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WebRTC: Video Chats in Browser, No Plugin Required!

April 11, 2012 by noemi

What is your main means of communication? The chances of video chat being up in the list is rather high, especially if you are based in a location far from your family and friends. With the technological advances that we enjoy today, video chat has become a major mode of communication.

There are many different providers which offer video chat services, many of them free. While that is convenient, there is the issue of having to download and install those programs. What if you can do a video chat on your browser without having to install a plugin or any other program?

This is exactly what the creators of WebRTC had in mind when they conceptualized the web standard. [Read more…] about WebRTC: Video Chats in Browser, No Plugin Required!

Mozilla Add-on Collusion Allows You to Spy on Who’s Watching

March 5, 2012 by noemi

We all know that the Internet is anything but private. Sure, there is still the high degree of anonymity, hence the cyber bullies and people who say things that they wouldn’t dare say to a person’s face. However, there is also the known fact that more and more, entities are watching what we do online. They have various reasons, but Google’s updated privacy policy is blatantly all about gathering data from users in order to better target their advertisements. (Nah, it’s not all about the money. Why would anyone think that?) [Read more…]

Having a Baby? How About Checking Google for Names First?

November 28, 2011 by noemi

Apparently, this is what a lot of parents are doing these days. Gone are the days when parents simply pick whatever name they like based on their own criteria – without having to check if other people have the same name. It used to be that people chose names for their babies based on the meaning of the name, or maybe because they have someone in the family with that name.

Today, more and more people are looking to Google to make sure that the name they pick for their baby is “safe”. What does safe mean in this case anyway? The New York Times recently ran a story about how a couple checked Google to see if the names they had picked for their baby girl matched “inappropriate” people online. ((NYT)) For example, they did a search on Kalia, only to see scantily clad women come up in the search results. They immediately discarded the name, as they didn’t want their child to have to “wrestle” with a Google identity. [Read more…] about Having a Baby? How About Checking Google for Names First?