digitalapprentices

Facebook COO Shifts Europe focus from privacy to economy -  At a recent conference in Europe, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told the audience that the economy is probably more of a concern than privacy. She said so given an impending privacy law draft that would affect 27 European Union countries. Specifically, she suggested that the law could have a negative impact on the EU economy. [Image via Facebook]

Facebook has a €2.6 billion U.K. impact -  A study from Deloitte found that Facebook’s overall economic impact in the United Kingdom was €2.6 billion, or 35,200 jobs in the U.K. and 32,000 jobs in the European Union and Switzerland.

Facebook ads game categories to News Feed -  Facebook now displays the genre category below game names and stories in News Feed stories. As we reported on Inside Social Games, users might be more likely to click on games when they know more about them.

Facebook engineer creates Google hack -  An project called Focus on the User, created in part by a Facebook engineer, provides a bookmarklet that forces Google Search Plus Your World to display results from social networks besides Google+.

Causes now a standalone website – TechCrunch reported that the charity app Causes has re-launched as a standalone website.

85K Arab Facebook logins hacked – ZDnet reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia are in the midst of a hacking war, and 85,000 Arab Facebook logins are one casualty.

Washington state AG targets clickjackers -  Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna announced suits against two companies thought to encourage clickjacking on Facebook. The suit was announced at Facebook’s Seattle office.

Facebook registers ‘FB Origin’ domain - Facebook registered several domains, .com and .biz for example, for something called FB Origin via the company MarkMonitor.  Fusible speculated that this means the company is set to launch a new product along with Timeline apps.

If you're not smiling in your Facebook photo, your life is probably going to suck in 4 years time.

Reseachers J. Patrick Seder and Shigehiro Oishi at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville discovered that smile intensity from a single Facebook profile photo in the first semester of college predicted self-reported life satisfaction 3.5 years later, at the time of college graduation.

This type of study isn't actually unique to Facebook, however. A 2011 study by Harker and Keltner showed that female students smiling in their college graduation yearbook photos from 1958 and 1960 were reportedly happier 30 years later. A similar study by Abel and Kruger (2010) found that professional baseball players who smiled more intensely in archival photos lived seven years longer than those who didn't smile much.

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Why does intensity of smiling in a photo predict well-being later in life? Smile intensity is associated with life satisfaction and smiling. But what about extraversion? This is another, third variable that the researchers considered.

The researchers also considered that people who smile more in their public Facebook photos tend to have better social relationships. Past research shows that people who smile in photos are usually warm and friendly, and they tend to have an easier time in social relationships. As such, smiling intensity in photos correlates with a higher life satisfaction through positive social relationships.

Does extraversion play into the longitudinal association between smile intensity and life satisfaction? Smile intensity did not significantly correlate with self-reported extraversion. The researchers did not find evidence for extraversion-as-third-variable account of life satisfaction. They did find that first-semester social relationships satisfaction was an important link between smile intensity and future self-reported life satisfaction.

Interestingly, they did not find evidence that extraversion was responsible for association between smile intensity in photos and future life satisfaction. So just because someone is extraverted on Facebook or in life doesn't mean they're satisfied - it just means that they're extraverted.

One caveat to the study: Researchers worked with students who were college freshmen in the fall 2005, and used Facebook when it became available to most colleges. In September 2006, Facebook became available outside of the academy. The first study worked with 92 participants (35 male), which is a rather small sample size. All Study 1 participants were early adopters of Facebook.

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U.S. Patent # 6,591,353, "Protocol for Communication with Dynamic Memory," tends to refer to a "memory device." The innovation with respect to this device appeared to be the introduction of a synchronous clock. That way, time-multiplexed transfers could take place in a regulated fashion.

But as USPTO documents published today show, the appeals judges found that two existing patents cited by Nvidia qualify as prior art, and moreover, that the teachings demonstrated by those older patents would be inspiration enough for a skilled artisan to apply the teachings to improving synchronous memory the way Nvidia appears to have done.

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In their decision, the judges refer to the patent concepts by the names of their inventors - "Hayes" for the one under contention, "Bennett" for the prior art. Citing directly from the decision:

The Examiner agrees that Hayes discloses a memory device and anticipates claim 1, but maintains that including all the RAM control logic into each Hayes DRAM chip would not have been obvious... But dependent claim 2 recites sampling data synchronously and does not require all the RAM control logic to be integrated into each chip. NVIDIA points out that the term "memory device" in these claims is not limited to a single chip, but even if they are, NVIDIA persuasively shows the obviousness of creating a single chip... The claim 2 memory device, whether as a chip or a broader device, requires strobe functionality which Hayes teaches and synchronization which Bennett teaches according to this record. As NVIDIA persuasively explains, Hayes describes time-multiplexed clock data transfers between a master and slave during different clock cycles, and Bennett teaches benefits to providing a synchronized interface in a memory device using an external clock. The Examiner does not appear to disagree with these findings... NVIDIA also relies on Mr. Parris [an expert witness] who testifies that ordinarily skilled artisans were shifting from asynchronous to synchronous operations to increase speed... Based on this record, NVIDIA shows that it would have been obvious in view of Bennett to implement certain control logic, including a synchronous logic interface, into the memory device of Hayes.

This week's loss is the latest in a string of bad luck for Rambus, that comes on the heels of what had been an upward trend for a company whose reputation was pretty much created in the courtroom. The uptick began four years ago, when a Federal Trade Commission ruling was overturned. That ruling had found Rambus was withholding critical implementation plans for its memory standards from the JEDEC standards agency, and had sent a signal to the industry that Rambus was unfairly trying to manipulate standards to its own advantage. The overturning of that ruling was the beginning of what had been a glorious resurrection of Rambus' respect.

But perhaps buoyed too much by the outcome, Rambus then tried to hold the same manufacturers that first accused it of unfair standards manipulation - Hynix Semiconductor and Micron technologies - responsible for essentially the same conduct. The court didn't buy that argument either, ruling in favor of Hynix and Micron two months ago.

Suddenly, Rambus had resumed its former public image of pursuing greater revenues through litigation. With only three of six patents remaining valid in its case against Nvidia and five others, Rambus may not be able to hold on to even that. Today, Rambus' stock price hit what memory engineers would call a "low state," losing another 13% in NASDAQ trading today after already having lost over half its value last November in the wake of the Hynix/Micron decision.

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Please welcome bot@ifttt.com to your Google Talk contacts and edit the Google Talk channel for improved performance http://ifttt.com/channels/google_talk puts the internet to work for you. via task 578219

So, we've shot down SOPA and PIPA. Congratulations Internets for a job well done. Mission accomplished, right? Not so much. While that's two bad pieces of legislation pushed back, there's much more where that came from. Leaving aside existing nastiness like the DMCA, we also have the even nastier Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) (PDF). How bad is it? Bad enough that the European Parliament's rapporteur for ACTA (Kader Arif) resigned over it today (January 27, 2012). Unfortunately for those of us in the United States, President Obama has already ratified ACTA on behalf of the United States.

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If you haven't heard much about ACTA, don't be surprised. You see, you really weren't supposed to hear anything about ACTA until well after it was ratified and far too late for the rabble to do anything about it. That's what, in large part, led to Arif's resignation.

As Wayne Rash wrote earlier this week, "ACTA is, in effect, a treaty, negotiated in secret by the U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk... Until recently, the actual text of ACTA was so secret that only a few lawyers outside of the White House and the USTR offices had actually seen it. And those people were required to sign non-disclosure agreements."

What ACTA Is

The goal of ACTA, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is "to create a new standard of intellectual property enforcement above the current internationally-agreed standards in the TRIPs Agreement and increased international cooperation including sharing of information between signatory countries' law enforcement agencies."

The EFF backgrounder also provides some insight to ACTA. While President Obama is carrying the torch for ACTA right now, the treaty goes back to October 2007 (or farther) when the U.S., Japan, Switzerland and the European Community said they'd be working on a new intellectual property enforcement treaty.

ACTA isn't the only area where (as the EFF puts it) "copyright industry rightsholder groups have sought stronger powers to enforce their intellectual property rights... to preserve their business models." But it is getting closer to reality.

Note that our own Scott Fulton observes that some of the protests against ACTA object to provisions that have been removed from the treaty. What this doesn't note is that many other objectionable provisions remain. Fulton also says "you can't be arrested for an ACTA violation." This is true, but only half the story. People can and will be arrested for violations of laws that result from nations complying with the treaty.

The word is that ACTA probably doesn't change U.S. law. Probably? Nobody's entirely sure. But as Techdirt calls out "it certainly does function to lock in US law, in a rapidly changing area of law, where specifics are far from settled." It also, of course, serves to dictate compliance in other countries.

Why ACTA Is Unacceptable

• ACTA was negotiated in secret – for me, this is reason enough to oppose any legislation or regulation. I don't care if it's the "Hugs for Puppies and Kittens Act," if people aren't given an opportunity to engage with their lawmakers about a law, it shouldn't be enacted.
• Ridiculous damages – ACTA specifies "presumptions for determining damages" that basically assume that all of the infringed goods had sold. To put it another way, ACTA takes the position that if a user uploads a song to a file-sharing network, damages should be calculated as if the recipients would have paid for the work in question. This is ridiculous, as has been explained any number of places. Many people who download illicit copies would simply never have purchased the work in question had it not been available for free.
• It may be unconstitutional – The Obama administration is claiming that ACTA not a treaty, but an "executive agreement" and thus not subject to legislative approval. As Rash notes in his eWeek piece, Congress does not agree.
• It's over-broad – TK It's worth noting that not all of ACTA is necessarily bad. Some of the agreement is targeted at countering counterfeit goods that may be actively harmful, like counterfeit prescription drugs. But ACTA goes well beyond single areas of intellectual property and essentially tries to bear-hug everything IP-related. Not good.
• The ACTA committee is not accountable – ACTA creates a body outside of national and even international bodies, called the "ACTA Committee." (At least the name is honest.) The committee would not be accountable to the people governed by the agreement. Folks in the United States can vote out Lamar Smith and others who endorsed SOPA/PIPA, but we would have no real influence on the ACTA Committee.
• Low threshhold for violations – as the European Digital Rights group points out (PDF), ACTA's unclear wording would make it very easy for unintentional copyright infringement to rise to the level of a criminal act.
• No fair use provisions – As this opinion on ACTA by Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze notes, ACTA would "export one half of the complex U.S. legal regime" but "without accompanying exceptions and limitations." In short, ACTA would not include fair use provisions and such that we expect in the U.S.
• Criminalizes what used to be a civil offense – An opinion prepared by Douwe Korff and Ian Brown notes, "ordinary companies and individuals could be criminalised for innocent activities or trivial breaches of copyright, or for technical breaches that serve a wider, overriding public interest (as in whistleblowing), without an appropriate defence." The EFF says "If the real intent behind introducing expanded criminal sanctions is to address infringement on the Internet, this provision is not likely to do so, but is likely to cause significant collateral harm to consumers."
• Locks In DMCA-Like Provisions – As the EFF notes (PDF) in its submission to the USTR, ACTA would "lock in" some of the controversial aspects of the DMCA that require legal enforcement against circumventing copy protection, etc. In other words, don't get too set on the idea of jailbreaking that iPhone.
• ACTA could be used against legitimate medications – As I noted earlier, looking to crack down on counterfeit drugs is good. Going after legitimate "grey market" drugs, that's another story. Yet as techdirt notes "there are very reasonable concerns that ACTA will be used to crack down, not on actual counterfeit medicines, but on "grey market" drugs – generic, but legal, copies of medicines. Some European nations, for example, already have a history of seizing shipments of perfectly legal generic drugs in passage to somewhere else."

That's 10, but I'm sure there are more. As I wrote on January 18th sending SOPA/PIPA to the legislative trashbin for the year is great, but not enough. SOPA/PIPA are not the only laws that threaten the free and open Internet. There's plenty of bad policy to go around at the state, national, and international levels. One round of annoyed phone calls to Congress is not going to do the trick. Even if it's too late to stop ACTA, there's even worse coming.

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"Connect it to Facebook, viral spread, boom, boom." I have no idea what that means but I do know that for some reason, I'm still not tired of the Sh*t [fill in the blank] Says meme. This video is for anyone who's spent more than five minutes reading Techcrunch, knows what Y Combinator is and has faced the (sometimes) irrational exuberance of a tech entrepreneur. "Overheard: Time to pivot."

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As mobile becomes normal for the Web, location becomes key. The next phase of location apps are live, right there with the user as she goes about her business. When it comes to mapping the outside world, the space is pretty crowded. It's hard to argue with Google Maps, whose free consumer service powers the maps on both dominant smartphone platforms. For businesses, it's crucial to be on the map, and Google Places can't be overlooked.

But there's another frontier of mobile mapping that matters, and the exploration has just begun. Indoor mapping of big buildings - like airports, convention centers, museums and stores - is the El Dorado of mobile location. Google has begun its expedition inside buildings, and businesses can sign up and offer their floor plans. But there's another option: Use a platform like Meridian and build your own inside map. Which is better for business?

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Google Maps: Just Hand 'Em The Plans

Google launched interior maps in November. It's currently only available on Google Maps for Android. When it launched, it came with a bunch of partners, and it offered any business owner the ability to submit a floor plan for inclusion. After that, the business owner doesn't have to do a thing except submit updated plans if things change. Google handles the rest.

Business owners have enough to think about, so letting a service provider handle all this mapping stuff could be a convenient choice. Google has a vested interest in presenting the most attractive local business listings it can. But are they always the most accurate? In October, Google decided to take responsibility for updating business listings into its own hands, asking owners about changes only after the fact.

If you need fine-grained control over how your business appears online, you might want a more custom solution.

Meridian: Roll Your Own Map

When a location releases an app built with Meridian, it's a grand affair. It announces partners one at a time, such as the launch of the Oregon Convention Center app yesterday. Unlike Google, Meridian is in start-up mode, but it raised $1 million last year on the premise that the best location-based business apps are built by the businesses themselves.

Meridian has offered consumers interior mapping longer than Google has, but only for a few participating locations. That's not a shortcoming, though; Meridian is a platform. For consumers, it's an app that lets them navigate inside favorite museums, stadiums and stores (currently mostly in Meridian's hometown of Portland, Ore.). But for businesses, it's a way to build and control a 3D interior map of their own location and offer a custom-branded app for it.

It has its own Web-based editing tools, so owners can move around contents of the map like store displays or museum exhibits. You can include audio tours or featured products that display prominently for the user. It will even push pertinent information to the customer's device.

How Should Businesses Handle Maps?

If you own or work for a business with a building you want mapped for smartphones, think about priorities. Is it better for you to ship off location data to a service provider who will handle it for you, or would you rather have constant control over the experience? Do you just need to be on the map, or would you like to build the app?

Whichever option makes the most sense for you, it's exciting to have such choices. The power of the mobile Web to enhance the world for users and raise the profile of local businesses is only just starting to kick in.

Which location-based services do you use, whether for work or for fun?

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Social networking platform will monitor activity in certain nations around the world

The credit company gossips that computer giant is creating a new touch-free way to make purchases.

New study out of Harvard suggests that iPad, Kindle Fire and others are bad for your health.

The most controversial measures of concern to Internet users in the final version of the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for most Internet users are 1) that signing governments pledge to allow copyright holders a way to request, under court warrant, personal information about a suspected infringer from that person's ISP; 2) that means will be provided for a rights holder to legally pursue someone suspected of circumventing rights management technologies; 3) that goods crossing countries' borders may be made subject to search and seizure if they're suspected to contain infringing material, with exceptions provided for things like personal luggage.

President Obama signed this treaty on October 1, 2011, effectively ratifying it on behalf of the United States.

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What ACTA is not

This treaty is not a law, nor is it a bill or an act, like SOPA or PIPA. Although the treaty has already been signed in the U.S., ACTA is not a law that can be followed or broken by a person. A country may break the treaty, but you can't be arrested for an ACTA violation.

By far, the most controversial measures that were considered for the treaty were either already stricken or were voted down for inclusion in a draft. One such measure would have had governments narrow their provisioning of "safe harbor" for Internet Service Providers only after they implemented certain monitoring tools and/or filters for preventing the distribution of unauthorized material. Another would have compelled governments to institute "three strikes" laws, similar to one briefly enacted by France in 2009 but later struck down by its constitutional council, which would ban an individual's use of the Internet after three instances of infringement or piracy.

An alternative phrasing for the measure that narrowed the definition of safe harbor would have compelled governments to mandate that ISPs must monitor traffic. Again, this measure and the other two listed above are no longer part of the treaty.

Most importantly, they were stricken after the European Union's vigorous objection to the treaty negotiations between countries being held in secret. Actually, trade negotiations have historically almost always been held in secret. However, the EU's objection led to the veil of secrecy being lifted from the process in February 2011. At that time, Europe could publicly object to the inclusion of those measures, which eventually were withdrawn from consideration.

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Read the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

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Is ACTA the law or not?

Yes, the President signed the treaty, but that's different from signing a bill into law. Despite how some have strictly interpreted the Constitution (specifically Article VI, paragraph 2), there are U.S. laws today on the books that have not been changed or rendered null by ACTA, even though they appear to contradict the treaty's terms. There are "fair use" exemptions to U.S. copyright law, for instance, that make it legal for anyone to circumvent copy protection ("rights management") schemes for various personal reasons. A teacher, for example, may make a copy of rights-protected media if he uses it in education. If you have a legal movie, and you need to do something to it to make it play in any device you legally own, that's legal too. If you're a security engineer, and you're testing a copy protection scheme to see if and where it breaks, that's legal. These exemptions remain U.S. law, and as judges interpret the law presently, no treaty can override that unless Congress says so.

Which would have made Congress' participation in the ratification process somewhat helpful. The U.S. officially ratified ACTA without consulting Congress - which some believe to have been an awkward step because Congress would most likely have consented, not objected. Days after the ratification, Sen. Ron Wyden (D - Ore.) wrote a public letter to Pres. Obama expressing his frustration over the President's appearing to have circumvented the Constitution. "It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered," Sen. Wyden wrote, "without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law. But regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law... the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress' authority, absent congressional approval."

Indeed, the language of Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 reads states that the President "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." That would appear to signify that a Senate majority must approve first.

However, the very fact that the Senate was not consulted and did not vote on the treaty may, if the matter ever comes before a judge, be declared the reason why ratifying ACTA did not surmount existing law. A treaty can surmount law, but only after Senate approval. Conceivably, the Senate could take up the ACTA matter on its own time. But if it were then to approve or consent to the President's ratification (as though he had not already done so), then quite possibly, the current copyright exemptions could be put to the test, perhaps by way of a federal suit by rights holders against the U.S.

The situation in Europe is very different. There is a nebulous concept of the body of collected law among the various member nations through the centuries, called the acquis communitaire. If you put everything together ever written or adjudicated or declared that's consistent with the modern day, that's the acquis.

One of the European Union's strongest objections to ACTA, which became public in February 2011, was that it would surmount the acquis - it would effectively invalidate the existing laws of member nations. This was one of the strongest reasons why the treaty was "de-fanged" - that the "three strikes" mandate, among others, was removed. After that happened, an independent study commissioned by the EU Parliament declared that the treaty did not violate the acquis' boundaries - that Europe could effectively implement the treaty because it did not change the law.

To quote: "This study finds that, in the case of the EU, ACTA does not entail such a significant shift in the EU Acquis, but that, while it is not fundamentally in conflict with the TRIPS Agreement [the existing World Trade Organization document on intellectual property rights], it is significantly more stringent and rightholder friendly than the TRIPS Agreement. Many of the substantive issues that raised concerns in the early position papers have been addressed or are entirely absent from the final agreed text. On the other hand ACTA also does not appear, on its own, to have a significant impact on the EU's innovative capacity or its global competitiveness. This is partly due to the relatively modest scale of the outcome, as well as the fact that ACTA will not require any change in the laws or regulations of significant competitor countries such as Brazil, India and China."

That finding is perhaps the most important point of all, especially since Poland - an EU member state - ratified the treaty this week. Street protests by ACTA opponents there centered around fears that ACTA would force governments to enable rights holders to implement measures that censor Internet content. This is perhaps the most extreme interpretation of proposed clauses in the treaty that - once again - are no longer present and were not ratified.

The gist of what remains

Among what remains of ACTA is a measure that would give governments worldwide a kind of legal support mechanism should they decide to allow rights holders to seek personal data from ISPs. It does not mandate that they must provide rights holders such means (the verb "shall" has frequently been replaced with "may"), but it gives governments an excuse to do so.

Since the treaty is not law, it cannot stipulate the measures or methods that countries must put in play to enable rights holders to make these requests. And in a way, that's the problem: Though it mandates that privacy, freedom of expression, and fair process must all be observed when seeking someone's identity, ACTA does not offer any guidance as to how governments would ensure these rights.

As it stands, the treaty does state that governments "shall" (not "will") enable legal means to pursue individuals who circumvent copy protection knowing that doing so will lead to infringement. If the findings of the E.U. Parliament study - that the treaty does not override existing laws - apply to the U.S., then ACTA's implementation does not cancel out the "fair use" exemptions entered into copyright law over the last five years.

At least, so it might appear. However, individuals have lost faith in the largest rights' holders ability to restrain themselves from testing these laws for loopholes. Universal Music's false use of a DMCA takedown order last year is just one indicator that, given the right tools, the music industry will test the limits of their mandates.

Most people are not pirates or counterfeiters. I am neither. The protection of our interests may go a long way in helping us to reduce the instances of piracy and counterfeiting through our own positive example. There are valid arguments that treaties and legislation directed mainly towards rights holders, without similar regard for the individuals who would like to respect those rights, are imbalanced and perhaps unfair.

The sad but probable outcome of this final stage of the ACTA debate is that existing countries' laws will be tested, either by the largest body of rights holders testing the limits of their privileges, or by publicity seekers wearing Guy Fawkes masks - and most likely by both.

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The second-most important thing about social media is talking to people. The most important thing is to know whom you're talking to. We can't have a conversation about "authenticity" or "realness" or any other airy social media concept until we understand that there are people listening on the other side of that megaphone, and that's very nice of them to do. In order to get something out of social media, our listeners have to get something out of listening to us.

To give them what they want, it helps to know who they are. With the integration of Google+ into search, Google's social network will become an increasingly important part of the Web. By Google's count, it has 90 million users already. If you want to have a presence in Google search, active participation on Google+ is a good idea. I tested a tool for understanding the Google+ audience today and found some interesting insights.

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Global Google+ Demographics

The tools at PlusDemographics.com gather many of the basic statistics one needs to understand who uses Google+. They offer a free global report that they compiled by crawling 45 million public profiles, a very healthy sample of the estimated total, and normalizing the somewhat erratic data they got to within acceptable limits.

As it stands in January 2012, 70.38% of Google+ users identify as male, 28.77% are female, and the remainder fall into Google's third category: "other." Nearly 80% of users fall into the 18-34 age brackets. Over 30% of users are from the U.S., followed by around 14% from India, although the #2 state/region and seven of the top 10 cities are in India.

The majority of Google+ users surveyed are not active on Facebook or Twitter. 99.7% are not active on Foursquare. Google+ is a different place altogether from the rest of the social Web. How do my own followers compare?

Personal Google+ Demographics

PlusDemographics also offers personal reports for a fee. Single reports cost $4.99 for personal profiles and $9.95 for business pages. There are discounts for buying reports in packs. Personal reports crawl up to 10,000 followers, which ought to be enough to get a sense. Here's what it found from mine:

Almost 87% of my encirclements identify as male. That's a pretty remarkable indication of the demographics of people who follow tech bloggers on Google+.

The age breakdown is comparable to the global population, trending slightly older, which I find flattering.

The majority of my Google+ followers do use Facebook, which is different from the general population. Almost none are active on Klout, but that's more than in the global report, which found less than 0.01% used Klout.

These are all very basic data points, of course. Only a rough understanding of my encirclements is possible from these data. The way to get to know the people they represent is by talking to them, sharing with them and following their links.

How do you get to know the people on your social networks?

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Anyone who spends their day on the Internet inevitably wonders this question. Should I start publishing later in the day, to hit the after-work traffic? Should I publish earlier in the morning, to catch commuters while they're on the way to work? Or is everything completely random, driven by the off-chance that a post will end up on StumbleUpon and enjoy a slightly longer tail? Social sharing widget Sharaholic looked at its 2011 data, breaking it down to the top 100 days and times for sharing. See the results in Eastern Standard Time.

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Sharaholic looked at two metrics: social shares and traffic. For some, getting the highest number of shares is the goal; for others, increased traffic is where it's at. Please remember that this data all comes from Sharaholic, so it's specific to those users, though it's possible to infer more from the results.

Thursday beats every other day. Why? People are probably bored at work, trolling about on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (and Orkut?), sharing to their hearts' desire. Sharaholic's data shows that 31%, or more than a third of the top 100 social share days, were Thursdays. The best day for pageviews, however, is not Thursday. In fact, it's Monday. According to Sharaholic's data, Monday captures 43% of the top 100 pageview days in 2011.

As most blogs know, the best time of day for social shares is between 8am and 12pm ET. Sharaholic's data confirms this, showing that the most shares occur at 9am ET, moments before East coasters step into their offices to start the workday. Traffic declines throughout the day, spiking back up again around 9pm, and then slowly tapering off. Evidently, the best time of day to blog for pageviews is also 9am ET.

Image via UrbanHomesPDX.com.

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Facebook is in the final stages of preparing a filing for a much anticipated public offering, sources familiar with matter tell us.

The Wall Street Journal reports that such a filing could come as early as Wednesday and says that Morgan Stanley will take the prestigious role as lead underwriter with Goldman following. We can confirm that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are slated to underwrite the deal, but can’t confirm the order.

Facebook could be valued at between $75 and $100 billion and is expected to raise around $10 billion in the offering. Larry Yu, a Facebook spokesperson, said the company is “not going participate in IPO-related speculation.”

If Facebook went with Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter, with Goldman Sachs following, it would mimic the arrangement that Zynga chose in its December public offering. Morgan Stanley could receive up to $220 million in fees for its involvement, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The underwriting arrangement is a surprise considering that Goldman Sachs was supposed to have an advantage on taking the lead spot, given that it organized a $1.5 billion private placement for Facebook last year. Because of Securities and Exchange Commission rules allowing only 500 shareholders for privately held company that doesn’t publicly share financial results, Goldman’s fundraising round attracted media scrutiny. So the investment bank decided to allow only foreign investors to participate in the round.

Earlier this week Bloomberg reported that trading of Facebook shares on secondary markets would be halted for three days. Employees and former employees have also been warned by Facebook’s legal counsel not to talk to the press in the past few weeks, suggesting that a filing may be imminent.

The IPO filing would come at a critical time for Facebook. Private companies with 500 or more investors must legally make their financial records public within 120 days after the end of that calendar year.

Facebook said in January 2011 that it expected to pass the limit and file financial reports no later than April 30 this year. The company does not have to make a public offering at that time, but other companies in a similar position in the past like Google have chosen to go forward with an IPO anyway. Even if Facebook files next Wednesday, it may take several months or more than half a year before the offering depending on broad market conditions and whether company executives manage the SEC “quiet period” well.

For many years, chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he was not interested in taking the company public because he was focused on the product. Going public could make the company focus more on the short-term expectations of investors and less on the long-run opportunities ahead.

However, as the company’s value has grown, the pressure from employees for an exit has become more intense. In late 2008, Facebook stopped issuing outright equity and instead began to use restricted stock units, which convert to real shares in an event like an initial public offering. What this has meant for employees who have joined after 2008 is that they don’t have an ability to sell their shares in private secondary markets unlike earlier employees.

Zuckerberg has recently changed his tone. In a November interview with Charlie Rose, Zuckerberg said “We’ve made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we’re going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way.”

"We eat with our eyes," Iliana Regan told me, "and then it travels to our brain, and we love the sensation of the taste and the hot. I think it does a lot for the senses." Pretty steamy, right? Food is sexy. There can be no doubt. But just like sex, it's not always pretty. And in food and sex alike, humans love to take pictures.

There are laws about the sex part, but food is not censored in our society. The temptation is strong in the smartphone age to share our daily deeds with the world. It makes them less mundane. Meals are miraculous, really. Food is sacred. It gives life. But the rest of us on the Internet aren't at the table with you. We can't taste how good it is. Sometimes, if the light's not quite right, or you're too close up, what feels really good to you might look really gross to us.

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RWW's Curt Hopkins: "Good lord, man. That's the slop pail from a Burmese hospital."

This is just intended as a friendly tip. We would never presume to dictate what kinds of fun are or are not allowed. We just have some... let's call them aesthetic concerns about the lack of aesthetic concern sometimes sorely needed before posting a photo of food. It's food, remember? It's supposed to look delicious. It may taste delicious, but your Instagram followers, who don't get to taste it, might lose their appetites if you're not careful.

Food porn can be exceedingly pleasant. Professional photographers with solid equipment can make even everyday meals look irresistible. The website FoodPornDaily features one new shot every day, and they're invariably good enough to make you say "MMMMMMmmmmmmm." Iliana Regan has talented photographers capture the food she creates, and her images are lovely.

But a smartphone sensor won't always do it justice, and Instagram filters tend to turn things very brown. Just something to keep in mind.

"The key is good post-processing," says ReadWriteWeb webmaster Jared Smith, "and not just slapping an Instagram filter on. This digs to a deeper issue. Instagram has introduced a lot of people to photography that otherwise probably wouldn't participate. They get into the filters and the like."

"Punk as fuck," replies production editor Curt Hopkins. "And I like that. EXCEPT FOR FOOD."

"There have been amateur photos of everything from crimes being committed to mountains to ladies to flowers that have been lovely, arresting, striking," Hopkins says. "But there has not been one single amateur picture of food on a social media site that does not look like a pile of grey-beige recycled meatloaf. This includes lobster and cake."

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier has an important counterpoint. "You put them in your feed," he reminds us. "You followed them."

"I unfollow people for this all the time," I reply, "but there are some people whose tastes I mostly like, or who are my friends, and I don't want to miss out on their lives."

"You have to take the good and bad, then," Brockmeier says. "Just saying - if a friend of mine is like 'I don't like cat pictures, stop posting them to Facebook,' my response is, 'You can unfriend me if you want. This is my feed. I'll post whatever makes me happy.' Now, if the cat pic is my cat licking herself, you might have a more valid criticism."

What we are responding to here is the photo-culinary equivalent of cats licking their butts. The Web is a wonderful place to share photos. Lord knows there are enough ways to do it. But before you tweet your breakfast, take a look at the photo. Savor it. Then ask yourself, "Does this look good enough to eat?"

Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments.

Disclosure: Iliana Regan is the creator of the Chicago underground supper club One Sister, for which ReadWriteWeb's Alicia Eler has done some social media consulting in the past.

Lead photo by Iliana Regan

Photo 2 by Jon Mitchell

Photo 3 by Simon Mayo, found in Twitter's top image search results for "stroganoff"

Photo 4 (the good one) by Jennifer Moran

Photo 5 by Joel Sierra, found in Twitter's top image search results for "sushi"

Photo 6 by Nabila Huda

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We review the best in design, trends, culture, arts and fashion in our weekly 'What's Trending Now' roundup.

The kick-off weekend for Occupy Design includes a hands-on series of workshops examining design within the context of protest.

Some pundits expect Rick Santorum to drop out of the race after the Florida primary, but his Facebook page has gotten a burst of new Likes since Thursday’s debate, according to our Inside Facebook Election Tracker.

There is still time for things to change before Florida voters go to the polls on Tuesday, but in the past, we’ve seen correlation between Facebook growth and election performance. Newt Gingrich’s page was on the rise leading up to the South Carolina primary and had a large spike the day after he won there. His growth has since leveled off, but remains higher than it had been two weeks ago.

Ron Paul reached a new high with more than 9,500 new Likes in a single day following the debate in Tampa, Florida. He has been gaining the most new fans per day for the past week. Mitt Romney’s growth has slowed over the last few days, mirroring his drop in the polls.

For a closer look at how GOP presidential primary candidates are performing on the social network, visit our election tracker.

People familiar with the matter say that Facebook could file for its initial public offering as soon as next week, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. The source also says that Facebook is close to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter. The filing could happen next Wednesday, and the company is aiming for a $75-$100 billion valuation. It is looking to raise $10 billion in stock.

Facebook started in 2004 as a college-only social network. It opened to the public in September 2006, dropping the minimum age requirement from 18-years-old to 13-years-old. In little over seven years, it has grown to a userbase of 800 million people across the globe.

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Reports say that the IPO will have two active managers; Goldman Sachs Group will most likely play an important role.

Morgan Stanley was a lead underwriter for both the 2011 Zynga and Groupon IPOs last year. To put this in perspective, Groupon went public with a $12.7 billion valuation, the highest tech valuation since Google's $23.1 billion. Google sold $1.7 billion in stock.

Facebook will go public under the symbol "FB," according to reports from BusinessInsider. Right now it's unclear whether Facebook will list on NYSE or Nasdaq.

Facebook has been on a roll these past few weeks, pushing out Timeline to all of its users, releasing 60 new social apps. It also halted its trading on secondary markets for three days earlier this week, hinting at an IPO.

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This post is an excerpt from the NEW, revamped Facebook Marketing Bible — a major update to the leading resource for marketing and advertising strategies on Facebook. If you’re interested in learning more about this upcoming update, check out a preview at The Facebook Marketing Bible.

The Recommendations Bar is one of Facebook’s newest social plugins, and the first to integrate the social reading and frictionless sharing capabilities of Open Graph. Put simply, the Recommendations Bar allows any website to implement the same social reading and social recommendation features found in “social reader” style applications from the Washington Post, The Guardian or USA Today. The plugin is still in beta, which means that when installed, it is only viewable to developers and testers associated with the website or application. Normal site visitors cannot yet see or interact with the plugin. However, once the Recommendations Bar becomes publicly accessible, we expect it to be a highly effective tool for any news site looking to increase referral traffic and reader engagement.

The Recommendations Bar enables three essential social  functions:

Social recommendations

The Recommendations Bar prompts readers with other articles when they finish the one they’re reading, using Social Graph data to recommend the most relevant articles. This includes articles that a user’s friends have liked or articles that have received a high volume of likes and comments. Essentially, the same “secret sauce” that goes into ranking News Feed posts and Comments is leveraged in the Recommendations Bar, ensuring that readers are recommended articles that are relevant to their interests and social connections.

Omnipresent Like Button that “follows” the user

The Recommendations Bar creates a Like button that doesn’t move, even when users scrolls or resize their browser windows. Many sites currently struggle to determine the most effective placement for the Like button. Should it appear at the top near the byline? At the end of the article near the comments section? As part of the sidebar? The Recommendations bar is a much more elegant solution, as it eliminates the need to place a Like button in a particular location on a given page — its position is relative to the user’s browser window, not relative to site content. While this can be done using relatively simple HTML and CSS, Facebook’s solution is even simpler to implement, and the sizing and display has been thought through down to the pixel.

Social reading through frictionless sharing

The Recommendations Bar allows users to turn on social reading, the same functionality that’s available within canvas applications like the Washington Post Social Reader, USAToday + Me, and The Guardian. Except while those companies spent time and money creating a canvas application within Facebook, the Recommendations Bar provides the same functionality on any pre-existing website, with minimal effort. If you’ve seen stories pop up in your News Feed and Ticker like Brendan read “Facebook CEO speaks out against SOPA, PIPA” on Washington Post Social Reader, the Recommendations Plugin can generate the same kind of rich Open Graph story.

Continue reading for a preview of the NEW Facebook Marketing Bible coming in February!