Here is how social networks can take dumb criminals and make them even dumber.

A thief who stole a computer and other items from a woman’s house logged into the the woman’s Facebook account and boasted about the theft, even going so far as to say that the Television in the her house wasn’t good enough to take.

The items were taken from Victoria Richardson, who resides in the UK. The thief took an iPhone, a Nintendo DS, a handbag, some cash and credit cards and a computer. After the crime had been committed Victoria logged into her Facebook account only to find that the bragging bandit had left messages on her profile, stating:

“on my new laptop”

“Listening to music on my new phone feels so good.”

“I have the laptop , phones ok but a bit scratched itll do, tv was rubbish so I left it, ds was a bonus, now to the porn shop, thankyou toshiba is my favourite make”.

“regards your night time burglar”.

Victoria Richardson stated: “I felt very spooked. I have never felt like that before. It felt like they were rubbing my nose in it.”

However, the social networking bandit shows that the criminal isn’t very bright. Publishing a record of their crime on Facebook can only help the police with their investigation. It wouldn’t even be surprising if the thief has a Facebook profile of their own, since they had no trouble figuring out what Facebook is and using it as a tool for their bravado.

Using Facebook’s social search, you could take the comments above as examples of the thief’s writing style and compare it to comments on other Facebook profiles whose geographic location is near the victim’s.

Source: Mashable

In what is shaping up to be a battle among two web bigshots, Facebook is making moves that suggest they want to take on Google for search engine dominance.

Facebook taking steps to turn itself into a web site that is more powerful than just a social network. Facebook recently acquired FriendFeed, a popular social network service, along with the visionary developers that created it.

Facebook has launched new search on their social network as well as the ability to share real-time profile updates with their entire social network. These moves as well as numerous projects in progress aim to position Facebook as an must use communications service.

As of right now Facebook is no Google, but they have attracted over 250 million users in a short period of time. Facebook has reached a growth point where membership is growing exponentially. Every new user on Facebook invites friends and family to join Facebook’s social network so they can stay in touch and communicate with one another online.

If Facebook can capitalize on its large membership and create ways to turn those users into paying customers for products and services, it could take its social network to the next level.

There are signs that Google is feeling some pressure from the success of Facebook. Last week Google launched some new social networking functionality on iGoogle, its personal web portal service. iGoogle is turning into an online service for social applications, similar to the applications enjoyed by Facebook users.

Social networking are a dime a dozen. Social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are familiar names, but there have been numerous others that have gone the way of the dinosaur. MySpace took off and became a household name, but quickly losing interest among users. Facebook is taking big steps to become the next Google instead of the next dinosaur.

Source: PCWorld

Spokeo search allows you to track people and friends on your email contact list across most of the top social networks like Linkedin, Facebook and Myspace.

Users can login to the Spokeo search service using their logon from various popular email accounts and Spokeo will search their contact list for users that are registered on the dozens of social network sites that Spokeo indexes.

In addition, Spokeo also offers special services for law enforcement, job recruiters and human resource professionals.

You can try the Spokeo service for yourself below.

A county Commissioner in Escambia County, Florida has been charged with a violation of Florida public records law violation for not turning over requested emails on time.

Florida State Attorney Bill Eddins reviewed complaints that Commissioner Gene Valentino violated Florida’s public records laws by delaying the release of the emails.

According to a press release from Eddins office:

“This review has determined that sufficient facts exist to believe that Commissioner Valentino did fail to timely or completely respond to a public records request and as a result has been charged with one count of violation of the Public Records Law.”

The public record violation allegations arose after a meeting between Gene Valentino and Pensacola City Councilman Sam Hall on April
28, 2009 occurrred in a private office in the City Hall building.

Commissioner Valentino and Councilman Hall are both voting members on the Pensacola-Escambia Promotion and Development
Commission ( PEDC ). The PEDC is a quasi-government entity that was created by an act of the State Legislature in 1967. The purpose of the PEDC is to promote economic development in Escambia County, Florida. Meetings of the PEDC are subject to Florida public records law and the state’s Sunshine Law.

Florida’s Sunshine Law applies to any meeting of two or more members of the same board to discuss issues that will potentially come before the board for a vote. At the time of the meeting, Commissioner Valentino and Councilman Hall did not believe that the economic development plan being worked on by Gene Valentino would come before the PEDC for action.

The public records law violation is a non-criminal offense that is punishable by a fine up to $500. Commissioner Valentino will appear in court regarding the charge on August 27, 2009.

Source: NorthEscambia.com

Facebook upgraded its social search engine Monday. The new Facebook search will return better results for profile updates, shared links, pictures, personal videos, as well as posted notes.

Facebook beta tested their new social search engine with a selected group of users for about a month and decided to launch the new search upgrade based on the positive results from the testing.

Facebook users can now search the last 30 days of news feeds for status updates, pictures, web links, videos and notes shared by their network of friends and the Facebook pages of which they are a fan.

People who opt to make their Facebook content public will have their status updates searchable by the entire Facebook community, not just friends.

Facebook users can hide their content from the new social search by changing their profile’s privacy settings.

Source: PC Magazine

The following state public records searches have been updated on the Skipease site and can be accessed at Public Records:

• Alabama Public Records
• Alaska Public Records
• Arizona Public Records
• Arkansas Public Records
• California Public Records
• Colorado Public Records
• Connecticut Public Records
• DC – Washington DC Public Records
• Delaware Public Records
• Florida Public Records
• Georgia Public Records
• Hawaii Public Records
• Idaho Public Records
• Illinois Public Records
• Indiana Public Records
• Iowa Public Records
• Kansas Public Records
• Kentucky Public Records
• Louisiana Public Records
• Maine Public Records
• Maryland Public Records
• Massachusetts Public Records
• Michigan Public Records
• Minnesota Public Records
• Mississippi Public Records
• Missouri Public Records
• Montana Public Records
• Nebraska Public Records
• Nevada Public Records
• New Hampshire Public Records
• New Jersey Public Records
• New Mexico Public Records
• New York Public Records
• North Carolina Public Records
• North Dakota Public Records
• Ohio Public Records
• Oklahoma Public Records
• Oregon Public Records
• Pennsylvania Public Records
• Rhode Island Public Records
• South Carolina Public Records
• South Dakota Public Records
• Tennessee Public Records
• Texas Public Records
• Utah Public Records
• Vermont Public Records
• Virginia Public Records
• Washington Public Records
• West Virginia Public Records
• Wisconsin Public Records
• Wyoming Public Records

Google, in response to the increasing competition to its search engine dominance from Microsoft Bing and other search engines, is raising the stakes with their work on a new web search technology that will speed up the indexing of search results.

Some web developers have been invited by Google search to test a new search engine and give their input. The graphical layout of the new search engine hasn’t changed, but the underlying search technology is getting upgraded. Google engineers hope the new search technology will index new content faster and reduce delay between the time new web content is published and the time it appears in a Google search engine results.

According to a Google spokesperson: “”Google is always working on new technologies to improve the quality of our search services. We hope this new system will improve search in the areas of speed, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.”

Google’s new search engine technology has been dubbed “Caffeine”.

Google is also improving the freshness of its search results by including real-time results and more current news, along with updates from social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Source: UK Telegraph

Our inmate search and National Sex Offender Registry page has been updated.

We just updated the prison inmate search page with new links to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate search; National Sex Offender Registry Database as well as US state prison inmate search sites and state departments of corrections.

State prison inmate search updates and department of corrections sites include:

Alabama prison inmate search.
Alaska prison inmate info.
Arizona prison inmate lookup.
Arkansas prison inmate locator.
California prison inmate info.
Colorado prison inmate finder.
Connecticut prison inmate search.
Delaware prison inmate records.
District of Columbia prison inmate look up.
Florida prison inmate locator.
Georgia prison inmate finder.
Hawaii prison inmate search.
Idaho prison inmate search.
Illinois prison inmate info.
Indiana prison inmate records.
Iowa prison inmate lookup.
Kansas prison inmate lookup.
Kentucky prison inmate locator.
Louisiana prison inmate locator.
Maine prison inmate info finder.
Maryland prison inmate search lookup.
Massachusetts prison inmate locator search.
Michigan prison inmate finder search.
Minnesota prison inmate look up search.
Mississippi prison inmate search site.
Missouri prison inmate search info.
Montana prison inmate search.
Nebraska prison inmate search locator.
Nevada prison inmate record search.
New Hampshire prison inmate search.
New Jersey prison inmate record search.
New Mexico prison inmate finder.
New York prison inmate search and locator.
North Carolina prison inmate search info.
North Dakota prison inmate search and finder.
Ohio prison inmate search.
Oklahoma prison inmate search.
Oregon prison inmate locator.
Pennsylvania prison inmate locator.
Rhode Island prison inmate lookup.
South Carolina prison inmate search.
South Dakota prison inmate lookup.
Tennessee prison inmate search locator.
Texas prison inmate records search.
Utah prison inmate search and lookup.
Vermont prison inmate search.
Virginia prison inmate search.
Washington prison inmate locator.
West Virginia prison inmate search.
Wisconsin prison inmate search.
Wyoming prison inmate search and offender lookup.

You can visit the updated prison inmate search directory at Inmate Search.

In the past 24 hours Facebook started allowing people to claim custom URLs, using their real names, for their personal Facebook profiles.

This will make searching and finding people on the Facebook social network easier, especially when searching for a person whose Facebook profile has been indexed by a search engine like Google.

In the first three minutes, about 200,000 people claimed their usernames. After fifteen minutes, Facebook users had chosen half a million custom URLs. After one hour, over 1 million people on Facebook had claimed usernames.

From the numbers you can see that this URL service has been very popular with Facebook users and should make people searches online that much easier for people who are trying to find old friends, coworkers and family.

Source: Mashable.com

According to a recent CNN article, people who search online for phrases like “song lyrics” or “free” are engaging in risky search engine behavior. Along with “free music downloads”, these search terms put 20 percent of search engine users in danger of landing on sites that push malicious software, known as “malware.”

A research report by antivirus software company McAfee has found the most dangerous search engine terms that can land people on pages with a high likelihood of virus and malware attacks.

The McAfee study looked at 2,600 popular keywords used on the Google, Yahoo, Live, AOL and Ask search engines. The study then analyzed approximately 413,000 Web pages that rank for those search terms.

Categories that had the highest risk of contaminating your PC with viruses and malware are: screen savers, free games, work from home, Olympics, videos, celebrities, music and news.

The riskiest phrases were: word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire.

The study also showed how cyber criminals are increasing in sophistication and how antivirus software often lags behind the latest developments by cyber criminals.

Despite the growing virus and malware risks, McAfee CEO David DeWalt doesn’t believe there will be a “cyber Armageddon” that will cause worldwide destruction of servers, computers and web infrastructure.

However, he did say that “In the past year, we’ve seen a pretty dramatic shift in what we call malware.”

DeWalt further noted that: “It went from a hacker in a basement, to organized cybercrime to now, literally, terrorism and other forms of organized geopolitical attacks.”

Source: CNN.com