There was a lot going on in the internet this week! We can expect to see Twitter and Google partner up, but we can expect the opposite for Comcast and Time Warner cable. WordPress adds a security update after the disclosure of a cross-site scripting vulnerability, and Microsoft developers create a tool that guesses your age, which quickly went viral.
Twitter and Google partner up to integrate tweets into Google search results
According to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, we can expect to see Twitter content integrated into Google search results sometime this month. A deal was reached between the two giants in February that would allow Google full access to Twitter’s stream of tweets, known as the firehouse. This is a vast change from attempting to crawl through the 500, 000, 000 tweets per day. Although Costolo did not give a specific date, he did elaborate on the rationale behind the deal saying the “Google deal and relationship is all about driving our total audience strategy. The goal is to get people to consume content and engage with that content whether they log in or not.”
Costolo also announced that Twitter is working with Apple to integrate its content directly into Apple’s Spotlight search on both iOS and OS X. According to Buzzfeed, it’s already being introduced.
WordPress issues a critical security update to address zero day exploit
WordPress 4.2.1 was made available Monday containing a critical security release to address a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. The XSS vulnerability could have easily been exposed through seemingly benign WordPress comments that could be triggered when viewed by injected JavaScript, allowing unauthenticated attackers to take control of entire websites. Jouko Pynnonen, a Finnish information security expert, discovered the threat in November of last year but said WordPress “refused all communication attempts” about the security vulnerabilities. Due to the lack of response, Pynnonen disclosed the threat and urged administrators to disable all comments. Thankfully, WordPress’s release was made available a day after his post.
Comcast and Time Warner terminate merger agreement
The Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, the largest cable merger ever proposed between the two largest cable companies, has been cancelled.
On April 24th, Comcast announced that the $45 billion merger agreement had been terminated. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts made an optimistic statement, saying “Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn’t agree, we could walk away.” The announcement came after about a year of regulatory review from the US. Congress, the FCC and the Department of Justice. The majority of the American public viewed the merger as negative and believed it would lead to an increase in internet costs for everyone. Netflix’s CEO’s main goal was to stop the merger and “to get the government to block the Comcast-Time Warner merger.” The mega deal would have given the single cable company control over more than half the country’s internet users.
Microsoft’s new How-old.net site goes viral
Microsoft launched a new webpage using Microsoft’s recently released Face detection API’s called how-old.net. The site allows users to upload images to be analyzed and guess the age and gender of the any recognizable faces in the picture. To the surprise of the developers hoping for 50 people to try it, the tool quickly went viral entertaining 35,000 users worldwide within hours. The tool focuses on three things: Extracting the gender and age of the people in these pictures. Obtaining real time insights on the data extracted above. Using a real time dashboard to view the above results.
The tool was put together by a couple of developers within a day, demonstrating the capability of Azure services and the Machine Learning APIs. To try out the site yourself, go check out http://how-old.net (#HowOldRobot) and check out some of the funny inaccuracies.
In other news:
Google person finder deployed to assist earthquake victims
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/internet/finding-people-in-the-earthquake-zone
Facebook graph api changes go live
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/