Supreme Court to Hear Facebook Free-Speech Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case regarding the free-speech rights of a man who was accused of posting threatening messages on Facebook. The man's lawyers argue that a law banning speech that would be deemed threatening by a reasonable person shouldn't apply to Facebook messages, which are intended for people who know the speaker personally, and thus, might be less likely to take off-color comments seriously. The case revolves around a man sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for posting violent online rants against his estranged wife, law enforcement officials, and former co-workers. Experts predict that there are going to be more of these kinds of cases as people feel that they can get away with more incendiary speech on the Internet, in tweets and in texts.

And Texting Wins!

A recent survey of high-school students finds that they text more often than they use other forms of social media, such as Facebook and YouTube. Data from 7,000 graduating high-school seniors show that 87% report texting daily, while 61% say they use Facebook daily. Results show that LinkedIn is getting the fewest visits by teens.

Girls and Coding: Closing the Gap

Google has announced a $50 million initiative to teach girls to code and help close the gender gap in engineering and computer science. Google’s move follows recent reports that only 17% of Google's technology employees are women. The Made With Code campaign will include partnerships with various organizations and companies to help link families with programs and mentors. Check out the projects on the site.

The New York State Court of Appeals Weighs in on Legality of Cyberbullying Policies

The New York State Court of Appeals is considering one of the first challenges to the Albany County’s legislature’s 2010 law that make cyberbullying a misdemeanor. The court case stems from an incident involving Marquan W. Mackey-Meggs, a student at Cohoes High School in Cohoes, N.Y., who was arrested in June of 2011 for creating a Facebook page entitled "Cohoes Flame" to which he posted photos of classmates with derogatory and sexual captions. The case sheds new light on the complexity of issues surrounding the cyberbullying debate, and the number of questions it raises—from what exactly defines cyberbullying, to what punitive measures are necessary to combat it, to where exactly the responsibility (and in some cases, the right) to discipline lies. This is just one of many such cases currently being considered.

Facebook Rolls Out Slingshot

Facebook, in response to the Snapchat app craze that allows users to send self-destructing photos to friends, has rolled out Slingshot, it’s own service to do the same thing. The new app aims to create a sense of community by encouraging users to send a photo or video to a group of friends. Its unique twist is that the recipients are required to share a visual moment of their own before they can see what was sent to them. As with Snapchat, savvy recipients can use their phones’ screenshot features to save the file, which opens up the possibility of cyberbullying, because images that are supposed to self-destruct don’t necessarily do that.

Your Personality Type – What Big Companies See When They Look At Your Internet Use

Ok, so many people understand that companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter look at the queries, observations, and updates we write on their services, then they try to figure out what ads might have the most persuasive effect on us. So now, there is a tool called Five that analyzes your Facebook postings (and even those of your friends) to help you understand what those big companies see in you (and them). Seems a bit like the personality quizzes you take in a magazine, but then again the data they have comes from your public persona. This is something to think about.

Monitoring Your Data Use

If everyone in your family has an unlimited data plan, you can ignore this post, but for the rest of us who find ourselves running out of megabytes at the end of a billing period, try using the free tools built into your device’s operating system to see where you stand.

In recent versions of Android, open the Settings icon from the All Apps screen and in the Wireless & Networks area, tap "Data usage.” Here, you can see how much data each app has used, set restrictions, set an overall limit, and have Android display a warning when you get too close to it. In recent versions of the Windows Phone system, the Data Sense app in the App List can be used to monitor data use and set limits. In Apple devices running iOS 7, open the Settings icon on the Home screen and tap Cellular (or Cellular Data on an iPad) to see your current use amounts and choose which apps can, and cannot, use your cellular connection for downloading data.

Cybersecurity Lowest in Health Sector

The health care sector's adoption of cutting-edge digital and wireless technology has been mired by a stark increase in the number of cyberattacks directed against hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors, according to a new report from BitSight Technologies, which says the industry is struggling to address the challenge. Analysts say when compared with other commercial sectors, health care ranks lowest in cybersecurity preparedness.

Europe Gets a Google Eraser

Google has launched a service to allow Europeans to ask for personal data to be removed from online search results. The move comes after a landmark European Union court ruling earlier this month, which gave people the "right to be forgotten". Links to "irrelevant" and outdated data should be erased on request, it said. Google said it would assess each request and balance "privacy rights of the individual with the public's right to know and distribute information". "When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there's a public interest in the information," Google says on the form which applicants must fill in. Google said it would look at information about "financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials" while deciding on the request. Earlier this month, the BBC learned that more than half of the requests sent to Google from UK individuals involved convicted criminals.

Ever Think About Digitally Burning Your Text Messages?

If there have been times you have wished you could truly keep your text messages private, you might be interested in a new app called Confide – a super-private texting app that destroys your messages so you're always off the record.

Messages are encrypted end-to-end and can't be forwarded or read by anybody but the intended recipient (not even Confide's staff). Your words are hidden upon receipt and only reveal a couple at a time when the recipient swipes over them. That means your texts are screenshot-proof, and if someone even attempts a screenshot, you're notified immediately. Once your message is read, it permanently self-destructs. Of course, if the message is coming from a cyberbully it makes it harder to prove what they are doing, but it also means that if you are receiving messages from someone who might be tempted to send a less than nice message, you (or your kids) might just not look at them. This is just something else to know about.