It seems that Twitter dropping Bit.ly was true, as the site is now going to be launching a new URL shortener for use on the platform in order to combat the phishing problem that has exploded in Mentions and Direct Messages.

The company is launching "twt.tl", which will screen incoming links to the service being sent in a Direct Message (and thus email notifications), and check to see whether it's a reported phishing site, intercept and prevent the message from being sent.

Phising, as in the act of scammers obtaining a user's login data by pretending to be the destination site, is a massive problem for Twitter as it relies on third-party applications and a technology called "Basic Auth" where you need to input your Twitter credentials into other sites.

[Twitter Blog]

After waking this morning and going through the nights' tweets, I stumbled across a few rumours that Twitter had ousted long-time URL shortener Bit.ly from automatically shortening links when posted from the homepage.

This could be a bug or glitch, but it could also be one of two very interesting plays by the company.
Firstly, the could be doing it to be service agnostic - the company relies heavily on the third-party application market (even after bragging about forthcoming features that might increase the homepage's appeal) and might be trying to position itself by perhaps allowing users to choose their own URL shortener on the site.

Secondly, they might be thinking of launching a shortener of their own. Their reliance on third-party applications we talked about a minute ago is also one of the things most commentators are concerned about, and the company could be making waves to bring things into the fold internally.

However this shakes out, at present you wont have your URLs shortened via Bit.ly automatically from the Twitter homepage at present.

Spotify has been dabbling its toes in the video-music world as of late, but now they're going to be offering exclusive content from singer Amy Macdonald's latest album by showing songs recorded from a recent performance in Berlin in video format within the application.

For the rest of the week, Spotify Free users will be able to access the video content via the company's "video lightbox" on the homepage, featuring 5 tracks from her upcoming album, including; "Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over", "Spark" and "Love, Love".

"Spotify users in the UK, Spain, France, Sweden, Norway and Finland can watch Amy’s performance from today, March 8th through to Sunday, March 14th. Amy will also ‘take over’ the Spotify home page from today to Wednesday 10th March"

Intel had an event late last month where they showed off some of the new technologies that they're working on, with videos of these now being available online, you can get a feel for where computing is going.

The one that took our eye in particular is outlining a new technology that can mash-up your digital photos and convert them into a 3D model which can exported to a 3D-supporting browser or (hopefully) as a stand-alone file for use in a game-world. Imagine being able to take photos of any object and have that appear in a video-game - that's what the future might hold within the next 5 years.



Other videos include;

Ray Tracing

3D Gaming

3D TV

Apple has just loosed details about a slip in the launch date of the iPad (after rumours hit last week that it would) from the previously mentioned March release, to a now firm April 3rd target in the US, with it hitting internationally later that month.

Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek stated earlier in the week that problems at the manufacturer of the device could see it moving to an April release, and although this analysis was widely panned across the net, it turns out he was absolutely spot on.

Those lucky-devils in the US who want to get their name down for a device can pre-order starting from the 12th March (a week today), where they can sit and wait for the launch for either the WiFi or WiFi + 3G device at home, or arrange for a WiFi only device to be reserved at a local store (WiFi + 3G models will be released later down the line).

Still no UK or other international pricing, but at least the delay gives people another month to save up for when it eventually comes out here.

[Apple PR]

Overnight, Twitter, that microblogging site that noone's talking about, crossed a spectacular threshold; 10 billion tweets have now been sent on the service, outlining quite how far it has come in just the past year or so.

Another staggering fact to come from the site monitoring the numbers is that the number of tweets being sent per day has rocketed from 30 million per day in January, to nearly 50 million per day last week.

If the rumours of user-numbers are correct (c. 70-100 million), that means the average user has sent over 100 tweets, and with the majority of new users only picking it up in the pats few months, this number should starting jumping higher and higher, faster and faster.

[Popacular GigaTweet]

It seems that a miscommunication in a Brazilian magazine article has managed to set Twitter alight with inaccurate stories that Zynga were hoarding 50% of the proceeds from their Haiti earthquake relief efforts (an in-game Farmville item) after promising to donate 100%

What really happened? There was a campaign by the social gaming company before the devastating eartquake last month to raise money for farmers in the country where 50% of the proceeds of an in-game item would be turned over to a charity serving the region. The company's later campaign, after the earthquake hit, was the one where 100% of the proceeds would be donated, and the company (as well as other sources), have confirmed this to be so.

Twitter's ability to spread information quickly is it's oft-spoken selling point, but sometimes (and we're surprised it's not more often in fairness) it can get things wrong, and when it does, then boy does it have an effect.

Zynga were in the right completely on this, and it's a shame that the web can explode in this manner which could make the company think twice about philanthropic efforts in the future.

[Giga Om]