Rob Manuel: I’ve been booted from Facebook and now they want my passport

“Which means somewhere on their system they have a load of scanned passports. Well, that’s not a security fuck up waiting to happen, is it?”

via Rob Manuel: I’ve been booted from Facebook and now they want my passport.

‘Password’ Tops List of Worst Passwords of 2012 [VIDEO]

1. password (unchanged)

2. 123456 (unchanged)

3. 12345678 (unchanged)

4. abc123 (up 1)

5. qwerty (down 1)

6. monkey (unchanged)

7. letmein (up 1)

8. dragon (up 2)

9. 111111 (up 3)

10. baseball (up 1)

11. iloveyou (up 2)

12. trustno1 (down 3)

13. 1234567 (down 6)

14. sunshine (up 1)

15. master (down 1)

16. 123123 (up 4)

17. welcome (new)

18. shadow (up 1)

19. ashley (down 3)

20. football (up 5)

21. jesus (new)

22. michael (up 2)

23. ninja (new)

24. mustang (new)

25. password1 (new)

via ‘Password’ Tops List of Worst Passwords of 2012 [VIDEO].

The Death of Display As We Know It? (Again)

Yes, Display Is Dying A Quick DeathYes, the banner ad as we knew it is no longer, and thank God. Remember those pixelated 728×90 leaderboards with static images for online adult chat sites that had absolutely no relation to any of the content on the page? Or those flashing online casino banners that just blinked blindingly quickly, almost screaming for your online attention? Or the first animated interactive game banner with the fly-swatter that moved every time your mouse moved? That was pretty novel at the time.We’ve come a long way baby Ahem … pardon the dated 1960s ad slogan reference. I’m clearly a product of consumerism. Today’s rich media ads and those annoying screen-takeovers are paving the way for tomorrow’s new crop of ad units, social ads and mobile banners. People have now gotten smarter, and so have the ads. Many believe that this new direction is changing and redefining the game for brand advertisers. Yes, according to several ballers in the ad industry I know, it’s time for celebration, and I may need to break out my pack of Virginia Slims to celebrate.

via The Death of Display As We Know It?.

The Jimmy Savile witch-hunt sets us on a path to paranoia | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian

Jimmy Savile and the BBC the biggest story on Earth? Apparently so. Today the British media placed it above Romney versus Obama, above the implosion of Lebanon and above the birth of the world’s largest oil company. Savile was bigger than killer drones in Lincolnshire, bigger than Cameron’s prison policy, bigger than the sensational Birmingham terrorism trial. The mere “standing down” of the editor of Newsnight led the BBC news, as if the corporation had sub-contracted itself to its house journal, Ariel.

via The Jimmy Savile witch-hunt sets us on a path to paranoia | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Zynga closes UK office, closes games and axes 5% of staff | The Wall Blog

We have already seen stocks in social networking firms quickly decline this year and last night more of the bubble burst as social gaming firm Zynga announced, timed to coincide with the launch of the iPad Mini, that it was cutting 5% of its 3,200 workforce.

The cuts will include the closures of its operations in the UK and Japan although no word on how many are affected by these cuts.

Along with the job cuts Zynga plans to dispose of 13 older games and reduce its investment in the game The Ville.

via Zynga closes UK office, closes games and axes 5% of staff | The Wall Blog.

Apple Adds iPad Mini, its First Actually Mobile Tablet | Digital – Advertising Age

Up to now, advertisers have talked about how iPads are typically used in a lean-back setting; Apple ads even pictured users’ feet up. That, in turn, has informed the type of ads that marketers distribute to tablets: often magazine-style, whole-screen takeovers and ads that drive people to e-commerce experiences made for browsing.

At the other side of the spectrum are advertising strategies for mobile phones, which are focusing more and more on location data, with the belief that the person viewing the phone is on the move and looking for something to do or buy.

via Apple Adds iPad Mini, its First Actually Mobile Tablet | Digital – Advertising Age.

EC: Microsoft didn’t honour browser-choice commitment • The Register

From 2009, Microsoft has been legally obliged to show EU Windows users a “choice screen” so they can decide which browser they wish to install. Automatically tying Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system was a breach of antitrust legislation, the Eurocrats declared.

But the “choice screen” did not materialise in Windows 7 when it launched in February 2011 and from Feb 2011 until July 2012 millions of users were never shown the “choice screen”.

This meant that millions of people missed the chance to ditch IE for a better different browser. Microsoft has acknowledged that it did not offer a choice screen for those 17 months, though previously claimed that this was down to a technical error and that it didn’t notice the mistake until just under a year-and-a-half later.

via EC: Microsoft didn’t honour browser-choice commitment • The Register.

Cadbury Screme Eggs Are Amusingly Rotten in Halloween Spots | Adweek

Hardly surprising that Cadbury recently owned by US mega company Kraft and now owned by another US corporation Mondel?z is now creating Halloween products.
Cadbury has finally started recognizing Halloween with its Cadbury Screme Egg, and these three Canadian TV spots for it—by ad agency The Hive in Toronto—are as spooky as ads for candy eggs will allow. They do a good job of showing off the Screme Egg’s special Halloween wrapper and green-and-white yolk (which looks a bit more like snot than they probably intended).

 

via Cadbury Screme Eggs Are Amusingly Rotten in Halloween Spots | Adweek.

Top 10 Twitter languages in London

Zoom.it – Image IIY6 – lovely visualisation of the density of languages on twitter via @evilmanic

Data: Ed Manley (@edthink)

Map: James Cheshire (@spatialanalysis)

Summer 2012 English is 3.3 Million and the rest is in descending order

Spanish

French

Turkish

Arabic

Portuguese

German

Italian

Malay

Russian

 

I’m amazed that Polish doesn’t feature – it must be position 11 if you ask me.

 

Publicity Stunt of the Week: ten bizarre phone insurance claims • Reg Hardware

Here you go:

Inserted into a cow’s vagina

Dropped in the bog during defecation – a perennial favourite, this; or should that be ‘perianal’? ‘arf, ‘arf

Broken after being used as a sex toy

Stolen by an aggressive seafront seagull

Stolen by an aggressive safari park monkey

Blown aloft by fireworks

Broken when hurled at an inconstant boyfriend

Dropped out of a tree while being used to illegally film a pop concert

Baked in a birthday cake

Dropped over the side of a cruise ship

via Publicity Stunt of the Week: ten bizarre phone insurance claims • Reg Hardware.