Engineers from Facebook, Twitter and Myspace took matters into their own hands after being excluded from Google's new social search. Search Plus Your World, unveiled earlier this month, allows social content such as photos and posts from the people you follow on Google+ to be included in regular Google search results. The functionality also aids the discovery of people related to a particular search. The addition to Google search sparked an antitrust debate from Facebook and Twitter who argued that ...

Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has joined Twitter, reportedly as part of an attempted bid to boost his communication with the country’s young people. The move comes as Singh’s government forges ahead in its attempts to censor "objectionable material" on social media. According to The Next Web, the account will function as on official communication channel between Singh and the Indian people in much the same way as the @whitehouse and @Number10gov accounts do in the US and UK ...

I was told I was getting a Maserati GranTurismo or an Aston Martin DBS. I was lied to. The package was awfully small to be an Aston. I looked around the 'Burn offices and everyone shrugged. I opened it and guess what? It was a mouse. Not just any mouse, a car-shaped mouse. But it still wasn't a Maserati, it was a Range Rover Evoque. Ok fine, I am into off-road excitement. Why not take the Evoque for a spin around ...

US President Barack Obama’s administration is renowned for its use of social media. His election campaign relied heavily on Facebook and Twitter, and the president also has accounts on the likes of Foursquare and Instagram. It should hardly be surprising, therefore that he would also embrace the Hangouts feature in Google+. After Obama delivers his State of Union address, says Google, he "will answer a selection of top-voted questions...in a live-streamed interview”. According to Google, people will be able to ...

When Google released its 2011 financial results, general consensus was that the internet giant had performed worse than expected. Thing is, disappointing for Google and disappointing for any other company are two very different things. Google still managed, after all, to bring in a whopping US$37.9-billion in ad revenue. US-based Pay Per Click (PPC) company Wordstream decided to take a deeper look into what industries made up the bulk of that revenue. Google doesn’t generally release the kind of information ...

The Piratebay, one of the world largest torrent sites, will now offer physical downloads, or Physibles as it has lovingly named them. According to the site, which is often on the wrong side of the law, Physibles are the "next evolution in copying". These downloadable objects are nothing more than 3D render files which can be physically printed on the currently small selection of available 3D printers. But what the Piratebay proposes are "perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things". Outlining ...

Every day one tech company or another seems to be embroiled in some kind of legal battle. The rocketing growth of prominent social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook seems to have, in some way, influenced the legal system. The more we immerse ourselves in social media and the more these platforms define our we lives, the more issues around how we use them change. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have given rise to new regulations in privacy, user ...

A number of South African state schools using English as their medium of instruction, are reportedly considering scrapping their syllabi in African languages such as Xhosa and Zulu. All pupils in South African state schools are required to learn two language. The proposed move would force pupils in such schools, no matter what their background, to study Afrikaans as their second language. This is a particularly controversial idea given the country’s past experiences with language in schools. The forced use of ...

Facebook has once again caught the attention of everyone's favourite hacktivist group, Anonymous, reports Business Insider. The group has been on a retaliation quest over the past few days, following the takedown of MegaUpload. In a weekend of mass attacks, the group diverted all traffic away from CBS.com, took down Universal Music Group and various government sites. A new video posted on a supposed Anonymous-affiliated YouTube account, has singled out Facebook as the group's next target. The video, ...

In an effort to mitigate the potential fallout, file sharing sites with affiliate programs are shutting down regular operations. In the wake of the MegaUpload crackdown, FileSonic, FileServe and numerous others have disabled their affiliate rewards programmes and now only allow users access to their own files. The programmes rewarded members for uploading content -- pirated or legal. Many other file-sharing sites are following suit and some are taking drastic measures, blocking incoming traffic from the US, deleting incriminating content or ...