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Fight Over Access to Dead Person’s Email Heads to Supreme Court

What happens to your email after you die? Can the executor of your estate (or the administrator if you die without a will) gain access to your email account and read all of your email? That is the question at the heart of a lawsuit, Ajemian vs. Yahoo, that is heading to the Supreme Court, assuming that the Supreme Court agrees to hear it.

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What the new U.S. – Cuban Relationship Means for Cuba and the Internet

With the Obama administration’s plan to ease trade restrictions between the United States and Cuba, Cubanos may finally have easier access to an unrestricted Internet. At present, only 5% of Cubans have unfiltered access to the Internet, but if technology and electronics start flowing into Cuba as predicted, the Internet floodgates will open, opening up whole new avenues of communication and trade.

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Google Releases Transparency Report Which Shows More Government Surveillance

Today Google posted some news on their blog, along with the release of their Transparency Report, which shows increasing requests from the government for private user data. In fact, the report shows that, of all the governments in the world, the U.S. leads the pack in personal information requests.

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Kim Dotcom Launches New Mega Dropbox-style File Storage and Sharing Site

The scene was a pudgy man being chased around by scantily clad girls, but it wasn’t an homage to Benny Hill, it was Kim Dotcom’s launch party for his re-emergence back into the .com world – his new site, Mega (not to be confused with his now defunct file sharing website, Megaupload). Mega outdoes Dropbox by offering 50GBs of free file storage, unlike the 2GBs offered by Dropbox.

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Review of the New MySpace: Better Than Pandora, Nothing Like Facebook, Pinterest or Even the Old MySpace!

The social media world is buzzing with opinions about the new Myspace now that they have released the new version. Ever since it was announced that Justin Timberlake was one of the new partners involved in reviving the dead social media site, the Internet has been flooded with speculations as to how the newly revamped site will compare with Facebook, Pinterest, Pandora, Songza and, of course, how it compares with the old Myspace.

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Google Maps Allows You to See Floor Plans of Malls, Museums, Airports and More

Google had made shopping, sight-seeing and travel even easier, by making the indoor floor plans of malls, museums, libraries, transit stations and airports, worldwide, available through Google Maps. The feature, previously exclusively available through Google Maps for Android, is now available on your desktop so that it can be used by all.

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Twitter Resets Thousands of Passwords After Unconfirmed Hacking Attempt While Denying Anything was Hacked

If you received an email from Twitter prompting you to change your password due to a possible hack, you’re not alone. It was a mistake from Twitter, who has issued a statement explaining what happened.

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Google Rolls Out Backpack Cam for New Google Street View Trekker

Google is going beyond Google Street View and rolling out the backpack cam operated Google Street View Trekker, a wilderness cam that offers a wilderness view of all the corners of the world that Google Street View has previously left untouched, namely woods views and forest views. The backpack cams can be carried by hikers and campers who are on foot and already headed to spots where cars and planes cannot easily go and Google is starting with the Grand Canyon.

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Toys R Us Introduces Tabeo Tablet Made Specifically for Kids

Toys R Us is throwing their hat, or rather tablet, into the ring by introducing the Tabeo. The Tabeo is a tablet made just for children, and is proving that it might be a worthy adversary for the new kid-friendly Kindle Fire HD.

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Facebook Allowing Marketers to Target YOUR Facebook Account by Uploading Email Addresses and Phone Numbers to Match to Facebook Users

Well, Facebook has finally done it, they’ve found a way to allow unscrupulous marketers to spam your Facebook account. Facebook will allow advertisers to target users based on personal information such as phone numbers, user IDs, and email addresses. In a confirmation to PCMag.com, Facebook relayed their new marketing program which will begin next week, targeting ads to their “existing customers.”

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Expecting a Baby? Facebook Delivers Expectant Parents Into the Snares of Opportunistic Advertisers

With the announcement that they are introducing, “expecting a baby,” as a life event option for parents-to-be, Facebook is once again proving that they have mastered the art of capitalizing on their users’ lives. And in true Facebook fashion, they claim that, no, this is just another thoughtful tool for excited expectant parents to share their overwhelming joy with their loved ones…but that perhaps they will consider using it for advertising at a later date.

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App.net Founder Dalton Caldwell Moves to Create an Ad-Free Social Network

Would you pay to belong to an ad-free social network? Dalton Caldwell, mastermind behind App.net, akin to an ad-free Facebook or ad-free Twitter, thinks you just might. While he doesn’t presume that App.net will score the huge user-base of Twitter or Facebook, he does think that he will amass enough of a following that the $50 per person annual fee, coupled with the an ad-free and developer-friendly platform, will build a sustainable network that instills trust among both users and developers.

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About the Gmail “Recently Accessed From” Warning

It can be a pretty scary thing to log into your Gmail account and be met with a blazing red banner that says “Warning: We believe your account was recently accessed from:” followed by a geographic location that you decidedly aren’t, often a place such as Russia, Poland or China, and that followed by the options “Show details and preferences” and “Ignore”. Usually you can be certain that at that moment, the first thing you need to do is change your password, because your account was almost certainly hacked or otherwise compromised. However, that’s not always true if you get a warning of a remote access in the U.S., such as “We believe your account was recently accessed from: United States (CA).”

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How to Apply Parental Controls to Restrict Web Access, Calls and Texts on Your Child’s T-Mobile Cell Phone

If you are wanting or needing to give your child a cell phone, but want to be able to apply parental controls to restrict access, or even to make their access fully restricted access with them being able to call just a few numbers that you designate, then here is how to do it with T-Mobile. It is important that you understand these steps, and that you both a) don’t let Tmobile tell you that it can’t be done, and (equally important), b) don’t believe T-Mobile when they tell you that it has been done. You will need to do it – or at least check that T-Mobile has really done it – yourself. Here is how to lock down your child’s cell phone account and access, and apply full parental controls, so that they have no Internet access, and can only call and text to pre-approved numbers.

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Facebook Opens Up YOUR Inbox and the Email You Send to Others for Data Mining

While this was announced last month, nobody really noticed it until this week. Facebook has created new features that allow developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data. In addition to the content of your email, it allows applications to make note of who are the recipients of a mail thread, and the time and date of the emails.