Facebook Heir? Time to Choose Who Manages Your Account When You Die

IF you’ve wondered what will happen to your digital presence after your die, Facebook now has answers.You can finally decide what happens to your Facebook account when you die.What’s the point of maintaining a social network after death? Facebook legacy contacts will be able to manage accounts in a way that can turn the deceased person’s Facebook page into a kind of digital gravestone.  Read More About it Here. 

Samsung's New 5.5-Inch Galaxy A7 Smartphone

Samsung Packs An 8-Core Processor Into Its New 5.5-Inch Galaxy A7 Smartphone

Last year Samsung released an eight-core version of the Galaxy S5, and now it has outed a dedicated octocore smartphone in its own right: the Galaxy A7.

Korean firm teased the phone in 2014 and showcased it last week, according to a report, but now it is official with dual 1.8GHz and 1.3GHz quad-core processors (or 1.5GHz and 1.0GHz in the dual-SIM version) and a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. Those eight cores are great for handling multiple tasks, on paper, and are backed up with 16GB of memorystorage, 2GB of RAM and a large 2,600mAh battery.

There’s no word on launch dates, initial markets or pricing, although reports last week pegged it at around $420 off contract.

The phone runs Android KitKat and sports a 5.5-inch screen, making it larger than the Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A7 that were announced back in October. Like those two products, it is another slim, metallic bodied release from Samsung, which has long been criticized for using all-plastic bodies, including faux leather.

Samsung has again focused on appealing to cameraphone enthusiasts. There is a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. On the software side, the Galaxy A7 software that Samsung claims can take a ‘wide’ selfie, while ‘auto selfie’ lets narcissists snap themselves using “a voice command or even a simple wave of the hand” –selfie sticks be damned.

Samsung is also touting ‘Always Clear Voice Auto Control’ which reduces background noise in-call, multiple screen support for apps and a private mode that “adds an extra layer of security for important files and documents.”

The introduction of the Galaxy A3, A5 and A7 over the past few months is interesting: Samsung is diversifying its focus beyond its flagship Galaxy S and Note families. The company is bracing itself for its first profit drop in three years, and its latest Galaxy S5 and Note 4 don’t appear to be selling as well as previous models.

The Galaxy A3 and A7 were pretty focused on China, as we noted last year, but Samsung is birthing a new series of phones that offer something else to consumers. With a distinctly different design, marketing focus and lower prices, the Galaxy A series looks to be its Xiaomi-like effort at bringing a quality experience to the mid-range of the smartphone market.

Facebook Unveils Facebook At Work

About six months ago, we reported that Facebook was working on a new product aimed squarely at the enterprise market under the working title, “FB@Work.” Now that product is officially coming to light: today the company is launching new iOS and Android apps called “Facebook At Work,” along with a version of Facebook at Work accessible via its main website, which will let businesses create their own social                                                          networks amongst their employees.

Tech News

Best of CES 2015 Awards, PC: Lenovo LaVie HZ550

Lenovo typically brings a lot of new product releases to CES. And it did it again in 2015. However, there was one particular highlight: a 13-inch laptop with top-end specs, but somehow weighing in at 1.7 pounds.This is Lenovo (and NEC's) slender LaVie HZ550. For reference, that's 43 percent lighter than the latest MacBook Air -- and in person you'd think it was a dummy laptop shell. Despite that, the laptop still packs fifth-generation Intel Core processors: It's got muscle too. Was it the best PC we saw at CES? We think so, yes.

New OS ‘Avatar’ Offers Total Browser Privacy

A new Operating System, called “Avatar”, is in Alpha launch and looking to build a subscriber base, dedicated to the idea that the Internet should be open to everyone without being analyzed or monitored by advertisers – or worse.

What makes it different?

According to its own promotional text, Avatar is “a vision where the Internet is again a world where you can access information beyond borders, be as anonymous as you want to be and not have to worry about being constantly analyzed and monitored.”

This kind of project has been attempted before, with varying degrees of success, but, in this age of user anxiety over governmental privacy abuse, it’s like paraphrasing a famous slogan, “What happens in Avatar, stays in Avatar.”

How will the new site assure this Internet “invisibility cloak?”

Apparently, every keystroke originated by a subscriber is given its own unique ID, which can only be opened by other users who have already been granted access to your private network.

As described on the FAQ page, interacting on the system “happens with encrypted JSON objects. All messages, files and basically everything you produce with Avatar OS are Objects. These Objects are stored either locally or in the Network. To access any Object, even the locally stored, you need to know the unique id (UID), the access key (AKEY) and the key for encryption (EKEY).”

That makes encryption virtually guaranteed and about as secure as missile launch codes in secret nuclear bunkers.

But, these assurances have been promised before, particularly by The Onion Router (TOR) which relies on anonymous volunteer users to route message packets around the web.

But, all too often, the weakest link in a security system are the humans safeguarding it.

So, it remains to be seen if this new, privacy promising browser lives up to its stated mission. But, relying on robots might just be the way to go.

At least until SkyNet falls…

Few Facebook Users Share Daily

Few Facebook Users Share Daily, Survey Says

Small Portion of Site's 1.2 Billion Users Share Details Every Day, According to Pew Study

A new Pew Research survey on Facebook Inc. FB +2.31% 's users, released 10 years after the social network's founding, sheds new light on how relationships are changing in the age of social media.

While there are more people than ever using Facebook, only a small percentage of users are sharing details about their lives every day.

Of Facebook's more than 1.2 billion users, only 10% update their status daily, while only 4% update it more than once a day, according to the Pew survey. About 15% of users comment on photos more than once a day.

The survey suggests that a significant portion of Facebook is a one-way conversation buoyed by Internet voyeurs who relish the ability to document their lives with their friends or the public.

Engagement, or the amount of time each user spends on Facebook, has become a key metric for investors because it is directly tied to the number of ads Facebook can sell. Each action taken by Facebook users equals another data point for Facebook. Analysts say Facebook's future business success relies on its ability to leverage that data with more accuracy as its user growth slows.Those super sharers are annoying some users, according to the survey. Some 36% said they disliked it when people share "too much information about themselves."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Washington, on Sept. 18, 2013. Reuters

Facebook doesn't disclose exactly how users are interacting with the site, other than whether they used the service daily or not. Last week, the company said daily active users were up 22% year-over-year. Facebook also said average revenue per user increased 24% from the third quarter to $2.14.

To be sure, even before the advent of online social networks, there were people who shared too much, and others who kept to themselves. And just like in the real world, all of those people play an important role in social circles. Of the respondents, 44% said they click on the "like" button on content posted by their friends. Even that kind of low-level sharing is invaluable, Facebook says.The Pew study was based on telephone interviews in the fall of last year with 1,802 adults, all of whom were 18 or older.

The Pew survey reported a quarter of adults say they share nothing at all on Facebook. But even those users are still shown lucrative advertising needed to keep the social network profitable.

The survey also shows how technology has allowed social networks to grow in size, beyond anything that would have been possible in the pre-social media age.

The average adult on Facebook, according to the study, has 338 friends. That number may not be surprising today, in an age when private citizens can have Twitter TWTR -0.15% followers in the tens of thousands, but it underscores a radical idea. A decade ago, the concept of being in constant touch with hundreds of friends would have seemed impossible, if not incredibly annoying. Now, it seems normal.

As much as Facebook has become a routine part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people, the Pew study shows there is still significant unease among users.

Of those interviewed, 27% said they disliked "other people seeing posts or comments you didn't mean for them to see." Others felt pressure to get "likes" and were "tempted" to share too much information.

For Facebook to achieve its goal of becoming a utility that connects the world, one challenge will be convincing a higher percentage of the population to feel comfortable about sharing ever more intimate details about their lives.