Online journal trendingbytes.com shares the latest digital, web and user insights, along with social media news, with Communicate Levant.

Apple helps you to confuse location trackers

The NSA, Facebook, advertisers, market analysts and many more are after your MAC address.
Why? Because it is a signal that your phone sends out continuously, provided your Wi-Fi is on. Each device has its own MAC address and uses it to register on wireless networks. It’s easily traceable, but iOS 8 has made a tiny change to the process.  Read more…

This year’s World Cup will be more social than ever

If you haven’t started tweeting about the World Cup yet, you’re already late.
The 2014 World Cup’s opening ceremony, which took place on Thursday, June 12, has already seen more posts about it than the entire tournament in 2010.
When Lionel Messi, Twitter’s most followed sportsman with more than 26 million followers, tweeted Nike’s ad, it bumped the YouTube views to 70-plus million in a matter of days. Read more…

OpenSSL is vulnerable again… as usual

Now that your passwords are safe, OpenSSL would like to inform you of another bug.
Just a short two months after the Heartbleed bug, developers have found new vulnerabilities that allow hackers to intercept and modify information before it is sent. One out of six problematic codes was implemented in 1998 and is deemed far more dangerous than Heartbleed. Read more…

Facebook launches advertising bootcamp

If you don’t like Facebook ads, you might not like what’s happening.
Facebook posts from brands are all over the place, but many small businesses don’t even know how many people have seen their adverts. This is why the company is launching a bootcamp, which will teach small business owners about the advertising features of Facebook. Read more….

Iron Man-like vision is on the way

You may not have Jarvis and a super lab, but soon, you’ll be able to see the world as if you were in an Iron Man suit. A team of 50 people, occupying a 20-acre real estate property in Silicon Valley, is working on Meta, a pair of augmented reality glasses. The idea is simple: put on a pair of Meta goggles, and they will digitally render around you and allow you to interact with them. Read more…

China blocks Google before Tiananmen Square anniversary

If you live in China, you probably don’t use Google very much.
The Chinese government has made it very difficult to use Google products, which has reached a point of complete block at the dawn of Tiananmen Square’s 25th anniversary. What happened there 25 years ago was a complete massacre when students rioted against the corrupt government. Read more…

Google will launch drones and satellites to give Internet to the world

Two thirds of the planet does not have access to the Internet.
There are 4.6 billion people that can’t go online and that’s a huge number, despite the Internet being pretty common for most of us. Google is acting on it by spending more than $1 billion (and up to $3 billion) to send 180 satellites that will give Internet access to all regions of the world. Read more…

Lebanese handisports champion crowd funding his way to the 2016 Paralympics

After a fall, it is best to get back up, even if not physically.
Edward Maalouf is a Lebanese contractor that fell and was paralyzed, after which he discovered handi-marathons, which transformed his life. He dedicated his life to handisports, having won the Hand-cycle Marathon in New York in 2006, the silver medal in the Disability Cycling World Championships in Bordeaux in 2007, the Beirut Marathon in 2012 and two bronze medals in the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Read more…

Beats and its first model as part of Apple

Let’s face it, if you want bass-like sounds, Beats is the way to go, but if you like hearing middle and high frequencies, you should look elsewhere. However, that’s the issue Beats has addressed with its latest model; the new drivers have been tweaked to reach better quality for higher pitches and subtler bass sounds. Read more…

Real Madrid vs Atletico Madrid: World responds in real time on Twitter

Even if you don’t care about football, you’ve probably heard about the UEFA Champions League final Madrid showdown.
Saturday, May 24, marked the final game of the championship, an all-out match between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid. The world was watching and tweeting as the game was happening, and someone was listening. Read more…