New Technology From Web Design Giant Gives Businesses Greater Networking Capabilities Than Ever Before

Mega Star Media, Inc. announced the beta launch of their latest technology, JumpSwitchMedia, slotted to take place in mid-October. JumpSwitchMedia, which is still pending patent, will eventually take its place among the web giant's custom made social networking media.

The company specializes in harnessing the tremendous networking capabilities taken by big name social networks like MySpace and Facebook and scaling them down to create custom made, industry niches specific websites for their clients. JumpSwitchMedia will serve as a switching mechanism for both social and dating sites, streamlining their natural resources and providing their clients with greater growth potential than ever before.

"(We are) building dreams one website at a time," says Mega Star Media, Inc. lead designer Sandra Rowley.

Rowley and her team have enjoyed a tremendous amount of success building those dreams since the company's birth in 1999. Mega Star Media, Inc.'s client base has grown from thirty to over 1600 (and growing), with over 3500 websites bearing their savvy graphic design and optimized text designed to give businesses the boost in site traffic they need to watch their business grow exponentially.

Facebook Chat?????

Facebook Chat is Coming… in 2 Weeks!!

By Steve Gebhardt - Seton Hall U.

Facebook is set to launch a highly anticipated chat feature in the next 2 weeks to allow for real time communication within the popular social network.

The program will sit at the bottom of the page showing open chat windows and number of friends online. The user can pop out the entire chat interface into a separate window to show online friend lists and current conversations which is similar to Gchat’s Gtalk feature (see screen capture to the right). The users will be able to throw online/offline status easily which is a similar feature to Away Messages in AIM. Users will also be able to clear their chat history and they “online” status will appear throughout the site.

All-in-all it’s a major upgrade for Facebook but let the backlash begin from users who feel Facebook is pushing the instant communication envelope too far.

The Internet is Not Just for the 20-Something

73-year-old Man Takes on Ebay with a 1920's Style Live Auction and Auctions off $100 Bills

It may seem like a crazy idea, but at 73 years old Donald Karr is taking on Internet giants like Ebay by starting a live auction site where users pick up paddles, listen to
auctioneers cry out and find out immediately if they have won. To prove it isn't a crazy idea, Karr will be auctioning off $100 bills everyday so users can get acquainted with the how-to's of his live auction.

Contrasting the young entrepreneurs who have found success on the Internet, like the developers of Facebook and MySpace Karr is proving that the internet is for everyone. Karr, a retired antique and jewelry dealer, recently launched his 24-hour a day, old-fashioned, live internet auction called Blackwells Live Auction.com. www.BlackwellsLiveAuction.com

MySpace, States Agree on Predator Shields

by Ken Schachter

In a deal with 49 states aimed at thwarting sexual predators, MySpace said Monday it will tighten its security and privacy standards and step up enforcement of its age minimum of 14.

The deal, announced at a news conference in New York City, calls for MySpace to make profiles of teens aged 14-17 private by default and work to set up an e-mail registry that will let parents block their children from gaining access to MySpace or another social-networking site.

Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that the move by MySpace, with 110 million users, likely will force competitors to fall into line.

"You can expect others in that market ... to be likely to be very interested and adopt this same type of outreach," he said.

The voluntary agreement with MySpace, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is expected to heighten pressure on Facebook and other social-networking sites to adopt more stringent controls as well.

Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, the No. 1 social networking site, and Fox Interactive Media, called on its competitors to sign on to the agreement.

"It's time to tell the industry: Step up," he said.

The agreement is the product of negotiations that extended for nearly two years, said Tom Corbett, attorney general of Pennsylvania, who noted that eight of the 27 people charged by the state's child predator unit in 2006 were MySpace users.

Julian Lennon Invests in MyStore.com

Today MyStore.com confirmed Julian Lennon, son of Beatles icon John Lennon, is among the group of private investors behind yourStore, LLC. The company owns and operates www.mystore.com, an online marketplace.

"In addition to his monetary investment, Julian has contributed some great ideas to the options MyStore.com offers to musicians and artists who want to resell or self distribute their music and art online. As an independent artist himself, Mr. Lennon was an early user of MyStore.com, setting up his own MyStore and linking it to several places he has a presence online including his MySpace page. We are glad to have him involved. He's been a friend for a long time," stated Todd Meagher, the company's CEO.

About MyStore:

MyStore.com is owned by yourStore, LLC (http://www.yourstore.com) which is a virtual real estate company and application service provider offering individuals and businesses with FREE online "retail" space and software usage in the form of personalized web stores located within the company's marketplace http://www.MyStore.com and an e-commerce service provider offering seller support and software services; including web hosting, site design, marketing, fulfillment and inventory and customer management tools. MyStore is not an alternative but rather an additional sales channel that can be either a stand-alone store or integrated as part of other websites like eBay, Craigslist, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Amazon or Yahoo. Users simply build a store and start selling. MyStore provides the marketplace
and tools to promote, sell or trade your items and services.

MySpace and Google join forces

Internet search engine giant Google has teamed up with the popular social networking site MySpace, it has been announced.

MySpace will now be able to access Google applications, Google announced at a party it threw for software developers on Thursday night in Mountain View. Discussions about Google's OpenSocial platform began between the two companies over a year ago.

The move is seen as a strategy to try and combat the growing influence of Facebook, the second-largest social networking site in the world after MySpace. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is quoted in USA Today as saying: "This is really the next step in the evolution of the web.

"We're ultimately in the business of people being happy online, and this helps do that." Microsoft recently paid $250 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, which values the social networking site at $15 billion.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room at Harvard.

Facebook Users 'Vulnerable'

Many users of the popular social networking site Facebook expose their personal information to anybody who wishes to see it, Sophos has warned.

The security software company stated that in making their personal details public information Facebook users are making themselves vulnerable to cyber criminals. In the London network on Facebook, the largest network on the site, a full 75 percent of users allow anybody to see their profile, whether they have been accepted as a "friend" or not.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "I was flabbergasted when I joined a network on Facebook using a profile which I thought was secure, only to find Facebook had changed a number of settings and was opening me up to millions of strangers." "Who was to say that cyber criminals weren't in that network too? Is it right that Facebook works this way?" Currently Facebook has approximately 34 million members worldwide.

MySpace to give personal data to advertisers

The popular social networking site MySpace has announced that it is to give users' personal details to advertisers to use in highly targeted ads.

Users' details will be perused to find out their likes and dislikes and then MySpace will sell them in ten neat categories, consisting of finance, auto and so forth. By using this tactic, MySpace may see a massive growth in revenue, reports the New York Times.

Jeff Chester, executive director at the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington, told the paper: "People should be able to congregate online with their friends without thinking that big brother, whether it is Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg, are stealthily peering in." Rupert Murdoch is the head of News Corp which owns MySpace and Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook. MySpace, which was founded in August 2003, currently has over 200 million accounts, providing a mine of information for advertisers.

Facebook Addicts Cost Employers Billions

Workers surfing the social networking site Facebook are costing billions of dollars in lost time, according to research by an internet security firm.

Up to $4 billion a year is being lost by businesses due to workers voraciously logging on to the site, the research from SurfControl found. Chairman of SurfControl, Richard Cullen, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "People love being there and telling people what they are doing right now, what their thoughts are right at this second.

"It's so interactive that people just get addicted to watching their Facebook groups all the time." Mr Cullen's findings are based on a Facebook user who works the typical schedule of nine to five and spends an average of one hour on Facebook every day. Facebook allows one to search for friends and acquaintances, send messages and post pictures. With hundreds of new users logging on every day, Facebook has become the latest craze in internet social networking.

The site's name is derived from the "facebook's" used by colleges in the US identifying the college's staff which are given to incoming freshman students. Currently Facebook has an estimated 34 million users, with the city of London in the UK having the network with the most users.

Facebook Source Code Exposed

Part of the source code of the highly popular social networking site Facebook was leaked onto the Internet over the weekend, it has been reported.

The source code is a group of commands which control the physical appearance of the site when accessed by its users. Facebook has blamed a misconfigured web server for the exposure of the code. A spokesperson from Facebook told Computer World that the security of the website was not broken and that the leak "did not compromise user data in any way".

"Because the code that was released only powers the Facebook [user interface], it offers no useful insight into the inner workings of Facebook," the spokesperson added. The source code was published on a blog called Facebook Secrets. Launched on February 4th 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook currently has over 34 million registered users. Facebook is based in Palo Alto, California, and generates revenue of approximately $50 million.