When in trouble, contact Facebook first (duh!)

Here's a real-life anecdote that probably gets a thumbs up from Facebook fans. Singapore woman flies to remote city in China. Woman gets robbed of almost all her belongings. Numb from hunger and cold, woman begs and borrows 100 yuan (S$22) from a kindly policeman. What does she do? Well no, she doesn't call back home for help. Instead, she immediately makes for a cybercafe, logs into Facebook, and posts for help.

You'd also think that after three days of holing out in a hostel and checking her Facebook regularly for a response, she would think to pick up a phone to call home. Even our lovable extraterrestrial E.T. had the right idea. But no, the 27-year-old R. Yeow, a hobby photographer, waits it out. By Sunday night, desperate, she files a post: "Nothing. There's no response." So much for the 2,600 friends on her social-networking Facebook site.

Fortunately for her, this strange saga has a happy ending. A fellow Singaporean and photographer eventually spots her Facebook message on Monday. And suffice to say, Yeow is finally rescued. Though not before friend Willy Foo taps his Facebook, Twitter and Plurk networks, which trigger off a viral SOS that has people who see it calling consulates, police stations and even friends in China to try and track down Yeow's location.
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You said email, our survey says... Social networking!

A Nielsen survey has found that social networking is more popular than personal email. Nielsen probably has an impressive array of fancy graphs and scientific calculators, but we've just basically just looked on Lifehacker for some ways to see just how you've managed to waste yet another day.

The survey lumps together 'member communities', including blogs. According to the report, one in every 11 minutes spent online is spent on social network and blogging sites. There is also a fast-growing number of older users getting into this whole social thingy, with the wall, and the what's it called? The poking, yes, that's fun, isn't it?

The surprising thing about this research is how big social networking is worldwide, with Google's Orkut singled out as being particularly popular in Brazil and India. Social networking's wealth of communication options, from friendly "I like" thumbs-ups to sharing photos to heartfelt mail missives puts it ahead of boring old email. In fact, Crave can't remember the last time we got a personal email that wasn't a Twitter notification.
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Microsoft expands its hardware line

The Arc Mouse in new colors will be skittering into Asia end of March. It will be available in the four colors, at US50 (S$89.90), save for Singapore which will still bundle the white edition with Office for Mac.

Microsoft is introducing a new technology to help keep laptops cooler. Unfortunately, it's not software.

The company on Tuesday introduced its first Notebook Cooling Base, an inch-thick stand with built-in fan. Available in white and black, the laptop-chiller is powered over a USB connection. The product will sell for US$30 when it hits the market in July and represents a new direction for Microsoft's hardware unit, which is best known for its mice and keyboards.

At one point, the company sold wireless networking gear, though it got out of that business in 2004.
Microsoft on Tuesday also announced new colors for its trendy-looking Arc Mouse. Later this month, the US$50 mouse will be available in the decidedly non-beige shades of frost white, eggplant purple, deep olive green, and marine blue. It's already on the market in red and black.

Via Crave CNET

Google's free SMS gravy train dries up

Google on Wednesday will close off access to the part of Google Talk that lets third-party developers send and receive text messages. Third-party applications, such as Infinite SMS for the iPhone and desktop chat software that made use of this XMPP pathway will no longer be able to freely send text messages to other mobile phones.

The company simply no longer wanted to foot the bill for that part of Google Talk's API, according to a Google statement posted by Infinite SMS creators Innerfence. "While Google is supportive of third party apps, we've decided we can't support this particular usage of our system at this time," the company said. Google also cited that the SMS feature was part of a labs project, presumably to note it not being a fully-baked feature, thus not belonging in the API.
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Poll: Facebook vs. Twitter

The future will be streamed. And streamed some more.

Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled a few notable product revamps: "fan pages" for brands that look and act more like regular member profiles and a redesigned home page that emphasizes a real-time version of the site's iconic newsfeed. The keyword here is "streaming", encouraging an even more extensive flow of information with a status update prompt that asks, "What's on your mind?"

Needless to say, "What's on your mind?"--which also allows the posting of links, videos and other content to newsfeeds--bears quite a bit of a resemblance to Twitter's "What are you doing?" prompt. So, especially in light of more rumors and reports about Facebook's spurned attempt to acquire Twitter, expect comparisons between the two services as means of ultra-customized media consumption to escalate.


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