01 Sep 10 Breaking : Twitter announces security updates proactively : All 3rd party apps can no longer store password & new T.co URL shortening service
Well, Twitter just sent out an email with significant improvements to their security model – something that Mark at Facebook just doesn’t seem to consider a priority over monetizing the trust of his 500 million Facebook members.
The highlights from the announcements by Twitter (full email details after the break) include:
- There are 250,000 3rd party apps that connect to Twitter
- All 3rd party apps will have to use the OAuth authentication method, and will not be allowed to ask for – or store – the actual Twitter user name or password
- Launches t.co – their very own URL shortening services … will be interesting to see how this plays out with dominating URL shortening services such as bit.ly
I’m impressed by this news… social media is wonderful, but the skeptics who are avoiding it (which includes a vast majority of “normal” non-tech and early adopter folk) should be reassured by this proactive approach by Twitter to making their environment a bit more secure.
Now, if only they could continue to work on the ever present FailWhale-powered site outages… 
Full email received:
Tags: IT Security, micro-blogging, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0
01 Sep 10 RéseauContact offre 7 jours de membre privilège gratis suite au problème de recherche
Le site de rencontre RéseauContact éprouvait des difficultés techniques avec le moteur de recherche interne sur leur site depuis presqu’une semaine entière !
Ils avaient publié des informations tout le long de l’interruption de service qui affectait seulement une partie des fonctionnalités du site – cependant, essentielle car la recherche est évidemment utilisée par la majorité des membres pour trouver des personnes ou des profils qui correspondent à leurs besoins ou intérêts.
Aujourd’hui ils ont réussies à résoudre l’enjeu entourant la recherche et ont annoncé que tous les membres payants – des membres privilèges – ont eu un crédit sous forme de 7 jours d’abonnement additionnels.
Ça, c’est du bon service à la clientèle… et important car l’industrie de rencontres en ligne est hyper compétitive – RéseauContact est un site Canoë qui appartient à Quebecor.
Tags: dating sites, downtime, français, online dating, RéseauContact, sites de rencontres, Web 2.0
21 Aug 10 Touchality finally releases new WinMoSquare Beta 1.5.0 Windows Mobile Foursquare client – many features & … stability !
Touchality has finally released a new beta version of WinMoSquare – the Windows Mobile client for Foursquare.
Updated August 22 to include a video of the new features with screenshots… see below after the break
If you’re not yet familiar with WinMoSquare or Foursquare ; 4SQ is a location based service that allows people to check-in to venues from their mobile devices (Smartphones, Net-books, Laptops, etc.) equipped with a GPS.
The idea is that you check-in to venues (originally restaurants, bars and that sort of thing but now pretty much everything including elevators, highway intersections and who knows what) and see if the venue offers “specials” for regular visitors. The more frequently you visit a venue, the more chances you have of becoming “Mayor” of a venue. Being the Mayor of a Foursquare venue gets you nothing from 4SQ themselves – except for status & recognition on the Foursquare website. A venue manager or owner can, however, decide to promote repeat business to their venue by offering specials to people who check-in and perhaps extra perks for a mayor. In addition, any Foursquare user can leave tips about a venue (try the steak, arrive before midnight, free parking in the back, etc) that other members can see and add as a “to-do” or “done this” item.
Foursquare have native client applications for the Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Palm smartphones. All other mobile devices can connect to the Foursquare Mobile website at m.foursquare.com.
Up until a few months ago, there was *no* client software for users with mobile devices running Windows Mobile…. That changed several months ago when Touchality released a beta version of WinMoSquare – a graphical client to run on WinMo phones … it required Windows Mobile 6.5 and the .NET compact framework (3.5 or higher)…
(more…)
Tags: Geolocation, LBS, location based services, MySquare, Windows Mobile, WinMoSquare
07 Jul 10 Canadian Tire closes their online affiliate program – will CanadianTire.ca survive ?
Well, less than 18 months after Canadian Tire essentially closed their online store, they’ve now officially announced the demise of their affiliate program. The affiliate program was initially designed for webmasters to make a commission on sales generated by driving visitors to the CT online store to make purchases. Once the online store was essentially closed, the affiliate program languished on – albeit it was pretty much to reward webmasters who sent visitors that bought CT gift cards; which are one of the few products they now sell online.
I ran campaigns on several client sites pointing traffic to the Canadian Tire site, and I’m also (like any real Canadian) a big fan of Canadian Tire, so I’m a bit saddened to see them backing away even further from the online world as far as eCommerce goes. Perhaps they just figured out that their core clientele preferred the fun of shopping in their bricks and mortar outlets. That, or the prohibitive cost of offering reasonable shipping rates given the weight and volume of most products they sell outweighed the expanded marketplace.
Here’s the official news we received:
Dear Robin Majumdar,
Please be advised that Canadian Tire has decided to discontinue their affiliate program. We would like to thank you for all of your hard work and dedication over the years to the Canadian Tire affiliate program. As of JULY 31st 2010 activity will no longer be tracked through Linkshare for the Canadian Tire affiliate program and the Canadian Tire affiliate agreement with you will expire.
PLEASE REMOVE ALL CANADIAN TIRE CREATIVE supplied through Linkshare including text links, banners, data feeds, or any other type of Linkshare link for the Canadian Tire affiliate program by July 31st 2010. After this date, links will no longer track or land on their intended landing pages.
Canadian Tire will not be transitioning their affiliate program to another network. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Tim Mueller (Linkshare) and The Canadian Tire Affiliate Team
Note the final quote about not transition to another network (from Linkshare) which pretty much drives a nail into the online venture for Canadian Tire – for now. The question that remains… how much longer will CanadianTire.ca. continue to exist – and in what form?
Tags: affiliate programs, Canadian Tire, LinkShare, Monetization
