AOL Brings in Outside Help With Homepage Redesign

New set of standards could make email more trustworthy

(NEWSER) - A new anti-phishing effort, backed by the big email service providers as well as banks, PayPal, social networks, and other companies, could dramatically reduce the number of scam emails you get in your inbox. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL are backing the new plan; 15 companies in total have come together to create DMARC.org, which officially launches today and will promote standard technologies to authenticate email. The hoped-for end result? If you get an email that claims to be from paypal.com, you could trust that it is actually from paypal.com. If it works, companies would be able to communicate with customers in new ways, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Lamar Smith seems unfazed by powerful opponents to piracy bill

(NEWSER) - Rep. Lamar Smith, author of the fiercely controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, doesn't sound like he's bothered much by the heated opposition from e-powerhouses such as Facebook, Google, Reddit, and Twitter. "It is amazing to me that the opponents apparently don't want to protect American consumers and businesses," the Texas Republican tells Reuters . The SOPA bill, which would authorize the government to seek federal injunctions against foreign-based websites suspected of piracy, is still in committee hearings and could reach the House floor in a few weeks. More»

Rumor mill heats up that company is going public soon

(NEWSER) - Here come the Facebook IPO rumors again. An insider tells Business Insider that employees expect the company to go public soon, possibly next month. "The IPO talk inside Facebook has ramped up the past 6 weeks and Zuckerberg repeatedly has said that it is 'coming,' which he *never* said in the history of Facebook," says the source's email. More»

Guess what? A lot of them should be followed by the general public

(NEWSER) - The US Army has some rules for social media use—but even if you’re not a soldier, you might do well to adhere to some of those rules. From the Atlantic Wire :

• On Facebook: DO “spell check every post prior to posting; the Army’s reputation is at stake.”
• On Facebook: DON’T “use social media (teen) language in professional posts (ex: i wanna b ur bff 2day & 4evr)."

People weren't ready for it then, but they are now: Tom Anderson

(NEWSER) - News that Facebook is teaming up with Skype must have sounded like deja vu to MySpace founder Tom Anderson. In a Google+ post , he notes that MySpace partnered with Skype in 2007 and had video chats three years before that, reports PC Magazine . But Anderson isn't joining the critics knocking Facebook for coming late to the video party: "The point is that people weren't really ready for it back then—now is the time, and FB has the userbase," he writes. "The large userbase (750 million) paired with a simple integration of the arguably the best voice/video tech (Skype) is what makes this news." More»