Share Your Wi-Fi, Get Rewarded

"Giving is receiving" is an old adage that doesn’t work for everyone — at least, not when it comes to Wi-Fi. Few of us are happy to discover unauthorized others have been leeching bandwidth off our hotspots’ signals.

But a new kind of WiFi hotspot launching later this year wants to change that.

It’s called Karma. And, like the regular kind of karma, it works by returning to you what you share with others. In this case, Wi-Fi.

Anyone in the vicinity can log on to your Karma Wi-Fi hotspot for a pay-as-you-go fee of $14 per GB of data. In return for each person who purchases connectivity through your device, you earn 100 Megabytes of free data — about enough to browse the Internet for five hours, and open 10,000 emails.

“It is not tied to a device, or to a network, but to you,” co-founder Steven van Wel explains.

In other words, you can use data purchased or earned over one Karma Wi-Fi hotspot to log onto another. There are no contracts, overage fees or subscriptions.

The startup expects to begin shipping hotspots by the end of 2012. The hotspots will sell for $69 and can support up to eight devices.

Karma isn’t a broadband provider itself, but it does partner with providers. And it adds a a subtle social layer to sharing Wi-Fi.

Users login to their accounts via Facebook so that hotspot owners can see who is using their device, and they can send a thank you note to a device owner after using it.

If it catches on, Karma could make connecting to the Internet anywhere easier. How many times have you turned on a connected device in a hotel room or restaurant and found a list of private, locked networks — but no open Wi-Fi access?

Ultimately, whether or not Karma is a good deal depends on your device and data habits. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all offer 5GB of data per month starting at $50. So if you use more than that — if you watch a lot of Netflix on your iPad, say — Karma could help you avoid expensive overages. Especially if you’re sharing your signal a lot and earning free bandwidth.

Will you be giving Karma Wi-Fi a try? Let us know why or why not in the comments.

6.5 Million LinkedIn Passwords Leaked - Dont Let it Happen To You

Do you have a LinkedIn account? If you answered yes, I sure hope you have changed your password.

You have probably heard that roughly 6.5 million LinkedIn account passwords were leaked the other day. Recent news has also revealed that some eHarmony and Last.fm passwords were leaked as well. The complete details regarding what information was compromised have not been released, but it is known that some accounts were hacked to in order to find sensitive information, send spam messages, etc. Regardless of what information these hackers have found, it is clear that a serious issue in online security has been exposed.

LinkedIn currently has more than 150 million users, which means the chances of your password being leaked are small (roughly 4%). Even though 4% is a small amount, the passwords we use online protect very important information, and anytime that safety is threatened, it is important the we take action. Even if you haven’t noticed any suspicious activity on your account, it is better to be safe and change your password just in case (especially if your password isn't a very secure one).

What To Do? First, it is important to use secure random passwords. A secure random password should combine capitalized and uncapitalized letters that do not spell out any words and should also include a combination of numbers and characters. Secondly, it is important that you use a different password for every site you use.

GREAT! How do I think of these random passwords and how do I remember them? A variety of sites offer password protection services where you can store passwords or content. One that combines features is MySocialCloud.com which offers safe storage of your username and password as well as a Random Password Generator that creates very secure passwords.

With the recent LinkedIn password leak, I knew I needed to change my LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter password because I had been using the same password for all three sites. Now that I use MySocialCloud, I was able to log-in and create secure random passwords for each site with the click of a button.

Since MySocialCloud can store these passwords and allow me to auto-login to the sites in the future, I don’t have to worry about having to remember the complex passwords. Now, if/when a password leak happens in the future for whatever site it may be, I don’t have to worry about my information being exposed.

We hope that you enjoy your safer and more secure online life!

How is Social Media Impacting Traditional News Distribution?

There is no denying the impact that social media has had on the news industry. Particularly, news distribution. People online, now more than ever, are reading, monitoring, and most importantly sharing news on their mobile phones, with their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and with countless other social media digital tools.

We recently surveyed “social news consumers” and asked them their habits, their interests, their uses of social media as it applies to news, and the results were recently published in the 2012 Social Media News Survey Report. This is the third year that we’ve run this survey, and the results, in our opinion, keep getting more and more interesting.
Five Statistics To Think About

Social media news is not new. The majority of our survey sample indicated they have been using social media tools for more than five years (34.5%) with more than 63% indicating upwards of three years of social media tool experience. Nearly 33% of respondents use social media tools more than two hours per day. Think of that! 1 in 3 people that use social media tools are following, sharing, posting, or reading news and information — possibly about your company. And they have been for quite some time.

The corporate news website is still important. More than 66% of the survey sample reported sometimes (34.3%), very often (22.4%), or all the time (9.7%) making use of a corporate site or online newsroom website when following or sharing news. As people use outlets such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Facebook to discover news, they are inevitably going to then refer to the source — the corporate news website — for verification, additional information, and contact information. Companies of all sizes are using social media as distribution channels to their online newsrooms.

From social to corporate website. Almost 75% of survey respondents indicate they sometimes or frequently visit a corporate website after learning of a news story through social media channels. This is related to the above analysis — people are learning of news about your organization through social channels, and then they are coming to your online newsroom or corporate newscenter. This distribution channel has been proven and your organization can take advantage of sending out tweets and posting onto Facebook links back to your news, thus building up your own distinct, proprietary online news distribution network.

You heard it first. Timeliness of social media channels is an undeniable advantage over traditional media. 75% indicated that news gathered through social media channels was either slightly (36.1%) or much more (38.3%) timely than traditional news outlets. This is obvious and with the increase in traditional news channels offering social content such as CNN iReporters, there is no doubt a huge blend in this area. If your organization can respond to activities happening in your industry in social media channels, you may be able to get a competitive edge and increase your coverage, your leadership position, and your exposure on the issue. Ensuring that your news is timely is of utmost importance.

Facebook and Twitter are distribution kings. Despite the recent Facebook IPO setback, there is no doubt that both of these social media channels are excellent vehicles for distributing news content, engaging with interested customers, informing investors and analysts of financial information, and several companies have taken advantage of these features. Almost 90% cite the use of Facebook and 70% the use of Twitter as primary sources of news and information when following, sharing or posting content. This is more than twice that of the Wall Street Journal and significantly more than CNN, in our survey.

In conclusion, one survey doesn’t set the pace for an entire industry, nor should it. However, there is no doubt that social media is having an impact on the news distribution industry. Social media has become a powerful, effective, and cost-efficient news distribution network for organizations of all sizes.