How To Hide Secret Messages In Your Twitter Updates

Twitter offers a surprising freedom of expression within 140 characters, but what if you want to hide a message in plain sight -- say, to get around censorship? Well, it's now as easy as pie. Matthew Holloway has built a web tool that uses steganography (that is, hiding messages within other content) to put secret phrases inside your tweets. The technique replaces letters with similar-looking characters that hide a second message you can only reveal with the right decoder.

Holloway is quick to stress that this isn't cryptography. Since anyone can use the tool, your hidden meaning is fair game to anyone who tracks down his website and pastes in your text. It's also patently obvious that this isn't an ordinary post, so suspicious types will know that something's up. Still, if you ever want to enjoy a degree of obscurity on Twitter -- or just want to mess with your followers -- you can check out the utility at the source link.

Source:Twitter Secret Messages
Via:Ars Technica, engadget

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Posted on 22:45

Categories: mobile , Social Network , Twitter

Instagram Does Your Selfies A Favor With An Improved Lux Feature For iOS

Go ahead, ask any youngster around you: selfies are serious business. No one is more mindful of that universal truth than Instagram, which is why it pushed out yet another iOS app update earlier today. No, there aren't any new filters (isn't 19 enough?) -- instead, the company brought some much-needed control to its Lux feature.
Lux (a.k.a. that little sun icon that makes pictures look better) was originally added to help mobile photogs salvage their underexposed, anemic-looking shots. The big caveat? It was an all-or-nothing affair, with no way to find the middle ground between the original image and the occasionally over-the-top Luxified result. Today's update adds a much-needed slider to the mix so you can decide just how dramatic the effect should be. If you're feeling particularly devious, you can crank down the Lux to desaturate your shots, too.

Download Link

 iTunes Store

Source:@Instagram

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Posted on 02:50

Categories: iOS Apps , mobile , Social Network , Updates

Facebook Announces First Data Center with Rapid Deployment Design

Facebook announces first data center with new rapid deployment design coming to Luleå, Sweden

Facebook announced plans to build the first data center using its new “rapid deployment data center” (RDDC) design, its most efficient method to build a data center yet. It will be located in a second building at the company’s existing campus in Luleå, Sweden, the location of the social network’s first international data center.

At this year’s summit for the Open Compute Project (OCP), Facebook previewed the RDDC design (video embedded below and full 97-page presentation available here). The company says it expects the new approach to data center design will enable it to construct and deploy new capacity twice as fast as its previous approach, will prove to be much more site-agnostic, and will greatly reduce the amount of material used during construction.

• Site-agnostic design: By standardizing the designs of component assemblies much like with OCP servers, Facebook hopes to deploy a unitized data center into almost any region in the world faster, leaner, and more cost-effectively. Performing more of the assembly in a controlled environment and at ground level also reduces assembly time. By deploying pre-manufactured assemblies, a majority of the components can be used interchangeably. The goal is to be deployable wherever needed.
• Reduced on-site impact: The RDDC concept will deploy pre-engineered unitized modules that minimize the amount of time required for heavy equipment on site and overall time to complete a data hall. The modules reduce the generation of on-site waste and the impacts associated with the delivery and staging of individual construction materials common to traditional construction techniques.
• Improved execution and workmanship: Having a predictable and repeatable product delivered to the site allows local teams to easily replicate the quality and fit from one region to another. The RDDC design will produce this result by using explicit assembly instructions with established tolerances.

Facebook wouldn’t reveal when construction will begin, saying only that it will be “soon.” It did say, however, that lessons learned will be shared with the OCP community.

Via:Facebook, thenextweb

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Posted on 19:52

Categories: Facebook , Social Network