trial run today and we liked it. After downloading and installing (7.9 MB Mac and Windows) the beta, Libox prompts you to import your files from your computer. The UI is clean, minimalist and intuitive. After importing your media files from your computer, you can share them by email with your friends and groups. Your friends will also have to install the app to open the files you send.

Libox allows you to sync your media files with all the computers in your house. There is also a web app where you can access your media in your browser, however, it is in alpha and can only be used on your local computer and if it is not behind a firewall.

To accomplish all this, Libox uses a combination of P2P networking, cloud and grid computing. It does not store your media or metadata on their servers and when you share media with your friends, Libox creates a “private secure network” on those specific files with those specific friends. The files are received in their original format, no compression, resizing or degradation.

Many questions abound, like how will this service make money? Once out of beta, will it be a paid service? What about the private secure networks? How private and how secure? The web access in alpha - how will that work? What are the compatible file formats? Any plans to add other file types like EPS or Docs? Does Libox work with Linux? Tell us more about the company and mission. Is their plan complete world domination? Is Libox too good to be true?

Stay tuned. Hopefully, we’ll get these answers and more if you leave your questions in the comments.

Share unlimited media files for free with Libox originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News, Social Software

Facebook’s making some big changes around its application platform, particularly concerning how much access apps have to a user’s activity stream and notifications. If you’re a Facebook user who hates app spam, that’s good news for you. It’s terrible news for developers, though, because getting their links in front of you is how they spread virally and pick up more users.

This doesn’t mean that apps won’t be able to communicate with their users. They’re getting put back into the sidebar, and that (virtually useless) boxes tab is going away. App and Game notifications will be handled by a new sidebar dashboard, moving them out of your stream once and for all.

Email will also figure more prominently in the user-developer relationship, with developers getting the option to ask users for their email addresses and send notifications that way.

Facebook isn’t mincing words about what it’s trying to do, here. In the official blog post announcing the changes, they come right out and say they’re trying to cut down on spam: “Application communication in channels like notifications and requests aren’t effectively serving their original purpose. There is a significant opportunity to improve the user experience and reduce spam by replacing them with better features and moving most communication to the stream and Inbox.”

Take that, Farmville!

[via TechCrunch]

New Facebook rules make app spam a thing of the past originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Security, Social Software

If you didn’t ask to have your Facebook password reset, think twice before opening an email that looks like it’s from Facebook’s support team. A lot of these fake password-reset emails have been going out lately, and the attachments they contain can take over your computer and add it to the Bredolab botnet, according to ZDnet.

Your first clue that these emails are sketchy is that they contain a zipped .exe file, which is a horribly insecure and inefficient way to send an account password. Although the mail looks like it comes from support@facebook.com, the address is just spoofed to fool you. The botnet behind this attack, Bredolab, is reportedly involved in some large-scale spamming and identity theft activities, so don’t risk letting your computer become part of it.

[via ZDNet]

Fake Facebook password-reset emails are a botnet attack originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, iPhone

Well, at least they’re honest about what they do. A new iPhone app called Stalqer helps you locate your friends, even if they’re not signed up for your favorite location-based service - like Google Latitude, Foursquare or Loopt. Users who opt-in to Stalqer ping the service with their location every time their phones check for email, which gives nearly real-time updates on the iPhone (which can’t keep an application like FourSquare open in the background). That part is only slightly creepy. The creepier part is that Stalqer tracks friends who aren’t even using the service.

By pulling info from friends’ Facebook locations, the app can give you a general idea of where people are. It can’t yet read status messages and wall posts to look for location info, but it reported does a fair good job of finding people without that capability. The app does have SOME privacy features: it won’t let you track people who you haven’t added as contacts in your phone’s address book. That’s pretty easy to get around, though: just add the person you’re looking for.

As far as what information you share through Stalqer, you can control how precisely you’re located and also turn reporting on and off. If you only want to show some friends which city you’re in, and not the street address, you can create a group and change your privacy settings to allow for that. It sounds like Stalqer is trying to build the kind of app that everyone wishes exists, but nobody admits they want. Where do I sign up?

[via CNET]

UPDATE: To clarify, following someone on Stalqer requires you to be Facebook friends with that person, which is something they’d have to approve.

Stalqer iPhone app finds people, whether they sign up or not originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Google, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

Last week, at the Web2.0 Expo, Google demoed a new Social Search feature that delivers targeted search results based on your social circle. Now, this feature is available in Google Labs, so anyone with a Google account can try it out. When social search gives you “results from your social circle,” who does it mean? Google looks at your Gmail chat buddies and contacts, as well as your Twitter and FriendFeed buddies and your Google Reader subscriptions to find relevant results. So far, it doesn’t seem like Social Search is for everyone, but you should definitely give it a look if you’re a social networking junkie.

Social Search results show you which of your connections a particular result came from, and how you’re connected to that person. For example, I searched for Download Squad, and found a blog post from fellow Squadder Nik Fletcher, who I follow on Twitter. Results aren’t limited to direct connections, though, Social Search also finds more obscure stuff, like your friends-of-friends on Flickr. It’s clearly still a work in progress, but right now it’s great for finding blog posts by people you know, and keeping up with your friends across the various networks they’re signed up for.

Google’s Social Search is now live originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Audio, Social Software, Web

Damn you, Grooveshark! I’ve been doing just fine without any Adobe Air applications installed on my system. But you come along and release a standalone interface, and now I’m hooked.

As Sebastien reported with Waver, the Grooveshark Air app seems to be a bit more smooth and responsive than the browser-based version. Whatever the reason, as a guy that runs on unstable, developer-channel browsers that have a penchant for crashing, it’s nice to have my streaming audio running stably in its own app.

The app’s system tray icon provides pause, skip, and previous controls, and notifications with album art and track info can also be set to appear in whichever corner you prefer.

Grooveshark Desktop is currently for VIPs only. If you have a $3/month paid account, just sign in and head to your account page (or click here) to download Desktop. Adobe Air is required, but as long as you have the Flash Player plugin the install just takes a couple of clicks and some patience.

So now I’ve got a great out-of-browser way to access Grooveshark on my desktop. I wonder when I’ll be able to do this on my iPod Touch? Soon, I hope.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat: Grooveshark attacks your desktop originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many webmasters think that low quality links or Links from spammy websites can have a negative effect on the ranking of their websites on Google. The problem with links from spammy websites is that it is very difficult to do something against them. Here’s an official Google statement about bad links.

Filed under: OS Updates, Social Software

Microsoft’s new Twitter account offers quick, brief Windows 7 tech support originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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© Max Klingensmith

Randfish had a good piece a while back on how Search Engine’s decide the value of your links.

Randfish looks in detail at what search engines are are doing with their link metrics at the moment. Top of the list is teh value of links from outside your domain.As you’ve likely noticed, search engines have become more and more dependent on metrics about an entire domain, rather than just an individual page. It’s why you’ll see new pages or those with very few Links …

Filed under: Productivity, Web services, Google, Social Software, web 2.0

Google has made a couple of big improvements to Google Reader, aimed at helping you easily sift through all those RSS feeds to get to the stories you’ll find most relevant. One set of new features focuses on finding relevant content that you weren’t already aware of, and another feature sorts the stuff you’re already subscribed to.

In the sidebar, you’ll notice a new “recommended sources” list. These are sites Google Reader thinks you’ll like, based on your browsing habits — if you’ve opted-in to let Google track those — and your reading habits in Reader itself. You’ll also see a Popular Items section from around the web, showing you some well-read and potentially relevant posts from sites you’re not subscribed to.

In addition to these ways of finding new feeds to read, Google Reader can now sort your existing items “by magic,” bringing the most relevant articles to the top of your list. To make this happen, go to the settings dropdown for one of your feeds or folders and choose “sort by magic.” The magic is actually an algorithm that takes into account what you read and share in Reader, and it seems to work pretty well. I’m not a frequent Google Reader user, and even my relatively untrained recommendations were interesting. If you share and like items on a regular basis, yours will likely be even better.

[via Mashable]

Google Reader now sorts your feeds “by magic” originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Audio, Web services, Social Software

As MySpace has lost ground to Facebook and other competitors in the social networking world, it’s increasingly focused on something it’s always done well: music. Being a musician on MySpace just got a lot easier, thanks to new analytics features that give you a better picture of who’s visiting your site and listening to your music. On top of that, MySpace has also worked out a deal with several prominent record labels to put a huge archive of music videos online.

On the new Artist Dashboard, artists can check out the demographics of their fanbase, including a breakdown of age, gender and location. The Dashboard also includes pageviews and song plays over time, and integrates information from iLike, which MySpace acquired earlier this year.

Music videos are now a much bigger part of MySpace. On top of the new video archive, music videos will show up in an artist’s MySpace Player if they’re available. Of course, MySpace has found a way to monetize the heck out the video business, including plenty of ads. Still, it’s nice to have another large stash of music videos online, and it might include some that you can’t easily find on YouTube.

[via TechCrunch]

MySpace shows artists some love with analytics and music video archives originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Google, Social Software, web 2.0

There’s Tweetdeck for your Tweets, Seesmic for your Facebook stalking — and now Waver for your Waves!

Waver is simply an Adobe AIR application that hooks into your Google Wave account. From there, you can create new waves, or update existing ones.

Adobe’s Javascript implementation seems to do surprisingly well, rendering Waves as quickly or quicker than Google’s own V8 — though this could be due to the fact that Waver uses the cut-down iPhone UI output from Google Wave. Also, a lot of the UI seems to actually be, er, missing. And a lot of the shortcuts don’t seem to work yet.

Try as I might, I could not get Waver to look like their sample picture — perhaps it’s because I’m running Windows 7 instead of OS X?

But let’s not forget the most important thing here: in this case, Waver is merely rendering Google Wave using WebKit — the same engine powering Chrome, Safari, and several other web browsers.

Is it really worth installing AIR and running a separate application to access your Wave account? Why not just open another tab in Chrome?

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

Waver, a cross-platform Google Wave application for your desktop originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Photo, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software

At long last, after what seems like an eternity compared to the usually-rapid pace that most social networks evolve at, Flickr has implemented people-tagging. The functionality that most consider a defining characteristic of Facebook is now available on Flickr.

We’ve all been there: waking up on a Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, last night’s drunkenly-debauched memories slowly swimming back into focus through your rheumy, sleep-encrusted eyes. You stagger into the kitchen or your study — maybe there’s a nice cup of coffee waiting for you. You sit down at your laptop — or turn on your iPhone — and check your mail.

There’s the usual spam, the banal good-luck chain-letters and perhaps news that your copy of Windows 7 has just been dispatched. And then you see it.

‘John Doe has tagged a photo of you on Facebook!’

Suddenly you find yourself plunged back into your memories of the night before. Desperately you poke and prod at the memory, praying the holiest damn prayer you’ve ever prayed, hoping that you didn’t do something you’d later regret… something you’d later see on your computer screen… something your mother should never, ever see…

Quickly you un-tag yourself, cursing your friend, his family and his loved ones, praying you’ve done it quickly enough to avoid disaster.

And now …? And now it can happen to you on both your social networks!

But wait! No! Flickr has gone one step further than Facebook! With Flickr you block people from tagging you in photos! With Flickr you can specify that only friends or family can tag you — or no one at all!

The only real problem of course is that people don’t often use Flickr for ‘wild night out’ photos — that’s usually reserved for Facebook. But would it be too crazy to suggest that Flickr could tie into the Facebook API and tag your Facebook friends on Flickr? Or will Facebook simply turn around and enable similar privacy options on tagging?

[via TechCrunch]

Flickr finally implements the tagging of friend, family and foe originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

With all of the redesigning to focus Facebook on your News Feed, one classic Facebook feature got lost in the shuffle. What happened to Groups? Facebook must have noticed that Groups had become virtually useless, because they’ve just taken some steps to upgrade the feature back to first-class citizen status. Groups now have walls, just like Profiles and Pages, and group activity now has a place in the News Feed.

Although Groups now look extremely to Pages, they still serve two distinct purposes. Pages are for broadcasting information one-way to fans, and Groups are for interaction amongst members. The new discussions tab on each group’s page emphasizes the collaborative aspect of Groups. It’s nice to see a great feature back from the dead, and doing a lot more than cluttering up your profile.

[via AppScout]

Facebook revamps Groups feature, makes it more like Profiles and Pages originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Macintosh, Social Software, Beta

The good news is that there’s now a Google Wave desktop client for the Mac. The bad news is that it’s not yet that much better than the web interface or a Fluid app. The app is called Waveboard, and it looks quite promising, although it’s still in its early stages. In case a prototype for Wave on the desktop isn’t cool enough for you, there’s also an iPhone app in the works.

Waveboard offers a handful of features that you won’t get by running Wave in Fluid. It alerts you to changes in your waves using a badge on the dock icon, and also supports Growl notifications. It also allows you to copy a link to a public wave so you can share it with others. Any wave links you run across in your browser can be set to open in Waveboard by default. True, the look of Waveboard is still identical to the Wave web interface, but the additional features at least start us down the path toward an awesome desktop version of Wave.

Waveboard is the first Google Wave client for OS X originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week, we’re showing you how you can optimize the listings of your website on Google Maps. Good listings on Google Maps can result in many website visitors.