Google Glass Will Have Automatic Picture-Taking Mode

Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed one of the features of Google Glass — the upcoming headset/eyewear device the search giant is developing — in an email to followers today.

Copying a post he had shared to followers of Project Glass on Google+, Brin said he was trying out a new feature of the product that automatically takes a photo every 10 seconds. Brin said he had the mode engaged while he was driving in Montana, with the device sending all the pics to his Google+ account via instant upload.

Browsing the images later, Brin picked one he thought best captured the beauty of the Montana landscape. The image has just 512 x 384 resolution — less than a megapixel — though that that’s probably not an indication of Google Glass’s capabilities. It could be an aspect of the auto-photo mode, using lower resolutions so storage isn’t taxed that much. Here’s the photo:

In the message, Brin emphasized that Glass allowed him to take pictures as he drove without distraction. He also talked about the vision of Project Glass. “We started Project Glass believing that, by bringing technology closer, we can get it more out of the way,” he wrote. “Whether you’re exploring a new city, hiking in the woods, or playing with your kids — Glass allows you to enjoy and share life’s moments without being tied down by technology.”

It appears only attendees of Google I/O who signed up for Google Glass received the email. On the Google+ post, however, Brin encourages followers to leave a comment and provide feedback on the project. He also promises that Google has some “great things” coming the next few months. He’ll have a tough time topping his spectacular skydive at the I/O conference.

Although it was first reported Google Glass would go on sale before the end of 2012, Brin himself has said it’ll be ready for consumers by 2014. Developers who were interested in receiving one of the prototypes were asked to commit to paying $1,500 for each one, though that figure has no bearing on what the retail price will be.

What do you think of the latest news about Google Glass? Does automatic picture taking sound like a feature you’d use? Share your thoughts in the comments.

80% of Officials Use Social Media to Solve Crimes

It’s not just prospective customers, partners or employers who are scanning social media glean information about you and your organization. The long arm of the law has joined the party as well, a new survey shows. So if you happen to have criminal intent, this might be a good time to lay low and forgo trolling for “Likes” on Facebook.

A survey of more than 1,200 law enforcement professionals at every level, including federal agencies, found that four out of five use various social media platforms to assist in investigations based in rural localities as well as major metropolitan areas. The survey was conducted by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, an information provider.

Agencies serving smaller populations and with 50 or fewer sworn personnel use social media more, and state agencies tend to use it less (71%) than local (82%) and federal (81%) agencies.

Identifying people and locations, discovering criminal activity and locations and gathering evidence are the top activities, while Facebook and YouTube are the most widely used platforms.

Two-thirds of law enforcement officials believe social media helps them solve crimes more quickly, the survey found. Search warrants obtained using social media to establish probable cause held up in court 87% of the time when challenged, the respondents reported. Close to half of them said they use social media at least weekly.

Most law enforcement use of social media is self-taught, the survey found. Only 10% of respondents said they learned how to use social media for investigations through formal training given at their agency. Lack of access and familiarity are the primary reasons for nonuse — 70% of respondents said they are either unable to access social media during the work hours or do not have enough background to use it.

“Investigation and analysis of social media content provides a huge opportunity in terms of crime prevention and offender apprehension,” said Samantha Gwinn, a LexisNexis government solutions consultant with 12 years of experience as a crime analyst with local and federal law enforcement agencies. “As law enforcement personnel continue to participate in formal training and gain an increased comfort level with the power and scope of social media, as well as its limitations, the value it provides will continue to rise.”

5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do on LinkedIn

1. Search for Events

LinkedIn offers a robust "Events" section.

While the site automatically suggests events that might be of interest to you, it also allows you to search listings by keyword.

To access the events section, click the "More" option on the top navigation menu on your LinkedIn profile and select "Events."

From here, you can browse all the public event listings or narrow down results by location and industry type.

If you do carry out a keyword search, you'll have the option to sort results by date or relevance.

2. Add an Application

Did you know about the third-party applications available on LinkedIn?

While the selection is not huge, there are some really useful widgets you can add to your profile.
Highlights include the Box.net Files application, which lets you share content on your profile and collaborate with friends and colleagues. You can also share the books you're reading with Reading List by Amazon.

SixApart's Blog Link lets you connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile. Behance offers an app that showcases your creative work, and TripIt's My Travel means you can share info about business trips.

To view all the applications available, click on the "More" option on your navigation menu and select "Get More Applications."

3. Customize Your News Feed With LinkedIn Today

While LinkedIn is great for career-related news, the site is now also a great resource for business and industry news.

The "LinkedIn Today" feature lets you customize a news feed totally tailored to your professional interests and network.

To set up your LinkedIn Today page, click on "News" on the top navigation bar and select "LinkedIn Today." Now if you click on the cog icon to the top-right of the page, you can customize what you see.

You can "follow" industries to see news relevant to certain areas and follow sources (such as Mashable) to see their content in your news stream.

Once you've set up your page with personal preferences, log into LinkedIn to catch up or get sent a daily or weekly email digest.

4. Join a Group

LinkedIn has thousands of groups that you can join and get involved with for some targeted, work-related social networking.

To get started with LinkedIn Groups, hit the "Groups" option on the top menu.
Now you can see groups that your contacts belong to as well as groups that LinkedIn's algorithms think you might be interested in. Or search by keyword.

The results for searches will show how active a group is, so you can be sure to join a group that's current.

With over 1 million English language groups alone, we're sure you'll find at least one relevant to you, no matter how niche your area of expertise or interests. If not, you can always create a new group.

5. Experiment With LinkedIn Labs

Finally, have fun with LinkedIn's experimental "Labs" section.

Whether you want to see a visualization of the most-searched companies on LinkedIn, see your own network in a more creative way, view your LinkedIn connections on a timeline, or search
LinkedIn via text message, there is a widget to do it.

What Your Facebook Page Says About Your Personality

If you think you’re keeping any secrets on Facebook, think again. It’s not just what you post on the social networking site, but how you post it that reveals what kind of person you are.

That’s the contention of researchers at the University of Missouri who have developed a new scale that judgespeople’s personality based on how they use the popular social media site.

The scale reveals that those who like high-risk activity tend to update their status, upload photos and interact with friends frequently. While conversely, those who are more reserved tend to merely scroll through Facebook’s “news feed” and don’t upload photos or actively engage with their friends.

Missouri doctoral student Heather Shoenberger developed the scale after surveying people about their use of Facebook and having them take a personality test.

Those who leaned toward high-risk activities were labeled as “appetitive,” with those who were more reserved in their activities labeled as “aversive.” While both personality types use Facebook frequently, Shoenberger found significant differences in how each uses the social media site.

“If you’re highly “appetitive” or lean toward high-risk activities, you’re more likely to want to engage with media that are more exciting, whereas those who are higher in the “aversive” trait tend to enjoy safer and more predictable media experiences,” Shoenberger said.

The scale could help advertisers target online audiences easier, according to Shoenberger.

“I believe this could really help advertisers and certain types of media groups target potential customers with particular ads on social media sites,” Shoenberger said. “Identifying these individuals using the motivation activation measure can give advertisers an advantage over their competitors and bring some order to online advertising.”

For example, she says companies that want to target consumers for a high-risk activity should try to determine who is active on Facebook and frequently posting pictures and updating their status.

The study was recently presented at the International Communication Association Conference in Phoenix.

Facebook Groups Now Show Who Has Seen a Post

Worried that a message you posted to your Facebook Group went unread? Worry no longer.

Members will soon be able to see exactly who has viewed each update posted to a Group, Facebook announced Wednesday. Below each post appears “Seen by” followed by a number; users can hover over the text to see who read each message and when they read it. The feature, which Facebooks calls “read receipts,” also work on mobile.

Facebook introduced read receipts into another of its applications, Facebook Messenger, in early May. The feature appears in both one-on-one messages and in group chats.

Read receipts are undoubtedly useful in the context of Groups, but are already raising privacy concerns. Rubina Madan Fillion, social media editor at SmartMoney and The Wall Street Journal, immediately dubbed it “creepy.”

What do you think of the new functionality? How would you feel if read receipts were integrated into other parts of Facebook, like personal or brand status updates?

Why Social Media Will Reshape the 2012 Olympics

The 2012 Olympics in London are being touted by some as the world’s “first social Games.” While some question just how social they’ll actually be, there’s no doubt that networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will play an unprecedented role in how information is disseminated from London, and how the global sports conversation is driven during July and August.

Why the big shift? It’s simple: Four years is an eternity in Internet time and since the last Summer Olympics in 2008, social media has exploded.

Web use in general has grown rapidly, too. In 2008, there were about 1.5 billion Internet users globally, according to the International Telecommunications Union, making up about 23% of the world’s total population. By this summer’s games, that number will have swelled to about 2.3 billion users making up about a third of the world’s total population.

Summer Olympics feature some of the most popular international sports — including soccer, basketball, swimming, and track and field — so that’s sure to fuel the global buzz as well. For more context on just how and why social media will reshape this year’s Olympics in relation to 2008, we thought it’d be interesting to take a quick look at a few of the world’s most popular networks and how they compare then and now.

Facebook

2008: A tweet in August of 2008 from then-Facebook executive and eventual Path co-founder Dave Morin gleefully celebrated Facebook breaking the 100 million-user threshold. 2008 was also marked by reports around the web of Facebook — gasp! — passing MySpace in popularity. The social network debuted its now omnipresent chat feature that year as well.

Today: Facebook claims more than 900 million users, is fast becoming a portal to the web at large for many and is a publicly traded company. Its founder Mark Zuckerberg is a global celebrity.

Twitter

2008: 2008 saw explosive growth for Twitter, and it still finished the year with about 6 million registered users who sent about 300,000 tweets per day. The social network and its users were still very much finding their way, as evidenced by this official blog post explaining @replies. In 2009, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love would tweet that the team’s coach had been let go, breaking the story and causing some in the sports world to speculate that maybe, just maybe, the service could change how news was delivered and consumed.

Today: Twitter currently claims more than 500 million users who collectively send some 400 million tweets each and every day. Sports news regularly breaks on the network, it’s become a prime marketing channel for athletes and much of the London 2012 conversation among media and fans is sure to take place there.

YouTube

2008: By fall of 2008, YouTube users were uploading 10 hours of video to the site per minute. The site had emerged as the go-to destination for web video and had been acquired by Google two years prior. It also launched its mobile site, pre-roll ads and 720p HD option in 2008. But that success was nothing compared to what the site would look like four years later.

Today: Iconic Olympic moments are sure to go viral and become immortalized on YouTube seemingly as they happen this summer, and it’s easy to see why. The company says it receives over 800 million unique visits per month. Those visitors watch more than 3 billion hours of video per month and upload 72 hours of new video content per minute. Five hundred years’ worth of YouTube video are watched on Facebook every day and more than 700 YouTube videos get shared on Twitter each minute.

What It All Means

Just looking at the the three most ubiquitous social networks reveals a sporting scene and world at large that have been transformed by social media since the last Summer Olympics. And that doesn’t take into account services like Pinterest, Foursquare and Google+ — none of which even existed in 2008. This summer, expect news to break, social sharing records to fall and moments to live on as never possible before thanks to social media. And to think — this will all pale in comparison to what 2016 has in store.

How will you use social media during the 2012 Olympics? Share with us in the comments.