News

Facebook For The Famous, and Other Tech Advances

by Jenny Hollander

The Week In Geek is our round-up of this week's best under-the-radar tech stories—the stuff we laughed at, were amazed by, and nerded out about.

Facebook tries out an app for the one percent.

For as long as celebrities have been on Facebook, they've had to manage their accounts just like us common folks. (Or their reps do.) Because they get an influx of fan messages and comments, Facebook is trying out something new for them: a built-in Facebook app that easily sorts through the weight of their feed, and directs them to the kind of fan conversations they want to pay attention to.

Apple's looking to integrate audio hyperlinks into their models.

While everyone was busy talking about the iPhone 5S, Apple quietly applied for a patent for audio hyperlinks. What on earth are audio hyperlinks, you say? Good bloody question: written hyperlinks take you to a website, so audio hyperlinks will take you there using audible cues instead. So, for example, an ad for Ikea plays on your television. Your tablet might "hear" it, and take you to the Ikea website.

Filing a patent alone doesn't mean that Apple will pursue the route, but they must think there's something there. Their official patent says that audio hyperlinks would give listeners a way "to access linked resources."

Could Google Glasses make life easier for the disabled?

A law student in New York, paralyzed for two years from the waist down after a car accident, is raving that Google Glass Explorer has helped her get her life back. Alex Blaszczuk taped a camping trip in which she used the glasses to get directions, call her friends, take photos and videos, and dictate texts. Google uploaded the tape to its YouTube page:

That said, Google's about to sift through your email whenever you run a Google Search.

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In the next few days, Google will roll out an add-on to their Google Search feature. When you run a search, Google will sift through your Gmail, your Google Calendar, and your Google + to give you more accurate results. (Because no-one's concerned about there being a wealth of personal data available for the government to mine through, or anything.)

Or as Google put it, in a recent lawsuit: “A person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”

Right.

Google has assured that the info will be "encrypted," but we'll believe that one when we see it. There will, however, be a button that'll let you turn off their access to the rest of your Google Cloud data.

Twitter is trying out a "TV Trending" feature.

Some users are seeing a "TV Trending" box at the top of their Twitter timeline, which has been interpreted as the next move for the Twittersphere. (Twitter recently purchased a TV-analysis firm, and joined forces with Nielson to study TV-watching patterns.)

It looks like the company is trying out its popular "trending" feature, specifically, responses to TV shows – which, let's face it, are one of the most popular uses for the social-networking platform. There are also whispers that if Twitter does integrate its "TV Trending" channel, it'll make it easier for the site to use targeted advertising.