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MPs are challenging the UK’s emergency data surveillance powers in court

Jun04
by on June 4, 2015 at 9:48 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, UK

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Two British MPs are challenging the country’s emergency surveillance laws, which were fast-tracked by the previous government last summer. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act allows intelligence agencies to gather phone and internet communications data. It was passed, with extremely limited time for debate, in three days last July. The process of passing the law was sped up after the European Court of Justice ruled existing powers illegal. Now David Davis (Conservative) and Tom Watson (Labour) are taking a case to the High Court, arguing that the legislation is incompatible with human rights law, was rushed and lacks adequate…

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Yandex Radio launches to be Pandora for Russians

Jun04
by on June 4, 2015 at 9:26 am
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Yandex, Yandex Music

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Russian internet giant Yandex has launched a new music streaming service, Yandex.Radio – a jukebox for users in the country who want to listen to pre-programmed music stations. This is the company’s second venture into music streaming. The first, Yandex.Music, is more Spotify-like, offering a library of 20 million tracks to choose from. It claims to have 10 million unique monthly users. Yandex.Radio takes a Pandora-esque approach, with 100+ channels classified by mood, activity and genre. Yandex says its using “proprietary machine-learning technology” to tailor the playlists to the previous listening activity of the user. The service is available online and…

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Why Instagram should be part of every business

Jun04
by on June 4, 2015 at 8:58 am
Posted In: Around the Web, brands, instagram, Social Media

Instagram
It’s common knowledge that a massive amount of digital content is being created daily on social networks. How much is massive? Every second there are 2,100 new posts on Instagram bringing an average of 180 million uploads each day. This rate of content creation spells nothing but opportunity for businesses. Not only is it now a necessity for brands to become active on Instagram, but they must have a clear strategy in place to take advantage of the continuing popularity of the most powerful social media network. Why Instagram is important for brands Instagram is capturing the most sought after audience…

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Pulsar partners with Datasift to bring Facebook topic data to its social media monitoring platform

Jun04
by on June 4, 2015 at 8:52 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Datasift, Pulsar, Social media monitoring

Pulsar Facebook
UK-based social media monitoring platform Pulsar has partnered with Datasift to allow its customers access to Facebook topic data for their market research and targeting needs. Datasift provides anonymized and aggregated topic data on Facebook’s 1.44 billion users across the globe and is the only company to do so. The partnership will allow Pulsar users to mine Facebook’s audience for insights into what people are engaging with and sharing on the social network. Pulsar offers more than 60 variables to sample data against in its TRAC social data intelligence service. You can request a demo of the new service by…

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Scroll-o-Meter Chrome extension turns all that scrolling you do into a game

Jun04
by on June 4, 2015 at 8:01 am
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Chrome Extension, games, Insider, Scroll-o-meter

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The amount of scrolling you do on the Web on a daily basis, particularly on sites like Mail Online where pages seem to go on forever, really adds up. Scroll-o-Meter is a fun new Chrome extension that keeps track of how far your finger has travelled. The tool automatically detects your screen size and keeps a running total of the distance you’ve scrolled (in miles or kilometers), awarding you achievements as you go. The best part is that it adds a little runner to the bottom of your screen who strides across it as you scroll. You can make the figure…

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