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George Lucas Engaged to Llongterm Girlfriend
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Movies, Engagements,
George Lucas is engaged. The Star Wars creator recently popped the question to 43-year-old Mellody Hobson, after dating for seven years and his daughter Amanda took to Twitter to share her joy with the news.
Posting a link to an article about the engagement on the Huffington Post, she tweeted, "George Lucas, Mellody Hobson Engaged: 'Star Wars' Director, Businesswoman Set To Marry ....Congratulations Dad & Mellody!:) (sic)."
This will be the first marriage for Mellody, who is the president of Chicago-based investment management firm, Ariel Investments LLC and the second for George, whose union with Marcia Lucas lasted from 1969 to 1983.
Last year, George made the decision to sell Lucasfilm to Disney because he felt it was time to retire from the day-to-day running of the company and wants the Star Wars franchise - which comprises of six movies and spin-off cartoons - to continue after his death. "For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next. It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime," he said in a statement.
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Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris Actually Tie the Knot This Time
Posted by Robin Paulson Categories: Television, Weddings,
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Congratulations are finally in order for Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris!
Harris, who famously broke off her engagement to the Playboy founder last year, married Hefner yesterday in a soft pink wedding dress at the Playboy Mansion. "Crystal & I married on New Year's Eve in the Mansion with Keith as my Best Man. Love that girl!," the 86 year-old wrote on his Twitter early today.
Click to continue reading Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris Actually Tie the Knot This Time
Read More 
| People
Kesha Didn’t Want to Sing “Die Young”
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Gossip, Pop, New Releases,
Kesha "never wanted" to sing "Die Young." The 25-year-old singer's latest single has been pulled from radio stations following the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Conneticut, and the blonde star says she understands why it has been deemed inappropriate because she herself was never happy with the lyrical content of the track.
In a Tweet which has now been deleted, she wrote, "I understand. I had my very own issue with 'die young' for this reason. I did NOT want to sing those lyrics and I was FORCED TO. (sic)"
The "Tik Tok" hitmaker went on to express her sympathy for the 26 victims of the shooting, which happened over a week ago, and appealed to fans to donate to a charity fund set up by 'Apologize' hitmakers OneRepublic. "Its beyond words what has happened. Help families affected by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary by donating here: indiegogo.com/OneRepublicForSandyHook I'm so so so sorry for anyone who has been effected by this tragedy.and I understand why my song is now inappropriate. words cannot express.(sic)" she wrote.
Click to continue reading Kesha Didn’t Want to Sing “Die Young”
Twitter Partners with Nielsen to Create Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Corporate News, News, Partnerships, Social Media,
Nielsen and Twitter are joining forces to create Nielsen Twitter TV Rating. Twitter, as we all know, is a social media platform that sees more than a billion tweets every 2.5 days on an inexhaustible list of topics. Nielsen specializes in information, particularly what consumers watch and buy. With Nielsen Twitter TV Rating, the two companies hope to find a standardized way of measuring the conversations happening around TV shows.
The ratings will be commercially available Fall 2013, and, according to Twitter's blog, will function as "one common benchmark from which to measure the engagement of their programming." The new rating system will set in place measures to quantify the people discussing the TV shows, as well as the people who were exposed to the conversation. The goal will be to provide "the precise size of the audience and effect of social TV to TV programming."
This is not the two companies first pairing, as both came together earlier this year to measure the impact of brand advertising campaigns using Twitter surveys.
Read More | Twitter Blog
New algorithm attempts to debunk false information on Twitter
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: News, Social Networks, Startups,
While Twitter has been described as a "self-cleaning oven" and a "truth machine," rumors do slip through and cause confusion, if briefly. A new study building on research done in 2010, analyzing tweets surrounding the Chile 8.8 earthquake, is currently researching the possibilities of sussing out the true tweets from the false ones.
The study uses 16 features to identify whether a tweet is credible or not. It seems reliable information tends to be longer and include URLs, as well as come from people with a lot of followers. The true tweets also tend to be negative in nature, and do not contain exclamation points or question marks.
A new paper by those behind the Chile earthquake study, Carlos Castillo, Marcelo Mendoza and Barbara Poblete, will appear in the journal Internet Research next month with what look to be encouraging results. Their algorithm had an AUC of 0.86, meaning that when it's presented with a false tweet and a true tweet, it would label the true tweet more credible 86 percent of the time.
It's not perfect, and actual people would probably fair better in determining which tweet was more credible. Probably. In any case, it's nice to see we're making strides toward making the Internet a more credible place. My only concern is the escalation factor; that is, the people behind the deliberately false information will only adopt better practices to fool such truth-seeking algorithms.
Read More | Slate
Instagram sees massive backlash for new terms of service
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Corporate News, Legal, Social Networks,
Instagram users are flocking to greener pastures after the photo-sharing service posted new Terms of Service this week. With the new TOS, users are required to consent to allowing the Facebook-owned service license their public photos to companies, organizations and advertisers. As CNET puts it, this could make Instagram a stock photo service in itself, without paying out to photographers.
More than likely, however, the new TOS are for Instagram users would be used in promotional images, rather than as stock photos that cheat the photographers out of money. It's the fact that the latter is a possibility that is causing some users to embark on an exodus to Flickr, Hipstamatic or Twitter.
The Verge reports that searching for Instagram on Twitter brings up several instructions for how to export your Instagram pics and cancel your account. There are also several tweets spreading about which photo-sharing services make a good Instagram replacement, such as the article Fast Company posted.
The change in its Terms of Services coincides not only with the unwelcome change in photo-cropping functionality, but also as Twitter adds its own photo filters, and Flickr releases version 2.0 of its iOS client. It may be a temporary setback for Instagram, or it could spell the beginning of the end if the service doesn't do something fast to appease its users.
Read More | CNET via The Verge
Here’s how to stay on top of all the Gear Live news!
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Announcements, Features,
We know we push out a lot of content here on Gear Live, but it's actually prtty easy to stay on top of everything, even if you don't have the chance to visit the site every day. How? Like this:
- Gear Live newsletter: Our free daily newsletter that brings you a wrap-up of all the tops news of the day. We also launch exclusive contests in the newsletter that you might not find on the site itself!
- YouTube: We have a pretty active YouTube channel with almost 500 pieces of content for your viewing pleasure. You can even subscribe and get notified of new videos.
- Kindle: You can get all of Gear Live's news delivered directly to your Kindle!
- Twitter: Gear Live in 140 characters or less.
- FaceBook: We know a lot of you spend hours here, and we've got our Facebook page set up to deliver tech news right into your feed.
- Google+: Yep, some of you hand out here, and we're there too.
- RSS: Old-fashioned RSS is still available for all you grizzled tech veterans out there.
See? Told you it was easy!
Twitter allegedly attempted to buy Instagram for $525 million
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Acquisitions, Corporate News, Rumors, Social Networks, Startups,
Way before Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, Twitter apparently made an offering of its own, to which Instagram initially agreed to.
The offer from Twitter, according to The New York Times, was for $525 million. Instagram's CEO, Kevin Systrom, agreed to the buy-out, but changed his mind before selling Instagram to Facebook without allowing Twitter to make a counter offer.
What's interesting is that Systrom had stated while under oath to the California Corporations Department that Instagram had never received another formal offer. None of the parties have commented on the Times article that brought this information to life, but it could mean we might be in the throes of an intense legal battle shortly.
Read More | NY TImes
Twitter rolling out Archive feature, allows you to download your tweet history
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Corporate News, Internet,
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If you thought you could just bury the past under an onslaught of new tweets, then you're about as wrong as Commissioner Gordon and Batman at the end of The Dark Knight.
The truth always comes out eventually, and this time it's coming out one tweet at a time in the form of your very personalized Twitter archive that, you guessed it, contains every tweet you ever posted. Each personalized archive is done up in HTML and divided by month, so you can remember the great (and not so great) times of your social media life a month at a time.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo promised this feature earlier, but it appears to be rolling out for select users right now, and you may very well be one of them. To check, go to your Twitter account and see if you find "Your Twitter Archive" under the settings page.
Read More | The Next Web
Kelly Clarkson Annouces Her Engagement
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Music, Engagements,
Kelly Clarkson is engaged. The "Since You've Been Gone" singer has announced she will wed 35-year-old talent manager Brandon Blackstock, who popped the question last night after nine months of dating.
The 30-year-old star - who shot to fame after winning American Idol in 2002 - shared her joy with her fans on Twitter, writing, "I'm engaged!!!! I wanted y'all to know!! Happiest night of my life last night! I am so lucky and am with the greatest man ever."
Kelly recently expressed her hopes that the couple would tie the knot even though they weren't yet engaged. Last month, she said, "We are totally going to get married. We love each other. We are totally going to get married one day. I mean, he's got to put a ring on at some point. But I'll wait it out."
Click to continue reading Kelly Clarkson Annouces Her Engagement
