Murcia residents start Facebook campaign to attract global coffee chain – possibly for the muffins, the wifi or the mugs!Murcia is one of the fastest growing cities in Spain, the proud capital of the country's south-eastern market garden region. But the coffee guzzling citizens of Murcia say it still lacks the one thing that would prove they have made it onto the global map of cities that count: the green, white and black sign of a local Starbucks.Now the city's cappuccino and mocha starved citizens have mounted a Facebook campaign to join the list of 16,000 places on the planet with a Starbucks."They have got it everywhere but here," complains Alicia Delgado, a recent contributor to the Starbucks campaign wall. "It is about time we had one too."Enrique Marhuenda agrees: "The day we...

Source of Daily Mail story refuses to divulge 'well-known social network' where he posed as girl of 14 and received sexual approaches from menFacebook has called on the ex-detective who posed as a 14-year-old girl online on a "well-known social network" and said he was approached by men making sexual suggestions within minutes to name the site he used.But Mark Williams-Thomas, whose experiences were described by the Daily Mail in a contentious story this week, declined to name the site today. He suggested that it would not be helpful to the site's users – and that it might damage its reputation or attract paedophiles to use it more extensively.A spokesperson for Facebook said that it was important to identify the site so that young users could be protected. "If you really want to...

Social networking site fears reputation permanently damaged by false claim that it let older men pressure teenage girls for sexFacebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail for damages after the paper wrongly claimed in a piece published on Wednesday that 14-year-old girls who create a profile on the social networking site could be approached "within seconds" by older men who "wanted to perform a sex act" in front of them.The paper apologised in print today and online yesterday for the error, which the author of the piece, Mark Williams-Thomas, insisted had been introduced by editors at the paper despite being told it was wrong. In fact, Williams-Thomas – a retired policeman who now works as a criminologist – had been using another, unspecified social network.But the giant social...

So I haven’t posted anything totally pointless and incredibly cute in a while. Here’s one for you Android fans out there. Got nobody to cuddle up with on an evening? (Or got somebody but they’re just not that appealing?). Voila- a pillow featuring the cutest little robot mascot in fetching green felt. visit site to read more] Gadget Gift Ideas If you like what you’re reading then learn more about joining our FREE newsletter here. Lucky readers will win some fantastic gadget prizes! Also, check out our recession busting gadgety money saving ideas. Get paid for your old phones – Top 5 mobile recycling sites compared Free phone calls to exclusive discounts at restaurants from phone networks – Free Sim cards from various networks and there benefits....

What happens when your news isn’t quite interesting enough? You embellish the news you have, that’s what! Step forward The Daily Mail – eager to make hay following the murder of teenager Ashleigh Hall and conviction of her killer Peter Chapman, the Mail yesterday ran a story entitled: I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you. The article was written by Mark Williams-Thomas, a former police detective and specialist in child protection. According to blog Global Dashboard, the article opened with: Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me. I was deluged by...

From the Guardian 09/03/10: Senior police officers clashed with the UK's most-used social networking site today, accusing Facebook of ignoring worrying trends that it is providing a safe haven for predatory paedophiles by refusing to sign up to a "panic button" for children and young people. Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Unit (Ceop), was joined by the country's lead officer on homicide to tackle the site about its repeated refusal to sign up to a key safety practice adopted by many other similar websites. The American-owned site has 23 million active users in the UK but refuses to display an official "panic button" that links users directly to Ceop to report suspected activities by predatory paedophiles....

You can design your own spoof Tory poster here and then post it on Twitter or Facebook. It’s a brilliantly subversive act that is not only fun and made easy to do, but also contaminates and ridicules the propaganda messages the Conservatives are trying to get across on billboards around the country. Along with your own text you can use the images provided or upload new ones. I’ll definitely be creating more of these! I’ve got an image in mind from my own collection of photos for the next one… If you give it a go, why not post the results to your own blogs and social networks and leave links to them in the comments section below? Related articles by Zemanta New Tory ad campaign already spoofed (liberalconspiracy.org)...

Facebook and iPhone applications can help you stub out your smoking habitAre you one of the more than 2 million smokers ready to quit on No Smoking Day? Then today is your day! Don't worry, you won't be alone as there is an app for it – well, several. And this is how you can call it a day:First of all, you install the WeQuit Facebook app to let everybody know what your are up to. It's best to grab one of your chain-smoking friends for a competition. The Facebook version of WeQuit helps you to reward your friend if they achieve success and punish them in case of failure, perhaps by throwing a sheep at them. You can also use WeQuit to bet your Facebook friends to see who can give up for longest, or sponsor someone to quit to raise money for charity. Secondly, you can use your iPhone to...

2 Must-Read Blog Posts What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator: Tories in Devon and Cornwall set themselves a target of raising £13,000 in an Obama-style online donate-now campaign, perhaps in an attempt to wean themselves off the Ashcroft millions.  How much did they raise? Stephen Glenn picks up on the news that Lord Paul has said he will voluntarily end his non-dom status from April, whether required to or not, and asks what it means for the Tory “they do it too” defence. Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all. 2 Big Stories Short term prison sentences don’t work...

[Austria] Platogo, the social games platform, has today released its Platogo Wrapper that enables casual games developers to easily integrate their games with Facebook by inserting a few lines of code. Essentially, it lets any casual game take advantages of the basic social features offered through Facebook, such as the ability for a user to invite and play with friends in their social graph and see how their scores compare, challenge each other, and display their gaming achievements on their Facebook wall. The idea was to offer a solution that “automatically transforms any casual game into a social gaming experience.” says Florian Landerl, Product Manager at Platogo. That ’social gaming experience’ on Facebook, of course, also means a casual game has the basis to...

It’s taken a little bit of time to get with the Facebook programme. I wondered if I had the time. I am already very active on twitter and flickr, and spend a lot of time cooking and doing all sorts of other things relating to food. Could I justify more time? I asked around, why do people do it? Why is it useful? The answer was that it is a great space to do things that you may not do on your blog. Competitions, events, general announcements. But, I do that on twitter? Lots of people use facebook and don’t use twitter it seems. Most people that read this blog perhaps. So, it made sense that Eat Like a Girl have a home there too. I’ve only just set it up and am feeling lonely. So, please come join me. I promise it will be useful, and I will never ever spam you. In other...

We have an iPod Touch winner! Virgin Broadband – Next-gen fragging for Discerning gamers.. Another night, another marathon Call of Duty session. You have finally scoped out the hateful sniper who’s been pwning your team with a cold eye and withered husk of a heart, and crept into position inch by painstaking inch. He’s toast. Your finger slowly depresses the trigger and…Eh?! One moment he’s crouching, helpless, under your crosshairs, the next he suddenly, impossibly, flits out of harm’s way, safe to kill another day. The dreaded lag strikes again. You have lost the match, your team has been humiliated, and all because your sister’s been hogging precious bandwidth uploading photos of her new emo friends to Facebook. War may be hell, but sluggish broadband blows like a wind...

We suspect our avid Bitterwallet readers are too savvy to fall for some dickish Facebook (and Twitter) scam, but you’ll no doubt have plenty of friends and family who aren’t, so point them at this. Obviously Apple doesn’t bother beta testing new products with puny earthlings, so the whole thing is a lot of old balls. If you give your details away to the scamsters – specifically, your mobile number – then you can expect to find yourself subscribed to premium rate SMS services. Nice. It looks like it’s geared towards US users only, but we’re not going to to test that theory:...

1 in 5 Glasgow parents wants to be able to communicate with teachers about their children's work via Facebook and other social networking sites, reports the Glasgow Herald. I think this is potentially an underestimate: there are more than one in five parents in East Lothian, I'd guess, who take advantage of the online 'coverage' of what their kids have been learning at school through the eduBuzz Word Press blogging platform. I'm sure that more than 1 in 5 sets of parents whose classroom teacher has started a learning log wherever they are, check in to see what their child has been doing, or what their teacher is planning. I wonder, though, whether Facebook (and its verb form) have become the new 'Hoover', the interchangeable Proper/Common noun that has permeated the mainstream so as...

New figures suggest Facebook's financials are healthier than expected - with the site on course to break a billion dollars of revenue by the end of the yearYes - and perhaps even more than that, according to new figures.New projections suggest that the company made as much as $635m in 2009 - around 15% higher than previously estimated - and could be on track to rise to around $1.1bn by the end of this year.The numbers come from Inside Facebook, a favourite source of information for the site's army of advertisers and developers, and whose editor Justin Smith has given us his thoughts on a number of occasions.Inside Facebook usually has fairly accurate data on the inner workings of the company's business - and this time it's suggesting that a number of crucial moves mean is more or less on...

It does seem that the questions levelled at Lord Ashcroft are increasing and are not going to go away and that the Tories are starting to panic. Cameron's comment about this not being a question on Polling Day betrays his fears on this.That said, it is a matter of concern that Ashcroft seems to have promised to relinquish his non dom status ten years ago and that nothing seems to have happened since. If you share these concerns then you can do no harm by joining this rapidly growing Facebook...

Signing up for that 'free' offer could actually end up costing you as scammers use Facebook and Twitter to tempt gadget seekersIt's a day for scams. Think you've been given the chance to sign up as an iPad tester via Facebook? No you haven't - it's a scam which actually signs you up to a premium rate mobile service, warns the security company Sophos."Facebook pages with names such as "iPad Researchers Wanted - Get An iPad Early And Keep It!" and "The Mega iPad Giveaway!" prey on the public's desire to own a free iPad," notes Sophos.Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, has explained the scam on his blog.Here's how it works. The scam pages typically take their intended victims through a three step process:1) "Become a Fan" of the page; 2) "Invite your friends" to also...

[France] Paris based dating service Smartdate has raised €1.7 million with European VC 360 Capital Partners. Smartdate, which previously secured Angel investment from four international Business Angels for a total of €300,000, was founded by Fabrice Le Parc, who also launched be2.com in France and Benelux in 2006-07. This €2 million total amount of seed funding (one of the largest in France lately and one of the largest for a dating site) will be mainly used to market the service as they have an objective of one million users before the end of the year. Smartdate basically wants to use Facebook Friends as a criteria for your dating search. Using Facebook Connect to log in to Smartdate, you search for single people among friends of your friends. The search called...

We have now got 99 followers, so who is going to be our 100th follower? Are you looking for a Twitter news feed for Birmingham City? If you don’t follow us yet, please do. That way you will get a notification sent to your Twitter account whenever we update the blog with a new article. Find...

According to our tips inbox and complaints on Twitter and local blogs, popular social network Facebook has been unavailable to users in Turkey for a number of hours now, although it appears to be coming back up for some users in the last half hour or so. Facebook being down for several hours in Turkey is a big deal, because the country is said to be the third largest on Facebook, at least according to comScore. The question is: is this a technical issue limited to one country only, or did the Turkish government move to (perhaps temporarily) block access to the social networking service? Turkish authorities regularly block access to sites like YouTube and MySpace when it is unhappy with the content that users generate and publish on such networks. We’ve reached out to Facebook to...

Thanks for visiting “The world of mistrust (music)”. I’ve moved! I’m now at http://www.mistrustmusic.co.uk/blog Please come on over and see my new website and my new blog. I’ll still be posting stuff about Facebook, Soundcloud, and most of all, my music! I’ll also be giving away some exclusive tracks to subscribers to my blog! What’s up? You’re now looking...

Facebook Credits or ‘virtual currency’ is getting closer to its full launch. A recent post on Facebook Developer Blog explains how the … [visit site to read more] Gadget Gift Ideas If you like what you’re reading then learn more about joining our FREE newsletter here. Lucky readers will win some fantastic gadget prizes! Also, check out our recession busting gadgety money saving ideas. Get paid for your old phones – Top 5 mobile recycling sites compared Free phone calls to exclusive discounts at restaurants from phone networks – Free Sim cards from various networks and there benefits. Facebook Credits: Ready for Full Launch Soon! is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site - Gaj-It.com...

Ok – I tried sharing this on my Facebook page but apparently there’s some naugtiness in the vid so you have to be over 18. All I could see was some anime nudity at 0:25, 0:52, 1:25, 2:39 and 3:25. If you’re innocent (and reading my blog????), at work or under 18 skip past those parts. This isn’t a bad cover of ‘Turning Japanese’ but it is made more palatable because Kirsten Dunst is dressed up as the “Akihabara Majokko Princess” complete with blue wig, magic wand and cute outfit. Enjoy Related posts:New Apple iPod Nano, Classic and Headphones Hina – The Cutest Grinding Robotic Barista You’ll See Today! [ Coffee Fembot ] Brionvega RR226 – 60’s Classic Get’s 21st Century update...

Once more a Glasgow Herald journalist chooses 2% of an argument in his quotation from a McIntosh and leaves out the more positive 98% that he could have printed but would not have made such a 'good' story. Andrew Brown has indeed engendered "a new mood of collaboration" since he took over the Directorship of Glow, the national schools intranet in Scotland, in November - collaboration was something he, I and what felt like a small band of colleagues at the time felt was missing in so many parts of education. I can't wait to see what he pulls off in the longer term; he's already managing to move on from the hype of usage stats of sign-ins and sign ups and is talking about how he can make things better until a new version of Glow is commissioned later this year. Here's the full text of...

Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford, joins us in the studio to discuss human friendships and Dunbar's number – the theoretical limit to the number of stable social relationships one can have. His latest book How Many Friends Does One Person Need? is out now. In the newsjam we report a anti-missile laser test by the US, bleak prospects for the world's primates and new research into Tutankhamun's cause of death.We discuss an editorial in Nature that raises uncomfortable questions about the media's cosy relationship with science. Plus, the Observer's science and technology editor Robin McKie checks in from one of the world's largest scientific gatherings, the annual gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. You can read...

Well Google recently released Buzz (didn’t Yahoo do that a few years back?) upon GMail users and anyone else who wants to sign up for a Google account, but the question is will it be the thing to beat Facebook and Twitter? I’m sure Google now hopes so, but I’m yet to be convinced. Besides, I already use Twitter and Facebook, do I really need another social network? Don’t know what I’m talking about? You can read all about it in this Google Buzz features review. I’m really not sure about Google Buzz, it seems strange for a company who keeps services in beta for years upon end (like they did with having Google Mail in beta for around 5 years), to release a previously unheard of product onto the world…and one that seemed to care little about your...

It’s the end of another week in the online world of hi-tech gadgets and technology blogging and as usual there’s been a lot happening out there, so here’s a quick roundup of some of the stuff that we’ve found particularly interesting this week, let us know what you think to them too! Linux Training Week on Zath – I’m sure we’ve all heard of Linux, but for me personally it’s not something I’ve ever seriously looked at because I always assumed it wasn’t worth the hassle of installation for something that wasn’t that worthwhile, well clearly I was wrong on that one! As you can see from this useful series of articles about the Ubuntu distribution of Linux – it’s easy to setup Ubuntu, it’s an easy to use the...

Mark blogged this wek about his top 10 iPhone applications. Always one with an original idea, I thought I’d post up a list of mine. Unfortunately there isn’t an app for that so I’ve had to write it myself. And they call this the future? This isn’t an ordered list and it’s not an attempt to catalogue the best apps out there – just the ones I use every day or find particularly useful. 1. Tweetie I experimented with some other Twitter clients (TweetDeck and Echofon) but Tweetie does everything I need with a clean and easy to use interface. My only bugbear is that you can’t do old style manual retweeting – when you “Quote Tweet” it puts “via @username” at the end; I have to cut and paste that to the beginnng and add...

There are many reasons people have for posting comments on this site or others: because they’ve got something to add to the conversation, because they want to correct an error, because they like taking part in a debate, because they’ve got a question to ask or a myriad of other reasons. For those seeking public office, judicious commenting on other people’s sites can also be rather like going to events and meetings in the area; it’s a way of getting to know people, getting known by them and discussing relevant issues. Reaching out to other people’s sites, particularly if they aren’t party political ones, often gets to more of the public than expecting them all to come to one of our sites. The content of your comments is crucial to achieving all of...

A burglar, yesterday Insurance companies could use social networking as a way of squeezing higher premiums out of customers, according to some fresh jaw-fart from a man at Confused.com. Darren Black, head of home insurance believes that, as using sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, allows strangers to tell when you are and aren’t at home, the risk of burglary will be increased, giving the insurers a golden opportunity to bleed a few more quid out of you. He says: “Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering, even using Google Earth and Streetview to plan their burglaries with military precision. Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims...

Well, I’m certainly getting a lot of hits on here about kids using Facebook. Why’s that then? Dunno, really. Maybe a lot of kids go on it, and a lot of parents either want to monitor what they’re doing on it or don’t want them on it all. I like all this social networking thing....

Carlisle railway station has been turned in to a filmset this week as the DIY chain, Homebase produce a tv advert. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]...

In the UK it was claimed today that two thirds of jurors do not understand what judges tell them about the law when they retire to consider their verdicts, according to a ground-breaking study into the secrets of the jury room. The findings will trigger an overhaul of the courts. The investigation found that jurors frequently used the internet to read about trials on which they were sitting, risking miscarriages of justice. In 2008, juries in three Crown Court trials had to be discharged because they used the internet inappropriately. Judges are likely now to look at how they can simplify the way they sum up and give directions. And doubtless we’ll get some arrogant people asserting that such “evidence” points the way to increasing the number of “no-jury”...

If you’re the type of person who likes to brag about the amount of cash you’ve splashed and what on – Blippy is calling you! Blippy basically gives your credit card its own Facebook and Twitter account and each time the plastic gets spanked Blippy gets to know and then, so will everyone else – so, careful when shopping at more adult-centric stores You can log into Blippy via your Twitter or Facebook accounts and then you can select which stores (iTunes, Amazon, Threadless, etc) you want your transactions blipped about – so, if you have some shady purchases or buying gifts at least you have the choice whether or not this info is transmitted. As expected, you need to enter your credit card details for Blippy to work – time to start the...

The people who run Facebook need a slap in the mouth. They keep tinkering and meddling with it to the point where, for the most part, the bloody thing doesn’t work, leaving you screaming in frustration at it. I’ve been prone to outlandish claims that I’ll never use it again, ridiculously assuming it would somehow make a difference. Threatening to quit Facebook is like trying to put out a volcano by pissing into it. So while the main site gets fiddled with constantly (no points to anyone snickering at the word ‘fiddled’), the Facebook folks have been making something so stripped down that it’s almost guaranteed to never break (but don’t hold your breath). This basic version will be text-only and called Facebook Zero. The low-bandwidth Facebook is...

Seth Silverton, a self-proclaimed social media guru who blogs about how to become a social media guru has topped the Billboard Download Charts with his number one single "Top 10 Tips for Social Media Rockstars". Silverton said his hit single started as as a blog post that was "link bait" designed to improve his search engine ranking. His link bait attracted the attention of blogger/personal branding expert/disc jockey DJ BlogzALot who quickly saw the potential of Silverton's post. BlogzALot and Silverton then crowdsourced the melody and commissioned musicians to record the tune with the promise of "publicity and blog traffic". "People really seemed to connect with the song," said Silverton. "Especially the part where we break into a rap about OPB: Other People's Blogs." "Who know after...

This is a guest post by Tiffany Philippou who started the Secret London Facebook Group. Two weeks after launch the group had amassed over 180,000 members, propelling its 21 year old creator into her first startup – see our previous coverage. The website build weekend drew to a close two days ago and it is only beginning to dawn on me that we might just have achieved the impossible. Building a website for £3,000 and in only 48 hours. One week ago, secretlondon put the call out on its blog, Facebook wall and Twitter feed for volunteers to help us build a site for the rapidly growing ‘Secret London’ Facebook Group and migrate the existing content across to a new home. We had more than 100 responses from across the London tech community, and over 40 people committed their weekend...

Bad news for moms, dads, dieticians and much-missed pets as Academy Awards call time on everlasting speechesBad news for moms, dads, directors, producers, agents, friends, lovers, deceased grandparents, dialogue coaches, yoga teachers, therapists, dieticians, inspirational teachers and much-missed pets.The organisers of this year's Academy Awards have called time on that appallingly fascinating Oscar-night staple, the everlasting and tearful acceptance speech in which several telephone directories of names are thanked as an actor grapples with the twin shock of industry recognition and performing without a script.Winners at next month's ceremony will instead be instructed to give two speeches: a pithy onstage one explaining the personal significance of their Oscar triumph, and a backstage...

The Hansard Society has a new report out which asks the public what they want out of politicians and the political system online. Although many studies have looked at what politicians do or don’t do online, those looking at what the public actually wants are rather rarer. That makes this a particularly welcome report and is based on: Two samples, the first is a national survey of individuals who are already online and the second a group of ‘digital leaders’; individuals with a strong interest in social media and politics. The first group is representative of digital Britain and the second group are the ‘early adopters’ of social media and digital technologies. In many ways the report paints a positive picture, concluding that the country has: An online population who are...

HTC have been busy and have unveiled a number of new mobiles at the MWC. Thing is that, in my opinion, none of them look as lovely as the HTC Legend. The body is carved from a single piece of aluminum – Mmmmm….. unibody….. I hope Apple are watching! Under that gorgeous hood purrs Android 2.1 wrapped up in HTC Sense. It’s fitted with a 3.2 inch capacitive AMOLED screen with a res of 320 x 480 pixels. The Legend sports a 5.0 megapixel snapper that’s paired up with autofocus and flash. This is all pushed along by a 600 MHz processor and 512MB ROM and 384MB of RAM. There’s a microSD slot to increase it’s capacity as well as the now expected Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. I’m particularly digging this “helicopter view”. Perhaps...