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A little while ago (approx 2 weeks) I read a story online which claimed a person has downloaded a compiled 100m Facebook users’ personal data. I searched online and found this torrent on thepiratebay.org

I downloaded this torrent and to my surprise, its almost NOTHING personal. Just names and Facebook IDs. Anyway, I also found a BBC Story on the same topic which is pathetic! They sounded this as if Facebook is HACKED, which is not the case.

Anyway, anyone who does not want to download via other file-sharing services or torrents can download this from the following VPS locations

• Location 1
• Location 2 (monthly allocation of 1TB bandwidth consumed)

P.S. If, for some reasons, you cannot download this file, leave a comment with a valid email address in this post and I will get back to you with the valid link.

Life is really moving in the fast lane for me, and Im pretty sure for most of you readers too. I login to social-networking platforms after weeks and I cant recognize most of these faces (even though they are my friends). Its proven that Humans tend to recognize people by face more quickly then names and email addresses so whenever someone puts on a new face (uploads a new profile-picture), I have hard time getting to know them.

Well, I thought today, I have been developing in facebook application for so long now – Why not put online a few hours to fetch Facebook Friends data via API and keeping track of who did what? (status updates) and who changed his/her profile picture? So last night I was up, as usual, and I put together a small script in PHP that fetches my friends’s list, processes newcomers, checks for updates (pictures and statuses) and posts them into a database. Now I can track who updated his profile picture and what was their previous profile photo. Also, I can invest in another 1 hr to create high-level-summary everyday for ME

Do you do something of this sort? I’d love to hear your story

Facebook is unblocked as per latest verdict from Lahore High Court but I find many people not using the popular social networking website. I have even seen many foreign friends leaving facebook and publishing email addresses to stay in touch via email.

Updated at: 1027 PST, Monday, May 31, 2010
LAHORE: A Pakistani court on Monday ordered authorities to restore access to Facebook, nearly two weeks after the popular social networking website was blocked nationwide in a row over blasphemy.

Justice Ejaz Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court issued the directive, reversing a May 19 order on the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to block Facebook over “blasphemous” drawings of Prophet Mohammed on the website.

“Restore Facebook. We don’t want to block access to information,” Chaudhry told the court.

A contest organised by a Facebook user calling on people to draw the Prophet Mohammed to promote “freedom of expression” sparked a major backlash in the conservative Muslim country of 170 million.

Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and even moderate Muslims were deeply offended by the drawings that appeared on a Facebook page in an answer to the call for an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day”.

A group of Islamic lawyers petitioned the Lahore court, which had ordered Facebook blocked until May 31 and the PTA then banned YouTube and restricted access to other websites, including Wikipedia.

Chaudhry on Monday asked the government to develop a system to block access to “blasphemous” content on the Internet, which he said was already in place in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“It is the government’s job to take care of such things, which spark resentment among the people and bring them onto the streets. They should take steps to block any blasphemous content on the Internet,” Chaudhry said.

The court Monday adjourned until June 15 the petitions from the Islamic lawyers.

Mudassir Hussain, an official from the information technology ministry, told the court that all links to “blasphemous” content on the Internet would remain blocked in Pakistan.

via Geo.tv

Last time I wrote a piece on Facebook duplicate ads but this time I am being offered to watch Free Indian movies online. I actually visited this link and it offers the content without any subscription. I am pretty sure the copyright holders of these movies would be pissed off when they hear this.

Facebook is rolling out its redesign to some of its users and they are somewhat like this, claims Om Malik on gigaom.com. Here are some of the screen shots of the new sleek look

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Games.com say

Even though gaming on Facebook has been around for a while, 2009 was the year of the social gaming boom. Mafia Wars was the first game since Scrabulous to get a nod from mainstream media, and by the end of the year, you’d be hard pressed find anyone — even your Mom — who hasn’t at least heard of FarmVille.

Then there’s the fact that these games are basically cash cows, corralling millions of dollars for Zynga, Playdom, Playfish and CrowdStar (and the prediction that social gaming will be a 5 billion dollar industry in a several years), we’d say this whole social gaming thing has officially taken hold, and we can’t wait to see how these games change in 2010.

Out of the 500+ games on Facebook, five in particular held us captive this year. All of the games on this list launched in ’09 and have 10 million or more monthly active users. It’s equally mind-boggling to sit back and think of how many hours we’ve sunk into these games, not to mention (yup, it’s confession time) how much real-life cash we’ve paid to buy virtual items for these games.

You can read the entire article here. In my opinion, I never played any of these games except Mafia Wars, that too very rare. Farmville and Cafe World are two games that I have started playing in 2010

My Facebook account got surpended today right after I got this PM from Saad Tariq, a friend of mine.

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This story appeared everywhere last week (and it was not an April Fool!) A study carried out at the University of Melbourne discovered that people using the web for personal surfing get more work done than those who do not. The study was carried out by Dr Brent Coker:

People who do surf the internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t.

Dr Coker states that most projects, such as writing a report, consist of mini-tasks e.g. gathering information, entering data, creating a graph, etc. Workers were shown to take small web-surfing “treats” between these mini-tasks. That enabled the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration and increased productivity.

I’m sure this news was printed and put under the nose of bosses all round the world!

Read the original post here

Although I do not have any such kind of restriction at work but I am definitely going to pass it on to my officials

I have recently request FaceBook to add the Vteams (aka NEXTBRIDGE in Lahore, Pakistan) as a network.

To join, you must have an active @nxvt.com email account, just go to

1. Setting -> Account, select network tab.
2. In network name box type “Vteams”, enter email address and click JOIN.
3. Check your email and click on the confirmation link
4. Congratulation, you have joined the Vteams Network

I have recently request FaceBook to add the Virtual University of Pakistan as a network.

To join, you must have an active @vu.edu.pk email account, just go to

1. Setting -> Account, select network tab.
2. In network name box type “Virtual University of Pakistan”, select your degree and graduation year, enter email address and click JOIN.
3. Check your email and click on the confirmation link
4. Congratulation, you have joined the Virtual University of Pakistan Network