Google says the changes will make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company to create more helpful and compelling services. Critics, including most of the country’s state attorneys general and a top regulator in Europe, argue that Google is trampling on people’s privacy rights in its relentless drive to sell more ads….

Google is combining more than 60 different privacy policies so it will be able to throw all the data it gathers about each of its logged-in users into personal dossiers. The information Google learns about you while you enter requests into its search engine can be culled to suggest videos to watch when you visit the company’s YouTube site.

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The Episcopal Church has embraced the Internet to help its members embrace the Church. Among the features now available on its new website developed by Drupal developer Duo Consulting, church members can submit their prayers, view other prayers and ‘like’ prayers to offer their support. In addition to bringing information on missions, feasts, fasts, sermons and doctrine to its members, the Church also offers perspective for non-members on what the Church stands for and what it means to be Episcopalian.

The requirement to launch quickly, on budget and with a broad new and imaginative set of feature requirements dictated the Drupal open source content management platform and led the Church to Duo Consulting. The Episcopal Church and Duo worked together to construct a site that was easy for non-technical staff to manage. “The Duo team worked miracles, held our hands and delivered on time,” says Barry Merer, manager of web services and social media for the Episcopal Church.

Read it all and the new look site is there.

Can a county judge tell you what to post on your Facebook page?

That question is at the heart of the interesting case of Mark Byron, a Cincinnati-based photographer who was ordered to post a court-approved apology to his soon to be ex-wife on his Facebook page every day for 30 days — or spend 60 days in jail.

“The idea that a court can say, ‘I order you not to post something or to post something’ seems to me to be a 1st Amendment issue,” free-speech expert Jack Greiner, told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

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A group of teens posts pics showing the results of alcohol consumption and perhaps some “smoking paraphernalia.” Is that an indiscretion that should follow them for the rest of their lives?

All of us do moronic things and some of them end up on the Internet. But should they stay forever, like a time bomb waiting to explode a person’s life maybe decades later?

Twenty-seven European countries say “no” and have introduced laws allowing people to have content about themselves removed on demand. Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission, discussed the proposal in a speech… she gave last month in Munich.

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If you’re thinking about giving up Twitter for Lent, here’s one reason not to….

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With Passover just a month away a new app aims to help consumers keep kosher throughout the eight-day Jewish festival and to stay up to date on kosher products throughout the rest of the year.

Released by the Orthodox Union (OU), which promotes the values of the Orthodox Jewish community, the app called OU Kosher provides consumers with updates on products that have been certified by the OU, which is the world’s largest kosher certification agency.

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The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers has been in the news in the past couple of years, highlighting the use of Facebook as either a cause of infidelity and subsequent divorce or as a way to build a case for divorce. While reports are mixed as to whether social media is playing an increasing role in marital infidelity and divorce, it is clear that this new way of connecting with people can be used for good and for bad.

Whether it’s reconnecting with an ex-boyfriend, private interaction with a co-worker, or making personal info about your life open to an acquaintance, sites like Facebook offer daily opportunities for a downward spiral.

As Christians who seek to follow after God’s own heart and want to protect our marriages and our families, we must determine our personal boundaries when it comes to social networking. Only if we place hedges of protection and accountability around us are we guarded.

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The economy might be experiencing one of its worst times, but Catholic colleges seem to be experiencing their best times, all things considered, because of their commitment to Catholic identity.

The Augustine Institute in Denver, which offers graduate degrees on campus and through distance education, saw record enrollment this past year. “One big draw for us is our program,” said Edward Sri, provost and professor of Scripture and theology. “Particularly, our distance-education program is booming.”

The distance program was launched in 2008, and by fall 2011, it had more than 200 students. Students like how the DVD format makes them feel part of a live class, plus the flexibility of the program means they can “maintain their work and revenue and responsibilities on the home front with their families and still work on their master’s degree,” Sri said.

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Facebook, YouTube and even texting will be the salvation of many of the world’s endangered languages, scientists believe.

Of the 7,000 or so languages spoken on Earth today, about half are expected to be extinct by the century’s end.

Globalisation is usually blamed, but some elements of the “modern world”, especially digital technology, are pushing back against the tide.

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Google Inc. officials were sued for violating users’ privacy rights on Apple Inc.’s Safari Web browser by bypassing computer settings designed to block monitoring of consumers’ online activity.

Google, the world’s biggest Internet-search company, has been dodging privacy settings in Safari, which serves as the primary Web browser on Apple’s iPhone and iPad products, lawyers for an Illinois man who uses the Safari browser said in a lawsuit filed today in federal court in Delaware.

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Hollywood veteran Brian Robbins has a new production studio under construction and 35 shows in development. There’s a sitcom set in a high-school bathroom, a talk show modeled on “The View” but hosted by young Twitter celebrities and a series about an outlandish teen wrestling league.

Mr. Robbins, a producer and director known for Eddie Murphy movies and TV shows including “Smallville,” plans to produce 120 hours of teen programming this year, all of it destined exclusively for the Web. “We consider ourselves a network,” he says.

Mr. Robbins is part of a teeming new ecosystem, as some of Hollywood’s biggest names””with support from Silicon Valley’s deepest pockets””are racing to create new shows, and in some cases, dozens of them, for the Web.

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The blog Hoops Analyst has crashed in the last 24 hours. Normally this wouldn’t be problematic for anyone beyond Harlan Schreiber, the site’s founder. But these are not normal times in the NBA, and Hoops Analyst had something like the Zapruder film of the basketball world: In 2010, an amateur geek named Ed Weiland published on Hoops Analyst his vision of Lin lighting up NBA arenas.

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Two Australians – a “paranormal writer” and a documentary filmmaker – have locked horns over a hoax “woolly mammoth” video that started down under but quickly circled the globe, writes Asher Moses.
It was a mammoth yarn, but as ever with the notorious British tabloid The Sun, there’s more to it than meets the eye – literally.
The red top earlier this month published “shock footage” of a “woolly mammoth” – thought to be extinct for thousands of years – lurching through icy waters in Siberia….

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U.S. legislators on Wednesday sought more information from Apple Inc….regarding its privacy policies, pulling the iPhone manufacturer into a swelling controversy over how developers on its popular iOS mobile platform have been able to access users’ private address book data.

In a letter addressed to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Representatives Henry Waxman of California and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, both Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asked Apple to clarify its developer guidelines and the measures taken by the company to screen apps that are sold on its App Store.

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“The day after Valentine’s Day is one of our biggest days of the year,” says [Noel] Biderman, founder and CEO of Ashley Madison, a 10-year-old site that unapologetically caters to “discreet” encounters for the married or otherwise attached. “People are disappointed by their spouses’ lack of effort, and they feel especially undervalued when there is a societal expectation of romance. Certain days of the year act as litmus tests for many people in relationships.”

Websites designed to facilitate cheating appear to be thriving; some earn tens of millions of dollars a year, and competition is growing. In addition to Toronto-based Ashley Madison, there’s a growing crop of copycats that equate affairs with romance, passion and adventure.

Whether these sites promote cheating or just facilitate it is up for debate….

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s top-rated universities, has announced its first free course which can be studied and assessed completely online.

An electronics course, beginning in March, will be the first prototype of an online project, known as MITx.

The interactive course is designed to be fully automated, with successful students receiving a certificate.

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The tech press provides constant updates on the Apple versus Google mobile war, using statistics about unit sales, activation numbers, app downloads, etc. But it’s always good to remember what the war is about.

Here’s a helpful reminder, via a Bernstein research note out today. By 2016, analyst Carlos Kirjner predicts, the majority of Web search queries will come from mobile devices.

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Read it all.

This is the link for those of you (like yours truly) who like to follow this sort of thing.

Internet giants Google Inc (GOOG.O) and Facebook removed content from some Indian domain websites on Monday following a court directive warning them of a crackdown “like China” if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities.

The two are among 21 companies ordered to develop a mechanism to block material considered religiously offensive after private petitioners took them to court over images deemed offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Two cases have been brought by individuals against internet companies in India, stoking fears about censorship in the world’s largest democracy.

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Ending months of breathless speculation, the 8-year-old social networking company has submitted registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that set preliminary goal of $5 billion.

Facebook had discussed raising as much as $10 billion. Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the IPO probably will increase with investor demand.

The filing sets the stage for an IPO in May.

The important stats right off the bat: 845 million users; 483 million daily users; annual revenue of $3.7 billion; $1.8 billion in operating income and $1 billion net income.

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Check it out.

Twitter has promoted itself as a beacon of free speech, and that image was burnished when revolutionaries used the social media service to organize protests during last year’s Arab Spring uprising.

But in what many view as an about-face, Twitter now says it has the power to block tweets in a specific country if the government legally requires it to do so, triggering outrage around the world, especially in Arab countries.

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As an example consider these available religion quiz topics:

Pet ministries and the spiritual growth of congregations
Investing for sustainability
Congregational conflict in changing times
The church in rural America

It is a goldmine–check it out.

Pope Benedict XVI praised new communications technologies like Twitter on Tuesday (Jan. 24), saying that even “concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible,” can convey “profound thoughts.”

Benedict did not explicitly refer to Twitter in his yearly message for World Communications Day, but Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, told reporters that “it’s safe to say that a reference to ‘tweets’ is there.”

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Google is overhauling the way it treats user data, linking information across its array of email, video and social-networking services so that information gathered in one place can be used in another….

the changes could irk privacy critics because of the sheer volume of information collected ”” including your location, list of contacts and the contents of your email.

Google hopes to improve the user experience across its different services and give advertisers a better way to find customers.

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YouTube videos go viral all the time, but sermons rarely do. Enter Jefferson Bethke, a young “spoken-word” poet who recently posted the video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” It has been viewed more than 10 million times in the past 10 days.

The video opens with an eerie soundtrack and the phrase “Jesus>Religion” in a stark, white typeface. His poem begins, “What if I told you, Jesus came to abolish religion?”

In a polished, hip style, he continues with such controversial questions for four minutes: “If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars? Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?” Mr. Bethke describes religion as no more than “behavior modification” and “a long list of chores.” This leads him to conclude, “Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums.” And his grand finale: “So know I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it.”

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Graham said the opposition to PIPA and SOPA “have raised some really legitimate questions.”

“I consider intellectual property real property, but I do believe the content part of the debate has been very resistant to technological changes,” he said of the film and recording businesses. “And if this bill can be made better, let’s do it.”

Graham supports wide and inexpensive distribution of mass media, “but there’s got to be a revenue stream or you’re going to destroy the creative content providers.”

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(Please note the content of this post is unlikely to be suited to some blog readers–KSH).

Gemma Barker, from Middlesex, wore boy’s clothes and gave herself three false identities so she could have sexual encounters with her 15- and 16-year-old friends, the Daily Mail reported.
Prosecutor Ruby Selva told Guildford Crown Court Barker set up Facebook profiles for her different personas and had individual dress styles for them.
She completely fooled her friends and their families by posing as Aaron Lampard, Connor McCormack and Luke Jones, the court heard.

Read it all and you can you can find the Daily Mail article there.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.