Google, Facebook in stalemate over social data

Google, whose Orkut social network has tens of millions of users in Brazil, tried to reach further into social networking with the November unveiling of a consortium called OpenSocial, which lets developers write applications for use on multiple social networks. News Corp.'s MySpace has joined, but Facebook hasn't. It quickly objected, citing privacy concerns. Normally dealing with other companies one on one, Facebook can block a service it feels violates its rules. With Google as the intermediary, Facebook lost that leverage, so it decided to block Friend Connect entirely.In a blog posting, Facebook developer Charlie Cheever said Google's Friend Connect "redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect."

Google responded, acknowledging it passes along data. But it said sharing is limited to links for profile photos of users and friends who have expressly consented to sharing with that particular site. The user's name and numeric ID on Facebook are replaced with Google's own identifiers, Google said in a company blog post.
Google also said it purges Facebook data from its systems every 30 minutes, more frequently than the 24 hours required by Facebook.

Facebook has run into privacy challenges before, most recently when it unveiled a marketing tool called "Beacon" that tracked purchases Facebook members made on other Web sites and sent alerts to their Facebook friends about the transactions.Facebook have announced that they are going to license their APIs and proprietary markup language to other social web sites - the first of which is Bebo. At their own launch announcement yesterday, Bebo CEO Michael Birch said that the company has chosen to license FB’s platform as they didn’t want to add to a format war. In time the company will also add support for “Open Social”.

Remix AR.Rehman songs to fit in your style

Nokia in association with Big Music came up with an innovative way to promote the music of director Tanvir Ahmed's forthcoming film Ada-a way of life. The film's music has been composed by music maestro A.R. Rahman and die-hard Rahman fans not just have a chance to enjoy his music but also play around with it.

Yes, you heard it right for the first time ever Nokia along with Big Music and A.R. Rahman gives listeners a chance to remix two tracks from this film http://www.remixrahmansada.com/index.aspx. The winner of this contest (who will be chosen by the music legend himself) gets a chance to spend one day with him and remix two of the songs of Ada in Rahman's studio.

Microsoft Live Search Cashback Deserves Some Credit

Microsoft is all set to follow the footsteps of corporate banks that offer 'CashBacks' on Credit Card purchases. Microsoft is implementing a new service called the 'Live Search Cash Back' . This service is a collaborative effort between Microsoft, eBay and PayPal and will be offering cash backs to consumers that would perform a search on 'MSN Live Search' and then make a purchase. This move is being contemplated as a Microsoft effort to increase website traffic and better compete with Google. Google on the other hand makes most of its revenue by displaying advertisements in its search results.

The new cash-back service is being described as a positive prospect to the consumers as they will be able to search for products online and at the same get good deals on the products too. The cash-back will work by calculating a small percentage of product's price and that amount will be awarded back to the consumer via a cheque, direct bank account deposit or if a user has an account with eBay's PayPal online payment service. Some of the prominent products that is available on the cash-back offer are running shoes, perfume, Canon Inc. digital cameras, Bulova Corp. watches and Oakley Inc. sunglasses. The site also lists participating vendors including Barnes & Noble Inc. booksellers, Circuit City Stores Inc. and Home Depot Inc.