The Balkan Chronicle

Sisters reunite 72 years later with the help of Facebook

Two Bosnian sisters who lost track of each other almost 72 years ago met for the first time with the help of Facebook although they lived only 200 kilometres apart, local media reported.

Profiled at airport? There’s an app for that.

A Sikh advocacy group launched a free mobile application Monday that allows travelers to complain immediately to the government if they feel they've been treated unfairly by airport screeners.

Launched at midnight Monday by the Sikh Coalition, the FlyRights app had fielded two complaints by 10 a.m.

Getlokal.ro and transporturban.ro: the route is as important as the destination!

Getlokal.ro and transporturban.ro became friends for the good of the locals and tourists in Bucharest that want to move efficiently through the city and decide fast and informed where to spend their free time.

Time to leave GoDaddy over registrar's support for SOPA

Thousands of website domains were transferred on Thursday from the Internet's top registrar Go Daddy as part of a colossal campaign against the service for its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

With managing close to 50 million domain names, Go Daddy is the largest registrar on the web and has customers across the globe. Thousands of clients stateside cancelled their accounts with the company this week, however, after Go Daddy originally voiced its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. Should the legislation pass, US Congress will enforce penalties on websites that share unauthorized content and will begin government sanctioned censorship on the World Wide Web.

New computers now come with pre-installed viruses, spyware

For years, online investigators have warned consumers about the dangers of opening or downloading files emailed to them from unknown or suspicious sources. Now, they say malicious software and computer code could be lurking on computers before the bubble wrap even comes off.

The team of Microsoft researchers in China investigating the sale of counterfeit software tested some computers made in China. They suddenly had been introduced to a malware called Nitol. The incident was revealed in court documents unsealed Thursday in a federal court in Virginia. The records describe a new front in a legal campaign against cybercrime being waged by the maker of the Windows operating system, which is the biggest target for viruses.

Facebook tracks you even after logging out

An Australian technologist has caused a global stir after discovering Facebook tracks the websites its users visit even when they are logged out of the social networking site.

Separately, Facebook's new Timeline feature, launched last week, has been inadvertently accessed by users early, revealing a feature that allows people to see who removed them from their friends lists.

OMG! Twitter has roots in the 17th century

The explosion of information via social media is nothing new. Europeans were similarly bombarded with an avalanche of new communication forms during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Search engines ‘rewire our memory’

A study from Columbia University suggests that the ability to find almost any information via a few keystrokes on Google could make us less likely to remember things. Researchers believe that we tend to forget information if we are confident that we can find it again. If we think that something will not be easy to find again then we make more effort to remember it.

Still struggling on with XP? Microsoft will let you upgrade any version of Windows to new '8' operating system for $40

Microsoft is putting a special price on its next version of Windows - offering upgrades to the operating system for just $40.

The offer, which translates to about £25 in the UK, will run until next January and applies to the previous versions of Windows - XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Microsoft has not yet confirmed the price in the UK yet, but the company is likely to price the upgrade at between £25 and £40.

Is Twitter Turning Us Into Twits?

Twitter: the ultimate time-waster or an invaluable social media tool?

A recent infographic shows people’s Twitter usage, providing arguments for and against using the micro-blogging website.

Twitter lets us instantly blast our 140-character thoughts to all of the Internet, where they can be archived for eternity. How could anything go wrong?