LSQHA Blog Reviews

Last week, we were very excited about all the possiblities offered by adding OAuth with IMAP/SMTP to Gmail, but as we noted then, don't let those acronyms cause your eyes to glaze over. What sounds like complicated, techie stuff really means simply useful additions to your email experience and this time, we're talking about Yahoo Mail, still the leading webmail provider. As Programmable Web pointed out this morning, it looks like Yahoo actually implemented OAuth several days before Gmail got around to it. Sponsor OAuth access to your email means that you can give simple, one-click authorization to external applications to have full access to your emails. This also means you can have seemless access to the information in your email account, from the contents of the emails themselves to your contact list, on other websites. If you think of going to a website and finding all the people you know on there by using Twitter, you're most likely already familiar with OAuth - it's that window that pops up that you click "Allow" on. From the Yahoo! Mail Developer Community group on March 25: Today we're super exited to announce our OAuth API for Yahoo Mail! Not only have we moved to a much cleaner authentication technology, but we have removed all the restrictions limiting message access of "free" accounts. That means that you can now use the full API for all Yahoo Mail users regardless of their free/premium status, accessing full message contents if your application needs it. Cool, eh? For those of you out there using Yahoo Mail, which is still a majority, expect to see some cool new add-ons for the age old email service to be released soon. At least, that's what we're hoping for. Discuss

Excerpt from:
Yahoo Mail Gets Unrestricted API Access with OAuth

In addition to confusion over charging that we covered yesterday, a number of other issues have come to light to mar the iPad's debut. The most common, according to Apple's iPad support forums, are weak and intermittent Wi-Fi signals and overheating . The heat issue might make the beach bums ReadWriteWeb mentioned earlier as early adopters default to other devices - or make the long move to Peter's Sink, Utah . Sponsor An additional issue is the apparent inability of the iPad to handle IMAP push email from Yahoo and others. Some of these and other problems may be the normal shaking out process of a hardware launch. Some may be genuine design issues. But some, like the "not charging" messages people were getting yesterday, may turn out to be a result of a multitude of expectations. Some expect it to behave like a phone, others like a laptop computer- and in some ways it does neither. It could be some time before expectations, and limitations, are established. These issues, again, are rooted in the responsibility of manufacturers in setting those expectations. Were these limitations noted prior to launch? If so, were they not communicated out of a fear of limiting sales? ReadWriteWeb has been evaluating the iPad extensively. How has your iPad experience been? Discuss

Here is the original post:
iPad Problems Begin to Surface

When people talk about managing communities in this new online world, one name is mentioned more often and with more respect than any other: Heather Champ of Flickr . Today Champ announced that after nearly 5 years and more than 4 billion photos uploaded, she is leaving Flickr to start a community management consultancy called Fertile Medium . Flickr went from a Canadian social gaming company in 2004 to a photo sharing service to a Yahoo! acquisition in 2005. 3 years ago next month, Yahoo! shut down its giant Yahoo! Photos service and moved everyone over to Flickr instead. Sponsor Champ put her work in perspective on a blog post that included the following: "How do you take a community the size of small town to the size of a nation? How do you grow a site that began in one region and make it truly global by adding languages and localizing in what's now 25 countries? How do you apply a content filtering system to a living site to ensure that members can be respectful of one another but still share the greatest variety of content? These are some of the big hairy challenges." Just as most of Yahoo! has, Flickr has seen budget challenges as well. A substantial number of the Flickr team members were laid off one year ago this month . Facebook has long been larger and now sees almost an entire Flickr's-worth of photos (3 billion) uploaded to that social network every month. As Facebook pushes its users more and more public with their content, it would be well served by paying attention to what Champ did at Flickr. The succinct and oft-learned from community guidelines at Flickr are among the work that Champ says she has been most proud of. Those challenges were experienced at Flickr in some of the earliest days of what's now called "social media" and Champ helped forge best practices that have served as a foundation for communities all over the web ever since. Photo by Beth Kanter. Discuss

Read the original post:
Flickr's Community Manager Says Goodbye

Have you become the Mayor of Buttita Plaza Pawn on Foursquare? Or the Archbishop of Myung Dong Tofu Cabin, or the...Deputy Sheriff of the Twilight Bowl? Yay for you! Meanwhile, bloggers in Morocco and Vietnam have become the Governor of Prison and the Water Commissioner of the Interrogation Room. Feel bad? I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't. All this technology we use and write about and enthuse on has higher stakes than we think. Here are some of them. Sponsor Moroccan blogger Abdellatif Ouaiss arrested. Ouaiss was arrested Sunday for "an article published in his English-language blog in which he criticized the ten-year rule of King Mohammed VI" according to Rihab Alhoria . Vietnamese human rights lawyer and blogger Le Thi Cong Nhan rearrested. In the middle of March, only three days after Le Thi Cong Nhan was released from prison after a three year sentence, she was arrested again. "Police took her to a Hanoi police station for allegedly violating the terms of the supplementary sentence of three years of house arrest that she is now supposed to serve," according to From The Old , which has more information. Germany blocks content country-wide, imitates China and Iran. Germany, according to the OpenNetInitiative , has instituted "block lists." What starts with porn ends with you shutting the hell up. (What was that thing about the lessons of history? Ah, whatever. Let's dance! Ganz toll! ) Google gets hacked in China . Intermittent hacking and other mysterious interference slows, and in some places, blocks Google. Google stammered in response. More from ReadWriteWeb . Yahoo gets hacked. In China. Over a dozen Yahoo email accounts belonging to foreign journalists, activists and analysts in China were hacked. Effectively, the email accounts were shut down. More from ReadWriteWeb . Still. Iranian blogger Hessam Firouzi 's still in prison. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer is still in prison. Omid Reza Mir Sayafi (murdered March 18, 2009) is still murdered. Top photo by Adrian Van Leen End photo by FreeKareem.org The author was a co-founder of the March 18 Movement. Discuss

Link:
This Week in Online Tyranny

Associated Press initially reported that three foreign journalists and one analyst have seen their email accounts hacked into today. The New York Times subsequently reported that there were "at least a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China," including the author Andrew Jacobs. AP: "They were greeted with messages saying, 'We've detected an issue with your account' and were told to contact Yahoo, they said Tuesday. Yahoo technicians told one of the four that his account had been hacked and restored his access, but it was not clear if the other instances were related." Sponsor Jacobs reported that "hackers altered (his) e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address." Among those affected were Clifford Coonan of Variety magazine and Kathleen McLaughlin, a freelancer. Agence France Presse reported that Yahoo! was avoiding directly addressing the hacks, saying only that it "condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose." Yahoo! was roundly condemned for hurriedly turning over user information on reporter Shi Tao to the Chinese security forces in 2005. Their actions resulted in a long prison term for Shi for sharing Chinese media coverage policy with foreign sources. The late U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos called CEO Jerry Yang a "moral pygmy" for his collusion and subsequent slippery excuse-making. Earlier today, intermittent blocking of Google was reported in the country. China has the most sophisticated and widespread online censorship regime in the world, dovetailing social measures, criminal statutes and electronic measures. Additionally, some believe that government-sponsored, or at least encouraged, hackers have been behind multiple attacks on the properties of foreign companies, like the one that occasioned Google's surprising announcement of its intended withdrawal from China in January. Discuss

Read more from the original source:
Yahoo Hacked in China: Journalists, Others Affected