Latest
LinkedIn shutting down iOS Intro integration, and other news for Feb. 10, 2014
LinkedIn has announced that it will shut down its Intro service next month. LinkedIn Intro was introduced last fall and was unique in that it used clever coding to connect LinkedIn contacts data with iOS' Mail app on the iPhone. Intro was actually a clever integration of the service for LinkedIn power users. Each time a user received an email in iOS' Mail app, a LinkedIn banner would appear above the message to show the user how they were connected to the sender via LinkedIn. However, in order to achieve this, LinkedIn used some clever coding (though still not breaking any of Apple's existing rules) and did not work with Apple in any way on the service. In a blog post announcing the forthcoming shutdown of the service on March 7, LinkedIn said: We are shutting down LinkedIn Intro as of March 7, 2014. Intro was launched last year to bring the power of LinkedIn to your email inbox on your iPhone. While Intro is going away, we will continue to work on bringing the power of LinkedIn to wherever our members work. Email, where the average professional spends more than a quarter of their time, is one of those places, so we'll continue to look for ways to bring this kind of functionality to our members through existing partnerships. Users of Intro will be able to uninstall it between now and March 7 and switch back to their previous mail accounts. Members can continue to use Rapportive, which brings the power of LinkedIn to Gmail. There are no signs Apple has asked LinkedIn to shut down Intro and the two companies appear to have a good relationship, as LinkedIn support is baked into OS X 10.9. Given that Intro was a useful solution that added context to messages, here's hoping Apple and LinkedIn might be working together to add more integration between the professional network and iOS in iOS 8. In other news: If you are interested in the legal complexities of dealing with the justice systems in America and Italy while trying to obtain an iPhone's passcode lock to solve a murder case, read this interesting article about how international criminal law can be so confusing to navigate. Speaking of laws... a judge has denied Samsung's request for a new trial in the never-ending Apple vs. Samsung battle that feels like it has entered its fifth decade now.
Daily App: Friend Check lets you monitor your followers as they come and go
Let's face it, your social media presence is important for extending your network of friends and colleagues and in developing your online persona. If you care about such things, then you should download Friend Check from MobileLife Studio. The app helps you track your followers as you build your presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Friend Check supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. The app captures a snapshot of your profile -- tracking how many followers you have, how many new ones added you and how many unfollowed you. The app saves each overview so you can see how your profile has changed over time. A handy reporting feature presents this data and provides other interesting stats like the percentage of people who follow you back. Friend Check also has limited conversation support that allows you to reach out to someone who unfollowed you with a quick @ mention or a DM. You can also follow or unfollow from within the app. Friend Check links to native apps allowing you to view a user's full profile instead of the brief overview provided by Friend Check. Friend Check is very easy to set up and configure. It uses OAuth to connect your accounts to the app, so there are no privacy concerns about handing over your Twitter username and password to an unknown developer. My only gripe is the number of in-app purchases required to unlock additional features and remove the app links that are appended to posts and tweets. It'll cost you US$0.99 if you want to set up more than one social network, another $1.99 if you want more than one account on a social network and so on. I wish there was a pro version that I could buy outright and not have to deal with these little charges. Despite the in-app purchases, Friend Check is an excellent app for monitoring your followers on the major social networks. It's earned a spot on my phone. You can download Friend Check for free from the iOS App Store. It's compatible with the iPhone and requires iOS 7 or later. There are in-app purchases, but no ads.
Rise of the Triad dev working on next-gen 'Project Ascender'
Interceptor Entertainment, Aalborg, Denmark-based developers of Rise of the Triad and iOS ports of Duke Nukem and its sequel, are currently working on a game known as "Project Ascender." The game is in development for PS4 and PC, and has been in the works since September. The project's existence is made known through two Interceptor developer LinkedIn profiles, namely that of CEO Frederik Schreiber. The other LinkedIn profile in question, for Executive Producer Khaled Ibrahimi, lists a 2014 release window for the project. The project linked in Schreiber's profile lists 19 team members on the project, including IP Creator Scott Miller, co-founder and CEO of 3D Realms.
LinkedIn's 'Intro' offers major security risks for minor benefits
LinkedIn's new "Intro" is not only the worst idea I've heard in quite a while; it's a bad idea with almost no upside. Here's what you should know about Intro before you even think about using it. Where did Intro come from? Quoting from LinkedIn's "Pledge of Privacy" page (say that ten times fast), here is how LinkedIn describes Intro: LinkedIn Intro is an email service that helps you be brilliant with people. The phrase "brilliant with people" is a phrase that LinkedIn apparently acquired when it bought Rapportive. LinkedIn must really like it, because the service's "Pledge of Privacy" page uses it three times. Rapportive, for those who never used it, was a service which attempted to collect as much information about you as possible from social network and create a profile for you based on the connections that it made. The company also made a browser-plugin which populated a sidebar in Gmail with the Rapportive profile. Sounds great, right? Well, partly. Three years ago I mentioned showing Rapportive to people, and while they loved the idea of seeing that information from other people, when they saw their own information, they suddenly realized that a) some of these connections they would rather have kept private, and b) some of the information was incorrect or outdated. You see it now, right? Here's a company that had devoted itself to collecting as much information about people as possible. It wasn't a question of whether it would be bought by some larger company, it was just a question of who would buy Rapportive. I can easily imagine Facebook and Google both being interested in it, but LinkedIn either got there first, or made a better offer. And all the information Rapportive has about you went with it. Now we have 'Intro.' What does Intro do that's different than Rapportive? Rapportive was a simple browser plugin that you had complete control over and was locally installed. It didn't change anything in your incoming or outgoing email, it just looked at the header information of the email you were currently reading in your browser. If you sent email through your iOS device or another mail app besides webmail, Rapportive couldn't see that message. Intro isn't like that. Instead, Intro will serve as a "proxy" for your email, which means that every email message that you send through that account will go through LinkedIn's servers. Think about that. LinkedIn's entire business is about making connections between people. It bought Rapportive to get its hands on a large amount of data about people that had been collected on the Internet. Now LinkedIn wants you to send all of your email through its servers. And why are you supposed to do this? So you can be "brilliant with people"? What does that even mean and how does LinkedIn hope to accomplish this? When people email you, we show you their LinkedIn profile: That's what you're getting out of this. You're trading unlimited access to your email in order to make it a bit easier for you to see someone's LinkedIn profile. What are some of the other features of this service? you can put faces to names Ok, maybe, but most of the time you can probably do this by connecting your Twitter or Facebook account to your iOS device which will make a one time connection to those services and try to match people from your contacts list to people on those services. From a privacy and security standpoint, even doing that is a dodgy proposition to a lot of people, but it's approximately a thousand times less dodgy than sending all of your email through LinkedIn's servers. write more effective emails and establish rapport. You'll also be taller, thinner, and better looking! Oh wait, it can't do that either. Hint: writing effectively might be better accomplished by actually knowing the people you are writing to, rather than pretending to know them based on the information LinkedIn shows you. Likewise establishing "rapport" is probably not best served by potentially compromising their privacy and security by having their emails to you routed through the servers of a company devoted to collecting information about people. But the last "feature" is my favorite: You can grow your professional network by connecting with them on LinkedIn. Translation: "You can help LinkedIn's business by using LinkedIn more." "Aren't you being a little overly dramatic about this?" I don't think so. What LinkedIn is proposing is exactly the sort of thing that anyone who was hoping to be able to do any of a dozen nefarious things would love to do. Here is LinkedIn's own description of the service: What's happening under the hood: without Intro, your Mail app connects directly to the servers of your email provider (e.g. Gmail or Yahoo!) to download messages. With Intro, your Mail app connects instead to the Intro servers, which fetch messages from your email provider and then pass them back to your Mail app. As the messages pass through the Intro servers, we add the social context that helps you be brilliant with people. See, there's that phrase again. LinkedIn wants you to send your email through its servers so it can add its information to your incoming email. Which will benefit you, as long as the person uses LinkedIn and keeps their LinkedIn account current. Translation: the more people who use this app, the better it is for LinkedIn's business, which is to collect information about people. Every email you send is also a free ad for LinkedIn! LinkedIn doesn't just want to change your incoming email either. The company is also going to change your outgoing message. From the FAQ: When you send an email with Intro, by default we add a small snippet of your LinkedIn public profile to the bottom of your message. This snippet functions as a great email signature, and it automatically updates itself within 24 hours after you edit your LinkedIn profile. Gosh, is't that just the best? Send all of your email through the Intro servers and it will add –- at no extra charge! –- a "small snippet" (as opposed to a "large" snippet?) from your LinkedIn profile! I'm probably going out on a limb here, but do you suppose that "small snippet" might maybe possibly add some sort of link or other information about how the person receiving your email can –- at no extra charge! –- find out more about LinkedIn, so that they too can feel the warm glow of appreciation from helping support LinkedIn's business model? Let's imagine the best case scenario. LinkedIn's announcement page for Intro is just so modest about what has been accomplished, it's only promoted as "Doing the Impossible on iOS." Turns out it's not impossible, it's just a bad idea. You have to install a new device-side profile into iOS to allow it to insert information into your email. In the best possible case, this advanced and unintended use of technology built into iOS would be done with a company with a great track record of security. LinkedIn is not that company. That profile LinkedIn wants you to install is a security risk. Injecting HTML into your email via an iframe loaded from the Intro server is a security risk. Sending all of your email through LinkedIn's servers is a security risk. LinkedIn may have very good intentions behind the "privacy pledge." Personally it sounds like the technological equivalent of a virginity pledge: what is said today with a mixture of good intentions, a desire to say all the right things and look good in the eyes of others does not mean that pledge will be upheld in the future. As Facebook has shown countless times, corporate privacy policies have a way of changing over time, gradually becoming a little more relaxed here and there. Somehow those policies never seem to change in ways the protect users and their information. Even if you believe that LinkedIn's intentions are pure as the driven snow and that the company won't do anything nefarious with your data, you are piling risk on top of risk, and depending on LinkedIn's technical competency to protect your data, despite a dodgy track record. All of which makes me ask again: Why? So you can see a little bit of contact data from LinkedIn slightly more easily than you could before? My advice is this: if you want to "be brilliant with people," start by realizing when someone wants you to do something that benefits them much more than it benefits you. Still not convinced? If you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to Bishop Fox, a company which has, since 2005, "provided security consulting services to the Fortune 1000, high-tech startups, and financial institutions worldwide. Our mission is to secure our clients and their business." They have 10 reasons why LinkedIn Intro is a bad idea. If you can get through my article and theirs and still think it's a good idea, well, at least you can't say we didn't try to warn you.
LinkedIn unveils new iPad app with a fresh look, improved feed and better search
LinkedIn launched its first iPad app in April of 2012, and today the company has revealed its latest version for Apple slates. The new app's changes revolve mostly around an improved feed interface. Aside from gaining a kind of card interface that's all the rage in mobile UI design these days, the feed now incorporates influencer posts and photos and embedded videos can be viewed in all their glory in the feed. Interacting with individual posts (liking, sharing, etc.) can now all be done directly from the feed via a horizontal swipe within each post, which reveals your options for those interactions. Additionally, search function has improved, so now users can look for jobs, people, groups and companies from one convenient place. The app also brings new top-level navigation in the form of a horizontal scrolling carousel that houses personalized categories and items that populate based upon your usage. Sound good? The new app will be available later today in the App Store, but in the meantime, you can read more about it at the source. Update: The revised app is available now, grab the update here.
LinkedIn Intro puts the power of LinkedIn directly into your iPhone email inbox
Like it or not, email is still central to the vast majority of workplace communications, so we suppose it was only a matter of time before professional network LinkedIn integrated into your inbox. That time is now. LinkedIn Intro is a new service that brings folks' LinkedIn info accessible directly from the iPhone's email app. Essentially, this means that an additional pane will appear in individual emails just below the subject line that shows a person's LinkedIn profile picture, title and employer. Tap that pane, and it expands to reveal the rest of their info, like employment history and education -- and, you can add people to your LinkedIn network straight from your email. Sound good? You can sign up for Intro at the source below, and see it in action in the video after the break.
Daily iPhone App: LinkedIn Contacts
As a journalist, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for managing all my sources, public relations contacts, technology contact and more. And while I've been a user and fan of the LinkedIn iPhone app (free) for years (the iPad app is still horrible), I always lamented the fact that there was no way to easily organize or sort through contacts within the app. That all changed earlier this year however, when LinkedIn unveiled its companion app LinkedIn Contacts, which is our Daily iPhone App. LinkedIn Contacts is a power user's dream. Not only is it a speedy little app for searching through all your LinkedIn connections, it also allows you to sift through them with ease. LinkedIn Contacts allows you to filter your connections by tags, companies, titles, locations or sources. This is much easier than trying to manually find that name of a connection when all you've got is, for example, that he used to work for Apple and lives in London. You can also browse through your connections alphabetically, those you've newly connected with or by those you've had a recent conversation with (meaning, you've sent them LinkedIn messages). The app also has a nice "To Do" function, which shows you the job changes and work anniversaries of your connections. As a journalist, this is very handy because I can easily see when one of my PR contacts changes to representing a different company. Finally, the app also offers a calendar function, where you can import all your events from your iOS calendar and combine them with LinkedIn's data. For example, if you have a meeting set up at 2 PM with Sue and Josh from Apple, you could quickly pull up their LinkedIn profiles to get the latest information about them. LinkedIn Contacts is a free download.
LinkedIn petitions court to provide more details regarding government data requests
It's not just the heaviest of the internet heavyweights pushing for greater government transparency. LinkedIn has filed its own petition with the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking for the ability to publish the exact number of national security requests that it gets. The social network argues that restricting data request numbers to vague ranges is not only pointless, but misleading -- the figures imply that the government wants as much data from LinkedIn as it does from larger firms. There's no certainty that the court will grant the company's wish, but its petition adds volume to an increasingly louder chorus.
LinkedIn launches University Pages, helps students learn more about colleges
LinkedIn has already branched out a bit with its own blogging and following features for select groups, and now the popular social networking site has introduced a tool geared towards students. Aptly dubbed University Pages, LinkedIn describes the new service as one that's part of its strategy to help college-bound pupils "at every critical milestone from campus to fulfilling successful careers." Beginning September 12th, LinkedIn's set to welcome high school students on its network and provide access to the new University Pages, allowing them to explore and rub elbows with about 200 participating universities, both in the US and abroad. Users will then be able to do things such as receive regular updates about campus news / activities and view notable members of each college's alumni. If one of your favorite schools isn't there just yet, fret not -- LinkedIn says "thousands more" will be given access over the next few weeks.
Apple looking to fill more than 200 new positions in China
Apple has a good chunk of the consumer electronics market in the developed world, with the company's flagship iPhone and iPad products still flying off the shelves. But there's still a lot of the world -- in particular Brazil, Russia, India and China -- where the company can make huge inroads. Apple appears to be turning its attention to China, with more than 200 job openings appearing in the last several weeks on LinkedIn. With the Chinese government and state-run media focusing on environmental and workplace issues at Foxconn facilities where Apple products are manufactured, and attacks earlier this year over warranty policies that allegedly discriminated against Chinese customers, the company has obviously decided to put assets on the ground to keep an eye on things. The advertised openings included a number of Supplier Responsibility positions, as well as an Environmental Affairs Program Manager. Apple is also hiring senior engineers in Taiwan, which has led to some speculation that the company is considering opening a new R&D facility in the island nation to focus on iPhone product development.
LinkedIn lands on Nokia Asha touch phones, lets S40 users network like a boss
Considering how popular Nokia's Series 40 handsets are worldwide, it should come as no surprise that the platform is finally getting a dedicated LinkedIn client. The app, which is available on the Nokia Store for free, is designed specifically for Series 40 touch phones like the sexy new Asha 501 (it also supports the Asha 305, 306, 308, 309, 310 and 311). Existing users can update their LinkedIn stream, manage their inbox, search their network and check their profile, while new users can sign up right from the login screen. LinkedIn for Series 40 comes hot on the heels of last month's Foursquare client and joins the existing Symbian and Windows Phone apps. Check the source links below for more info.
Fuse is the app that creates one feed to rule all your social networks
Most of us probably spend too much time on our phones checking in on various social networks. Even if you only subscribe to one or two, you've probably spent time out in public hopping between apps while waiting in line. Fuse is a new app that aims to at least keep all that searching in one place. The app aggregates your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn feeds into one updating master list. It even collects your messages and interactions for quick searching. You can like, retweet, favorite and comment to your heart's content. Currently the app runs on a freemium model, allowing for unlimited Facebook and Twitter feed connections for free, but charging $0.99 each for access to unlimited Instagram and LinkedIn pages. Version 1.0.2 will be released in the coming weeks, and bringing with it a number of minor bug fixes. We'll have a full review up soon.
LinkedIn adds two-factor authentication through SMS
Who knew that tighter security was all the rage these days? Following Dropbox, Google and virtually everyone else, LinkedIn has joined the trendy (if smart) ranks of those offering two-factor authentication as an option. Switch it on and you'll have to enter a verification code delivered by SMS before you can log in with a device that LinkedIn doesn't recognize. That's all there is to the process, really, but it may be enough to prevent ne'er-do-wells from messing with your CV.
LinkedIn status updates can now include photos, other types of files
Given how simple and common it is to do it on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you'd think being able to share images as part of a status update wouldn't be anything novel at this point. But for those inhabiting the popular (and inspiring) social networking site LinkedIn, this hasn't exactly been the case -- and that's about to change. As of today, users are able to add a little more flavor to things shared on the site, with LinkedIn letting it be known that they can now easily enclose more than just text when using the share box. And while picture uploads are certainly all the buzz, LinkedIn's also making it possible to include other file types, such as documents and presentations. Currently, the new feature only allows uploads to be done via the desktop version of the website, however LinkedIn did tell CNET that the content "will be viewable inside the mobile apps."
The Wall Street Journal to launch LinkedIn-style social network
The Wall Street Journal will soon launch a business-minded social network along the lines of LinkedIn, according to a report from The Times of London. The news comes amid reports of restructuring and new financial offerings from the media giant, including a personal messaging system for investors and a newswire service called Dow Jones X. Of course, this isn't News Corp's first social network rodeo, as it had a dubious fling with Myspace that ended rather badly. Though there's no word on an exact date, The Times said it should be arriving in several months -- but we're not sure if corporate types will be high on trusting the Rupert Murdoch-helmed outfit with their personal info.
Former DJ Hero devs exploring IPTV for multi-platform project
DJ Hero developer FreeStyle Games is hiring a producer for IPTV gaming, according to a job listing on LinkedIn. The position will lead "the development of new multi-platform games with specific emphasis on online infrastructure-heavy video applications." "IPTV" could mean any number of platforms, including set-top boxes such as Apple TV and Roku. The job listing noted that the developer is working on a "new ground-breaking multi-platform and mobile project." FreeStyle Games posted a number of jobs to LinkedIn in the last week, including one for a mobile gaming producer role that will "develop strategies to leverage mobile enabled business models including free-to-play and freemium." That person would also be in charge of creating "features to bridge online, console and mobile games to create a connected product." FreeStyle Games' most recent efforts were seen in Sing Party for Wii U, so the Activision-owned developer hasn't strayed too far from music-based games. Whether its next multi-platform and potentially free-to-play project falls in line with that genre remains to be seen.
Hands-on with Nokia JobLens on the Lumia 925: what a way to make a living (video)
We're hoping we won't need to use Nokia's JobLens app for real any time soon, but at the Lumia 925 launch event, we thought we'd at least explore our options. It's essentially a proximity-based job searching tool that, in the lens mode, is much like the CityLens AR app for Lumias, and points you in the direction of your next potential employer using icons on top of the realtime camera view. In another mode, JobLens uses the Here Maps platform to show you a top-down view of openings in your vicinity, and can subsequently direct you to your interview on time. From either views, you can poke at vacancies to see more about the job and share it, email it to yourself, or respond directly with a CV -- various sites populate the in-app listings. The software also integrates with Facebook and LinkedIn so you can hit up your contacts for the inside track. No word on a release date yet, but we imagine it'll coincide with the Lumia 925 launch. As they say, it's who you know that counts, and now we know Matt from Nokia, who treated us to a quick tour of the app in the video after the break. Update: we've been having trouble with the video -- it works on some devices and not others. It may work for you right now, but if not -- we're working on a fix. Update #2: This should now be working for everybody. Apologies for the delay!
LinkedIn and Twitter updates for BlackBerry 10 focus on search
BlackBerry isn't done with improving the BlackBerry 10 editions of LinkedIn and Twitter -- not by a long shot. The company has once more upgraded the two social apps, this time with an emphasis on search. LinkedIn now lets users import contacts to find people they already know; in Twitter, meanwhile, universal search now shows photos, profiles and tweets on a single page. There's more than just these two upgrades, of course. LinkedIn reveals more about companies and carries a slew of minor UI tweaks, while Twitter keeps content fresher with automatic caching. If the new versions are tempting, they're waiting at the source links for Q10 and Z10 owners alike.
Pulse for iOS adds LinkedIn sharing
LinkedIn is quickly settling into its ownership of Pulse: fresh from integrating itself into the news app's Android edition, it's doing the same for iOS. Version 3.1 of the news aggregator largely mirrors the Android refresh and lets users flick a switch to share stories through the extra channel. The update also simplifies saving articles to Evernote, Instapaper and Pocket for those that aren't quite so public with their reading habits. Whichever camp you're in, the Pulse upgrade awaits at the source link.
Pulse casually enables LinkedIn sharing, gets comfy in new HQ
LinkedIn's latest acquisition is giving a nod to its new boss: Pulse users can now share news stories with their professional connections. According to the Pulse blog, the tweak is part of a series of collaborations that started when Pulse moved into LinkedIn headquarters, and more updates are on the way. The changes are subtle for now, though -- the only other addition to the app is the ability to add a LinkedIn Influencers feed to your account, which offers content from select contributors and industry leaders. The update should hit the Google Play store shortly, and is due to launch on iOS soon after.
