Rev2.org

A couple of weeks ago, Opera Software, which makes the Opera browser, was announced to have brought a $3.4 million lawsuit against former longtime employee Trond Werner Hansen.  The suit, filed last year, alleged that he took proprietary secrets to Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox and other browsers, and demanded 20 million Norwegian Krone (or about $3.4M) in damages.

The lawsuit garnered a few mentions in the blogosphere and a note from Hansen that he would have to leave the states for Norway in order to face the suit, putting his work on a new music album and tour on hold.

The lawsuit was dropped suddenly and settled out of court, with neither party giving details as to what the settlement was.  For its part, Opera says that they’ve “reached an agreement and both parties are satisfied with that.”  Hansen says the lawsuit holding him back and now he’s looking forward to moving ahead.

Hansen says he may spend the summer in his native country before returning to Florida, USA where he planned to open an art gallery and begin promoting his first music album.

So what originated this lawsuit?  Likely it was a combination of things, but Hansen had said in Norwegian news that when he left Opera, he had a lot of good ideas that he wanted to see implemented and that Opera wasn’t interested in.  It’s likely those ideas, subsequently taken to Mozilla, that triggered the suit.

Some people say beauty is only skin deep, but on the internet, people sometimes feel judged based on the photos and videos they post and share. Consequently, some people are left feeling insecure about their looks because of the internet, with some even going under the knife just to fit the social media standards.

A new report by the American Academy of Facial and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) reveals that social media activity has been a main factor for many patients who requested plastic surgery. In fact, the number of these cases increased by 31 per cent, implying that more and more users want to change their physical appearance to look better on social media.

“We live in a very visual world, and have come to expect that we will be ‘Googled’ or ‘Facebooked’ even before actually meeting someone socially or professionally,” noted Dr Sam Rizk, member of AAFPRS and director of Manhattan Facial Plastic Surgery in New York.

“I see a lot of men and women who are executives or high profile so they are in the public eye. Their photos get taken all the time and they never know where they may end up.”

According to the study, which polled 752 of the AAFPRS’ board-certified facial plastic surgeons, there were more cosmetic plastic surgery cases than reconstructive procedures. The number of cosmetic surgeries increased to 73 per cent, with the most popular procedures including Botox, facelifts and rhinoplasty. This is a marked increase from the figure of 62 per cent noted in 2011.

“Whether you think it is harmful or not, it is a trend and I don’t think we will see it slowing down anytime soon,” noted Rizk.

If you have logged on to your Google+ account recently, you probably noticed a couple of changes. Google has redesigned its networking site to feature a more streamlined look with maximised screen space for a user’s feed in an effort to battle with Facebook and Twitter.

Google has ditched the sidebar and positioned all navigational tools at the top of the screen, in addition to launching several enhancements.

The site now has multi-column view choices reminiscent of Pinterest. Users can view a single column, two columns or three columns, depending on their screen size. Google has also added the ability to switch back to the old design.

Another noticeable new feature is called “Related hashtags”, which allows users to flip through related photos with a simple click on the current photo to find related hashtags. Users can also enjoy “Intelligent hashtags”. This feature analyses the photo and automatically places a hashtag on your post. The hashtag can be removed manually and users can also opt out of the feature altogether.

Photo editing has been made easier as Google+ now offers the new “Highlight” tool, which picks out a user’s best shots to display in photo streams while leaving out the blurry ones. The “Auto Enhance” tool can be used to remove red eye, improve skin tone, correct white balance and more. The “Awesome” tool strings photos together in an animated sequence.

Google also backs up all pictures taken from a user’s mobile device as soon as the photos are taken and is also providing accounts with up to 15 gigabytes of storage to accommodate full-resolution photos.

If you use Google Hangouts, then you undoubtedly know that they are a great, easy way to quickly connect with friends and family via video and voice.  Until now, however, it’s been difficult to use them for serious business meetings and webinar-style get togethers because there has been no good way to pause, rewind, or record live On Air broadcasts except with clunky third-party apps.

That’s changed.

Now you can use TiVo-like controls over a live broadcast you’re watching so you can jump up for that potty break or to grab an important call.

In addition to this great feature, On Air videos can now be published immediately instead of waiting during the “processing..” dialogue.  On Air videos are now processed as they air, in near-real-time.

This means that it takes a few moments longer to get your Hangout started, but otherwise, things are perfect.  For those of us who often use our mobile devices to participate in Hangouts and do On Air shows.. Google has also improved how connectivity is handled so that slow connections or connections that periodically drop for a moment or two don’t mean a closed Hangout.  For viewers, live broadcasts now begin without a page refresh.

With Hangouts now on many of the Google services we use daily, like Android and the new Glass, this is a big step forward towards making it an integrated part of how we communicate.

Sometimes, words are not enough to tell someone how you really feel, especially when talking via mobile or through social media. Emoticons can help users express feelings that normally would be conveyed via facial gestures.

Although these images are seemingly simple, trivial or even quirky, they have been a hit with savvy social media users. Now they are set to invade Facebook Messenger to help users communicate things that words alone might not convey. On Monday, the biggest social network upgraded its Messenger app with a few cute and colourful stickers.

These stickers are emoticons that show various feelings in the same way as facial expressions. The update has already been made available for the Facebook Messenger on Android and will be introduced in the iOS Messenger applications in the coming weeks.

Facebook’s stickers are currently still free, but there is a possibility that they might start charging a small fee for some stickers in the future. The social networking app Path also unveiled stickers recently, offering the first two packs for free but charging for additional packs. On Monday, Path also introduced new packs of stickers that included Peanuts characters.

Facebook first introduced its stickers in the general iOS app last month. Afterwards, new images crafted by illustrator Matt Jones were launched, including 16 facial expressions that show sympathy, surprise, cheerfulness and sadness.

In addition to this update, Facebook also resurrected the feature enabling users to delete conversations from their inboxes with just the swipe of a finger.

Internet security experts are looking into a new approach to protecting sensitive data. Instead of merely relying on password protection, websites can use “honeyword” passcodes, or dummy passwords that would trigger an alarm if someone is hacking the website’s database or someone’s account.

This proposal follows the hacking of high-profile portals last year wherein user data was compromised. Some of the sites that were hacked include eHarmony, LinkedIn, Twitter, Evernote, LivingSocial and dating site Zoosk.

As these decoy passwords are usually never accessed and are not really owned by actual users, they may be used to transmit an alert to website administrators once they have been hacked.

The proposed measure also complements the use of dummy accounts and was suggested in a research paper entitled “Honeywords: Making Password-Cracking Detectable”. The study was jointly authored by MIT cryptography professor Ronald Rivest and RSA Labs researcher Ari Juels.

This security measure requires multiple passwords for each individual account, but only one is the actual password. If someone uses one of the dummy passwords, a “honeychecker” system housed on a separate computer would issue a warning to the website’s administrators.

“This approach is not terribly deep, but it should be quite effective, as it puts the adversary at risk of being detected with every attempted login using a password obtained by cracking. Thus, honeywords can provide a very useful layer of defence,” said the researchers.

Administrators could also tweak how the system will respond to an ongoing hack, including suspending a particular account or tracing the location of the hacker.