Ad: Manage updates with the Download App

profiles

Google Social Search out of Labs, into beta

Google's Social Search product is ready for wider testing.

First announced back at the Web 2.0 conference, Social Search allows Google searchers to link their Google Profile with the various profiles they have on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Google launched it as a Google Labs project, but it's now going to be available to the wider Google user base, the company announced Wednesday.

In short, Google Social Search allows you to customize your search results with content produced by those in your online social circle. But it requires everybody in that social circle to … Read more

AT&T strategist learns lessons of battlefield

This is the last in a series of profiles that look at how the tech industry is working with the federal government.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--In October 2006 Jim Cicconi, a senior executive vice president at AT&T who heads up legislative affairs, took his team of top regulatory lawyers to Gettysburg to teach them battlefield strategy.

For two days, 15 senior AT&T managers stood on the very spot where more than 50,000 men had died during one of the greatest battles in the Civil War, and they listened to a former West Point history professor … Read more

Firewall settings not being reflected in System Profiler

The system profiler should poll the hardware and software configuration of the computer to generate the report of the current state of the system; however, a few Snow Leopard users have found that when some firewall settings (specifically stealth mode and logging) are changed they do not appear to be reflected in the System Profiler. Instead, regardless of the settings the System Profiler claims the settings are not enabled, which has confused a number of people.… Read more

JVC's new Blu-ray player is a Profile 1.1 throwback

These days, what separates Blu-ray players from one another has less to do with how they play Blu-rays--they all do that pretty well--and more to do with the sort of extra features they offer. Many players, for instance, can access a variety of online entertainment options, including Amazon Video On Demand, Pandora, Vudu, and especially Netflix. Unfortunately, JVC's latest player doesn't have any of those online features. In fact, it can't even access the online extras found on some Blu-ray Discs.

JVC has released an entry-level Blu-ray player, the XV-BP11 ($200), which--surprisingly--only complies with the older Blu-ray … Read more

Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5: Exported CMYK images from Preview may appear inverted

Images with a CMYK color profile may be displaying colors as inverted after they are exported from Apple's Preview application and opened in third-party programs. According to a recently published Apple knowledge base article, CMYK JPEG colors can be distorted depending on the program opening the file.… Read more

Keep your Facebook profile private

Earlier this month, an 82-year-old man in Auburn, Calif., was scammed out of $5,200 because his Facebook profile was too forthcoming. The first thing I did after reading his tale of woe on the Auburn Journal site was to examine my own Facebook profile from a stranger's perspective.

I didn't like what I saw.

What I saw was too much, so the second thing I did was edit my Facebook profile to remove some personal information and further restrict access to it. Unfortunately, the process took longer than I expected.

A Facebook privacy makeover begins by hovering … Read more

Upload Nintendo DSi photos to Facebook

It's been a long time coming, but Nintendo has finally announced that today's DSi system update will bring along the capability to upload photos from your DSi directly to your Facebook profile.

Photos from either of the two cameras can be manipulated beforehand then uploaded to Facebook afterward. While the onboard cameras don't boast enormous resolutions, we think the size should be good enough for use with the social networking giant.

Today's DSi update should be available about 8 p.m. Eastern time. DSi owners can simply navigate to the system update section of the settings … Read more

Roundup: New 2009 Blu-ray players

Blu-ray may have started out as a mess, with confusing "profiles" and painfully slow load times, but this year's standalone players have finally gotten their acts together. The new 2009 Blu-ray players are already hitting retailers and we're happy to report that all the units we've tested have full Profile 2.0 compatibility, as well as onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio Essential. The days of half-baked standalone Blu-ray players are pretty much over.

The Samsung BD-P3600 is the standout player of the bunch, going beyond the basic features to include Netflix … Read more

Share contact info, social graph via Google Profiles

In another expansion of its Profiles site, Google has enabled people to share their contact information with selected contacts, a move that offers modest convenience for users of the service and valuable data to Google.

The feature shows as a "Contact info" tab; clicking on it shows whatever contact information you've entered and the note, "You are not sharing your contact information with anyone. Edit your profile to add contact info, and then choose who to share it with so that they always have the most up-to-date information."

Google Profiles is hardly a Facebook crusher or a LinkedIn slayer, but it is getting gradually more elaborate, as Google builds it up. In October, user profiles became visible to search engines. In November came identity authentication and a mechanism to let people contact you without sharing your e-mail address.

Here's why this Profiles move is interesting: telling Google whom you entrust with your personal information is a good way of identifying the close members of your social circle--in other words, the strong links in your social graph. … Read more