Facebook posts

“We’ve been sitting here scratching our heads for the last couple of days,” says Greg Schrader, managing director of Teachbook.com. Greg’s head does not have an itch. In an puzzling move, Facebook has decided it owns ‘book’, and has subsequently filed a lawsuit against Teachbook, an Illinois-based company that provides online tools for teachers to manage and share resources. Right away, I guess that sounds pretty reasonable. Teachbook does seem to be playing off Facebook’s popularity, and Facebook tends to agree. “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online…

You’re obvs friends (the Facebook kind, obvs) with Mark Zuckerberg. Zuck’s a pretty fly dude. Runs a little internet startup or something. But sometimes, Zuck gets irritating. He’s always status updating, about everything. Those passive-agressive song lyrics directed at someone you don’t like that you’re passing off as a status update are getting real annoying, Mark. Hell, now that the guy’s got Facebook Places, it’s only gonna get worse. So sometimes, you wanna block Zuck. You want to post something nasty on his wall and retreat to the safe haven of blockitude. Well, grow a pair! Man up! Just…

This is entirely a new one. A new German law, penned by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, will potentially disallow employers from peeking at potential candidates on Facebook and other non-career based social networks. However, googling (and LinkedIn-ing) a candidate is still okay, provided – get this – the employer disregards information that is old, or ‘outside of a candidate’s control’. The idea is to provide greater privacy for employees. But, okay, let’s think about this for a second. First of all, for the Facebook thing to work, I’d have to accept a friend request from a stranger…

Chances are, by now, you’ve taken Facebook Places for a spin. If you haven’t, Facebook really, really wants you to, having unleashed this unbelievably sappy promotional video into the internet. What amounts to Foursquare: Blue Version is touted as the most teary, sentimental thing in the universe. I almost expected the whole thing to end on a flowery photo album closing and an old man shedding a tear, having looked back on his life, remembering all those times he used Facebook Places to create his fondest memories. And speaking of which, did you notice something about the dialog? Right at the end…

The new Facebook geolocation feature is here, and it is called “Places”. The new service will let Facebook users tag their status updates with where they are, “like”, and otherwise interact with Places. The new service isn’t meant as a competitor for similar services such as Gowalla or Foursquare, but will integrate with them. Following along with the release announcement on the Facebook Innovations live stream channel we learned the following: -Places has been in the works for quite some time (there were titters when Zuckerberg said it had been cooking for a few months) -find out where your…

You’re a tech-savvy poweruser of most impressive internets, so I won’t remind you of Google and Verizon’s plans to destroy the internet. The internet must remain free, but who will root for the little guy? Apparently, Facebook will. “Facebook continues to support principles of net neutrality for both landline and wireless networks,” said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. “Preserving an open Internet that is accessible to innovators — regardless of their size or wealth — will promote a vibrant and competitive marketplace where consumers have ultimate control over the content and services…

It’s no secret that Google is clearly ramping up for war with Facebook in the social network sphere. Fortunately, Google products are typically hideous, so Facebook certainly hasn’t got much to worry about in the GUI department. But that aside, Mark and Friends aren’t taking this new challenger lying down. Especially when the challenger is Google. Zuckerberg has apparently put Facebook’s headquarters on ‘lockdown’ for the next 60 days, leaving the office open 7 days a week in an effort to scramble to defend against Google’s plans. He’s even got a big neon sign on his door reading as such. You may…

You know, when I was a lad, we were always accused of spending too much time “in front of the computer playing games”. Then came email and its capacity to swallow hours of your day. Then, when broadband rolled around, it was just ‘mindless surfing’ that killed your online time. But now, recent research by Nielsen has proved what only the people still stuck on the island in Lost don’t know: these days, when people waste their time on the web, it’s on social media. The stats? Apparently, we spend about 23% of our time online twittering, poking and liking versus about 8% on email. One imagines that the rest…

If you’ve ever used Yahoo Answers, you’re painfully aware of the human wastelands that populate the internet, and the unfortunate questions they’re prone to ask. They make you facepalm. Sometimes groan a little. Occasionally, you’ll do that thing where you’re suddenly aware of your posture, and will reshuffle your butt around in your seat a bit from sheer amazement at the stupidity presented before you. Well, lucky you – now you don’t even need to go as far as Yahoo. Facebook Questions is Yahoo Answers, only for Facebook. You may be able to see it now, in fact. Run! Check it! Should be in your sidebar….

Oh, hey, that was slick, Facebook. Go to your account, guys. Right now. New tab. Check out your account options. Notice anything different? Facebook rolls stuff out slowly, so maybe you don’t. If you’re one of the lucky few, you may have noticed that Facebook has quietly added the option to delete your account, changing ‘Deactivate Account’ to ‘Deactivate or Delete Account’. Fancy that. It raises some questions, though, not the least of which is: why give us this option now? It’s not like Facebook is still facing bad press from the privacy snafu. You don’t like deleting our data, Facebook. Why give…