The fact many of us share so much of our lives online means break-ups can be pretty confusing, do you delete your ex from all your photos? Do you hide all of those cheesy statuses about how smitten you are? Do you go from "single" to "in a relationship" and force your friends to see the little breaking heart symbol in their news feeds (thanks for that btw Zuckerberg)? OK, so it may be the ultimate in First World Problems, but it's hard to know what to do and the new timeline format makes it easy for anyone and everyone (including potential new love interests) to see all the gory details of your relationship history.

Well it seems that although many of us are quick to try and hide exes from our Facebook profiles, a lot of us will sneakily keep old photos of former partners hidden away, according to a recent study.

The research, commissioned by Friends Reunited (yeah, it's still kicking around), has found that 21.6 million Brits have kept photographs of past flames (we're not sure how the research was conducted to come to that conclusion, mind...). It seems that men are more likely to be harbouring a stash of secret images, with 20% of those polled admitting that they have photos of their ex despite being in a new relationship and they keep quiet because they don't think their new girlfriend would approve, whereas only 9% of women do the same.

The research continues to hate on men, as it suggests 17% feel guilty about keeping photos and that could be because 12% admitted they still have feelings for their old lovers. Ouch. Apparently women claim to keep photos because they don't want to forget part of their lives. Hmm.

Call us scumbags, but we don't see the problem with keeping photos of our exes if it reminds us of good times. However, if they feature heavily in a shrine you've made to them complete with locks of hair and nail clippings then that's when your current partner probably needs to worry...

To be honest we're probably all just reading into these statistics and the fact we have photos of exes will most likely be down to the fact many of us (maybe men more than women) don't clear out things from our computers enough. Simple.

[Image via DavidMartinHunt's Flickr]

If we ever needed more proof that one day Lady Gaga will take over the world and turn us all into flamboyant little activists, the singer, songwriter, entrepreneur and general badass has now launched her own social network.

Little Monsters has been a private beta entity for some time, but today it's been released into the wild and any Gaga adoring creatures can sign up to connect with others, share all kinds of content and talk about Lady G in a slick Facebook/Pinterest/Chat Room kinda space.

We took a quick look around the site and here's what we saw...

There's a simple sign-up process, just fill in a few basic details, take a quick tour and away you go. Little Monsters feels a lot like Pinterest when you first sign in and this is the Media section, where you'll see everything other little monsters have been posting, you can click on things to zoom in, write comments and then rate them, because the better content then moves up to the top of the screen.

The Discuss tab is basically like a forum, allowing you to respond to different topics and post your own. There's a real sense of community throughout the whole platform, allowing you to rate and police all kinds of content and discussions that are taking place.

The Open Chat feature over to the right hand side is like your very own dynamic chat panel, allowing you to flick between rooms and get to know other monsters.

The News and Events tabs are full of Lady Gaga focused content right now, but we imagine that monsters can fill these sections up with other things that interest them over time too.

Just like Facebook you can receive messages, view recent notifications and the Monsters tab shows you who you're following, who's following you and suggests other monsters to connect with.

We've only just dipped our toes into the crazy Little Monsters pool, but so far we like what we see and wonder whether other artists and celebs will follow suit and create their own online destinations or whether Gaga's the only one with the dedicated fanbase to really pull it off? We think the latter.

It certainly helps that she's so outspoken and spreads her ethos of being strong, kind and original with users as soon as they sign up. Here are the inspirational words we got from the lady herself after becoming a member, also known as The Monster Code:

Be brave. Dare to create and share your art with the world.
Be kind. Encourage and support your fellow monsters. We don't want to put anyone down, be it other Little Monsters or other artists.
Be tolerant. Never make anyone feel unwelcome or judged; treat everyone with respect, love and acceptance.
Be original. Please only upload content you've created or have permission to post.
Be a contributor. Post good content and good discussion will follow. Don't ask for likes. Up-vote great comments, and down-vote those that take away from to the discussion (there is no room for negativity within LittleMonsters.com).
Be safe. Protect your privacy, and respect the privacy of others.
Be respectful. Keep things appropriate for everyone, including all of the young little monsters out there. Please no nudity or explicit content. If you repeatedly post content that offends the community, we may have to limit your access.
... be yourself.

Whatever you think of Lady Gaga's music, you can't deny she speaks up about a lot of important and often controversial topics and has really pushed the boundaries when it comes to fashion, tech, human rights, current affairs and the unique way she really connects with her adoring fans.

Visit: littlemonsters.com

Most of us have fallen victim to the fugly Facebook photo tag at some point in our lives, but why oh why did your good 'friend' really decide to do it? Well, we hate to break it to you, but they may have thought your clothes looked nice, that you seemed like you were having fun OR they might just not like you that much...

Although we thought we left playground bitchiness back in our teens, a recent study suggests that many female Facebook users are becoming increasingly catty by deliberately tagging unflattering photos of their (supposed) friends.

According to the research commissioned by MyMemory.com, a quarter of the 1,512 women polled admitted to having purposefully uploaded a gross photograph of a friend in a bikini. An even bigger 45% said they upload unflattering outfit shots all the time and 41% decide to tag when someone hasn't got make-up on. Oh how very Regina George.

OK, so why are we doing this to one another and acting out scenes from Mean Girls?

Well, 51% admitted that they did it because they didn't like the friend in question (not your friend then, love) and 32% claimed someone had done the same to them so saw it as a form of revenge. However, 65% would be angry if someone uploaded an unflattering photo of them. Hmm talk about double standards.

We're not sure what we think of the slew of "women do this" and "girls are so inclined to do that" stats that we've been coming across recently. We certainly don't want anyone reading this to scroll back through the photos they've recently been tagged in and start accusing people left, right and centre of being evil in some self-perpetuating cycle of pure hatred.

However, maybe it IS time we all started being a little nicer online, considerate to one another on Facebook or just stop posting holiday photos altogether. Some of us aren't going abroad this year you know.

[Image via Jacrews7 Flickr]

Ah social media, first it's making us more insecure then it's making us more confident, later it's improving our language skills and the next minute it's reducing us all to dumb sub-humans that ONLY TLK LYK DIS. Well now it seems linguistics professors believe all the time young people spend texting one another and updating their Facebook statuses is making them much more aggressive, especially girls.

According to Newser, researchers have found that over the past few years young people have begun to talk in a much more straight forward way online due to the fact they've got limited time and space. Although many of us may see this as normal and would never speak that way in real life, professor Deborah Cameron has suggested this could make people come across as much more aggressive than they actually are.

We can't tell whether we're being scared into believing this is a good thing or a bad thing?!

But don't be offended ladies, it's not that females are becoming much more angry and mean, it's just a more noticeable change because according to Cameron we're just really "innovative" or something:

"Girls are the innovative ones, more than boys are . . . The teenage years are a period of life where you find linguistic innovations of all kinds, and girls are generally ahead of the curve."

[Via Jezebel Via Newser Image Via borderlys' Flickr]

Well isn't Facebook a funny creature? Sometimes it likes to shout about its shiny new looks, features and profiles and other times it sneakily rolls out changes under the radar for us to either completely ignore or get unnecessarily angry about months later.

Recently we've noticed a few new changes that could have a big impact on the way we use the social network. Some of these features have been well publicised, but others seem to have slipped through the social media net.

So here are 10 cool new features that you may or may not have noticed, including silly, subtle, handy and annoying tweaks.

1. Email changes

Earlier in the week the social network quietly swapped the email addresses displayed on our timelines with a new @facebook.com one. As you'd expect, users have been a bit angry about the changes, especially as we already have work and personal email addresses and ABSOLUTELY no need for another.

We weren't at all surprised that Facebook made the changes without telling us, but according to a statement from a Facebook spokesperson published on All Facebook, we've been kept informed at all times:

"As we announced back in April, we've been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site.

"In addition to everyone receiving an address, we're also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines.

"Ever since the launch of timeline, people have had the ability to control what posts they want to show or hide on their own timelines, and today we're extending that to other information they post, starting with the Facebook address."

The @facebook.com email address basically allows people who aren't on the site to message you, so you never EVER have to leave in order to check your emails elsewhere. Sneaky yet clever, huh?

To get rid of your @facebook.com email address from your profile go to your Timeline, click on About, scroll down to Contact Info, click Edit and play around to choose what you'd like to display yourself.

2. Translation tool

Apparently the translation feature has been around on Facebook pages for months, but we've only just noticed that it's rolled out to personal profiles too here at Shiny Media HQ.

The social network has teamed up with Bing in order to provide you with a Translate link, which you'll see under any comment or status that isn't in your first language. You simply click the link and a translation will pop up in the place of the original update or comment. Genius.

According to Mashable when the feature first came to pages bilingual users were able to add their own translations too:

"The feature lets bilingual users enter a human (and often more accurate) translation in that pop-out window. If enough other users vote positively on the accuracy of a human translation, it will replace the one from Bing each time the Translate button is clicked. The human translations can be managed by page administrators using a "manage translations" link underneath posts on pages they manage."

3. Voice for admins

If you're an admin on a Facebook page, next time you visit it you'll probably notice a new tab in the menu bar called "Voice". This tab reminds you that you'll be liking, commenting and interacting as the page and not yourself, it even gives you the option to become you again too.

This is a pretty subtle change, but it's presumably been added to stop users from getting confused about whether they're engaging as themselves or a page. It sounds like even a monkey would be able to do that, but if you're an admin on multiple pages and haven't had enough coffee, it's an easy mistake to make.

4. In-app following

Yesterday a post was published on the Facebook Developer Blog, which explained that soon users will be able to follow actions within apps.

This means that you'll be able to follow a certain person's activity from within an application (even if you're not friends with them) and it'll show up in your news feed.

However, don't worry that every Tom, Dick and Harry will be able to see your runs or stalk the films you watched today, you still have complete control over who sees what you publish through the privacy settings of the apps in question. For now anyway.

5. Edit comments

The long-awaited edit comments feature is slowly being rolled out to all users right now, allowing you to make edits to anything you've written in the past under an update or photo. Just be aware that anyone can see the history of what you've amended.

6. Advertising icons

Facebook has added a teeny tiny megaphone symbol next to its Sponsored Ads sections, which takes users to a page explaining why they see ads and best practice tips for brand managers.

This may seem really insignificant and most users probably won't even notice the new icon, but it's good to see the social network being as open as possible about its use of advertising across the site.

7. Deeper Instagram integration

Instagram rolled out its latest update this week and one of the biggest features is much deeper Facebook integration.

By going to YOU within Instagram (we're not sure why it's shouting at us either) and clicking Sharing Settings then Facebook you can make likes visible on your timeline (this means photos you've liked and those who've liked yours) and also change your default settings so everything you snap is sent directly to Facebook without the hassle of ticking that little box. Because we all know how hard that is.

8. Pages app

If you're an admin for any pages on Facebook you'll want to download the Pages app, which gives you complete control over them while you're on the move.

You can download the app for free from iTunes.

9. Facebook Camera or just Camera (with a dot) app

Another Facebook app that's had everyone talking over the past month or so is Facebook Camera, or just Camera, or Camera with a dot that we can't find on the keyboard right now.

It's a slick application which allows you to take, edit, add filters and share photos with your Facebook friends. Did we mention filters?!

You can read our full review of the Facebook Camera app or download the app for free from iTunes.

10. Emoticons added to chat

And last but not least, you can now add silly emoticons into your Facebook chats for pre-teen style flirting. Just what we were after.

Have you noticed anything else over the past few months?

A new fashion start-up called The Cools has launched today, with backing from some top names in fashion, funding from MTV founder Bob Pittman and a slick, minimal website that's guaranteed to appeal to style junkies.

We hate saying a new platform is a bit like this and this, or a mashup of that one and that one, but if we had to describe The Cools we'd have to say it's a mix of Tumblr and The Fancy, because you can collect together "cool" images, add your own and even go on to buy them. The great thing about The Cools is that users have a LOT of freedom, they can show off their own designs or create their own style blog. You don't have to be an industry insider to get started either, even us regular, ugly, non-fashiony types can pretend we know a thing or two about style.

It doesn't just have to be about fashion either (although that's what the team behind The Cools is rightly focusing on), there are sections for photography, design and even TECH that might prove to be popular as the site gains momentum.

When you first sign up to The Cools you're asked a series of different questions about your ideal home, what you flat is like and what kind of clothes you wear. You're then asked to pick five images that you think are "cool", which all combine together to make a kind of taste profile that the site will use to fire ideas at you later down the line.

There are four main sections of The Cools, Feed, Shop, Sell and Me. Feed is a continuous, uh... feed of all the content other users are adding right now, which you can browse through, mark as "cool", add comments to or re-blog on your profile. Shop feeds you all of the content that's available to buy and the only difference is that when you hover over the images you can choose to click "cool" or "buy". Sell takes you to a form where you can fill in your details in order to sell your items and finally Me takes you to your personal feed with the content you "cool", a Tumblr-esque status bar that allows you to update and share content and plenty more customisable features.

If you're already a die-hard Tumblr, The Fancy, WIWT or Pinterest fan and follow a lot of other fashion-obsessed users then you might not find much use for The Cools right now, but if you're into style and like trying out new platforms that could one day be kind of a big deal, then sign up to The Cools and start "cool"-ing (we wonder if that will catch on?) a lot of lovely content that pleases your eyes right now.

We get that the fashion industry as a whole is a little pretentious, glitzy and unattainable (and the site is called The COOLS after all), but we hope the site gets filled up with juicy content that makes us excited about style and want to shop, rather than just confused/annoyed/jealous of everything. Of course the fact the first post we see when we visit the site is a blurry Lindsay Lohan with a gun to her head bodes oh so well...

[Via Venture Beat]

Yes Facebook is confusing, yes the team likes to change stuff, make stuff public and annoy us all regularly. But come on guys, it's hardly rocket science, if your status updates have a little world next to them that means you're sharing them with THE WORLD, so think before you write about your sexual exploits, drug habits and how much you wish your boss would die, because anyone could be reading them RIGHT NOW and (quite rightly) judging you for it.

To prove just how naive some users seem to be, UK teenager Callum Haywood set up the site weknowwhatyouredoing.com, a kind of experiment that collects together the most dumb, ridiculous, offensive and pointless updates from some of Facebook's biggest geniuses.

The updates are hilariously divided up into four categories, Who wants to get fired? Who's hungover? Who's taking drugs? And last but not least, Who's got a new phone number?

Here are some of our personal favourites:

What's better than saying you'd wish your boss would die? Well, threatening to kill him of course!

"Im getting so mad right now I hate my boss Jay I hope he dies better yet I feel like killin him if you in a bad mood don't take it out on everyone at the job like wtf its way to hot to take your shit-_- #Piss off"

Not one, not two, but three reasons why you shouldn't be employed...

"Who's hungover? Who's high? Who hates their boss? Find out here..."

This is rather profound.

"My story with my ex love(cannabis): My first joint:2004 i see the world perfect 2004_2008:I smoked for pleasure in about once a week 2008:i'm addicted I became the worship of that plant 2009_2011:Promoter drug with my friend Jamel He is currently incarcerated :( now i'm in the country of zakataka we smoke every days not every days every hours not every hours every moment...We kill ourselves to ourselves 2012:For me tasted tired .Hatred has become a smoke.. Now i'm freeeeee.. fuck u my love (maria vitta)"

As you'd expect there's a pretty hefty disclaimer at the bottom of the site, which states:

"All data is pulled directly from Facebook, it is not censored, and it is publicly accessible via the Graph API. I cannot be held responsible for any persons actions as a result of using this experiment."

The website doesn't really do anything special, these updates are already shared with everyone and anyone, but it just highlights the fact people REALLY need to be more careful about what they say on Facebook.

[Via Gizmodo]

STOP THE INTERNET, Facebook has done something or changed something without really telling us. How will we ever... We can't keep this going any longer, we're so used to Facebook changing our settings, adding new features and screwing up our profiles. In fact if we didn't get all angry and upset about Facebook every week we'd have to get off the internet and deal with, like, ACTUAL PROBLEMS. And who the hell wants that?

Well today another feature has been changed without our say so (YAWN). Do you remember back when Facebook wanted to revolutionise the way we message one another by giving us all @facebook.com email addresses? Yeah it was pretty "meh" and no one really cared. Well now in an attempt to make our Facebook inboxes more relevant Zuck and the gang have got rid of your regular email addresses and replaced them with a Facebook one.

To fix this and give people an email address that you'll actually use, then go to your Timeline, click on About, scroll down to Contact Info, click Edit and play around to choose what you'd like to display yourself and not what the Ministry of Truth, we mean Facebook, wants you to display.

[Via Gizmodo]

Everyone has at least one over excited parent as a Facebook friend who loves to share far too much information about little Susie or Billy. You only have to scroll down your news feed to see their first steps, laughter, paintings, trips to the playground and potty experiences accompanied by plenty of gory details.

Well it seems there's hope for us all in the form of new app 23snaps, which has been designed specially with snap happy parents in mind. The app allows mums and dads to capture and share moments of their children's lives among only a select few friends and family members.

23snaps, which looks a lot like Path, allows parents to set up a Timeline for their children where they can post photos, videos, status and milestone updates about their cute little lives. Parents can pick who sees the content and can even share select bits and pieces to other social networks too if they just can't handle showing off on Facebook.

Of course we joke that baby photos annoy us (THEY DO), but really 23snaps is an ideal app for parents who are reluctant to share information online too, as it gives them control to keep friends and family members updated in a safe and private environment.

23snaps is available from iTunes for free.

Facebook has sneakily rolled out a new feature called 'Find Friends Nearby' and we can't work out whether it'll be cool and useful or just plain creepy.

As you can imagine, the new 'Find Friends Nearby' feature allows you to do just that, find people that are sitting, dancing or scarily staring at you that are in your close vicinity RIGHT NOW.

According to Venture Beat, TechCrunch first spotted the new feature, which you can access inside the iOS and Android apps by clicking Apps > Find Friends > Find Friends Nearby or by visiting www.fb.com/ffn from your mobile browser, but you'll obviously need your location settings turned on first.

Now this could be a REALLY useful tool if you've just met someone and want to add them to Facebook (not that typing in their name is particularly taxing). However, it's also a bit worrying that if you left the page open on your browser, as you'd be visible to lots of other users nearby until you logged out.

We've tried out the feature a few times this morning and although it's slow to get going, we did manage to locate a few random users, but couldn't find them in Starbucks no matter how much we stared at everyone's faces. Hmm, maybe WE'RE the creepy stalkers you should be worried about?!

Obviously 'Find Friends Nearby' hasn't been officially rolled out yet, but it'll be interesting to see how Facebook launches the new feature and whether the usual suspects will get all whiny about it.

[Via Venture Beat Image via jul13d0wn3s]

Today Facebook has begun rolling out a new feature, which will allow users to edit the comments they make on the social network. It's about time Zuckerberg.

Up until now if you wrote something silly/mean/misspelt in a comment you'd just have to delete it and start over again, but now you'll see a little pencil icon next to all your comments, which you can click to make edits.

If you start amending everything do bear in mind that each comment will be flagged as Edited and if you click the link there's a full Edit History, which will enable other users to see what you wrote before. This makes sense so that if other people comment they have context after you've made edits and also helps with any spam/abuse issues. However, it does mean everyone will know how bad you are at spelling.

The new feature is being rolled out to most users over the next few days.

Last month Pinterest began to address some of the whiny criticism it's been facing since its launch by adding in automatic attribution for content from Flickr, Behance, Vimeo and YouTube.

Now, according to the Pinterest blog (called Oh, How Pinteresting!) the platform will be adding these kinds of automatic citations to content that's been gathered from the likes of Etsy, Kickstarter, Slideshare and even Soundcloud too.

The new attribution will apparently take some time to work across ALL content that's been pinned from those services in the past, but expect vintage crafts and crazy gadget ideas to have the right citations appear under them on a board near you pretty soon.

As well as the fact Pinterest is taking steps to ensure people are happy about their content being pinned here, there and everywhere, the integration with the likes of Slideshare and Soundcloud proves that the platform is making a real effort to allow you to pin EVERYTHING to your boards. The new inline play feature means you won't be constrained by images and videos anymore, but you'll be able to go wild with presentations and mash-ups too.

Today Tumblr has released the latest version of its iOS application, complete with a host of changes to the main dashboard, quality of images, offline support and even Spotify integration.

We've all been waiting for a revamped version of the popular app since CEO David Karp hinted about a "completely rebuilt" offering, but we didn't expect him to deliver on that promise quite so much in practice...

The newest iteration of Tumblr for iOS has added in more tap and swipe functionality throughout, which makes it all feel much easier and more intuitive than before.

Images now look a lot better as the app supports high-res photos, which is important for such an image-based platform.

A very handy new feature for big Tumblr fans is that you can now do all kinds of things when you're offline, like commenting, posting and re-blogging. Obviously things go live on the site once you've connected to the internet and you'll need to load content to read while you're connected too, but it's still really handy and a great new way to fill those lengthy commutes.

We all know that Spotify came to Tumblr earlier in the year, but now users can share songs from the music streaming service from within the app too.

The changes are pretty substantial and make blogging using the Tumblr platform even quicker and easier than it already was (and it was already REALLY quick and easy). Of course it's a shame that there still isn't a dedicated application for the iPad, but we expect that to follow pretty soon...

If you don't have it already, the Tumblr app is available from iTunes for free.

[Via The Next Web]

As much as we all love that satisfying feeling when we unfriend that annoying/offensive/disgusting person from our Facebook friend list I'm sure we've all realised we've been the victim of a culling at some point too. Why me? WHY ME? We ask ourselves. Well, unless you did something particular offensive or stalkerish to the person in question, according to new research it's because you've had a severe case of over-sharing.

The study, carried out by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, polled more than 1,700 Facebook users and asked them a lot about their behaviour on the social network and what makes them delete you from their online lives.

It seems over-sharing by updating your status too often and sharing too much personal information is what 46% of those polled said was the most annoying thing about their friends. So maybe calm down the updates to just a few a day and don't tell everyone about your gory dating stories or health problems.

It's not just over-sharing that seems to get our blood boiling, 31% of those asked said they can't stand it when friends share far too many photos and 19% get a little bit angry when they see others "liking" everything in sight.

It seems instead of unfriending, 48% of those polled tend to silence unwanted noise from their irritating friends by hiding what they say from their news feed. In fact the average person has hidden over 9 friends this way. Hmm, we'd say it's more like 90. However, this isn't because we're all lovely and don't want to offend people by erasing any evidence that they've ever existed, but 68% said it's so we can still stalk their profiles and photos at a later date. Awh.

Finally, the study found that 13% of us get so angry about Facebook that we consider deleting our account on a regular basis. We DARE YOU to actually go through with it though instead of just whining about it all the time...

[Image via stesciuba's Flickr]

This week a new blogging platform has launched and as well as allowing you to create posts and update your mum on the inane things going on in your life, it also lets you collect together all of your online activity into one place. But do we really need that kind of neat and tidy approach to social media?

Overblog is a platform that aims to bring together everything you do online, so you can stream all of your check-ins, status updates, Instagram snaps and other properties to one place.

It says it's not just a blog, but as you sign up it asks you what you want to call your blog, umm. So you can show everyone posts from your Overblog (which is the blog bit of the blog that isn't a blog), and then content from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and YouTube too.

It's a great idea in theory and certainly looks good on paper. Hmm, are there any more ways for us to suggest that this might not work so well in the wild?

Frédéric Montagnon, co-founder of Overblog, explained the thinking behind the platform:

"With the development of platforms dedicated to particular content types (Instagram and Flickr for photos, YouTube and DailyMotion for video, Pinterest for images, Foursquare for geo-localisation, Twitter for micro-messages, etc), users have a fragmented online presence, which poses a visibility problem for those who wish to develop and influence an audience."

He's hit the nail on the head right there. Overblog is great for those who want to develop an online audience, but in many ways it's a bit unnecessary for the rest of us. After all, even the biggest social media whores like to keep some things separate. Montagon uses the term "fragmented" like it's a bad thing, when really that's the way many of us like it, different audiences and interactions between Facebook and Instagram, between Twitter and Foursquare. As intelligent human beings, we like compartmentalising things and engaging with different networks in different ways.

However, with three million registered users to date in the US it must be doing something right. From what we can tell it would probably make quite a decent blogging platform, it's got plenty of themes that are all fully customisable, access to analytics, multiple users, free and hosted accounts, the list goes on. Maybe the team need to stop talking about "aggregating", "streaming" and "bringing together your social media properties" and just focus on making the blogging platform to rule all blogging platforms instead?

Watch this space, Overblog could well be the "next big thing" online, or just prove far too tidy and convenient for our messy heads and social lives.

It's not often that sleazy British tabloids and tech publications all over the globe are interested in the same stories, but today the worlds of social media and crazy UK regulations have collided as a nine year old girl who blogs about food has been banned from blogging about food.

UPDATE: So it seems all of that hullabaloo this morning was over nothing, as the ban has been lifted and a big bod at Argyll and Bute Council said he didn't see why there was a ban in the first place. Hmmm, interesting Martha. Can you say MEDIA TRAINING? We're joking. We like her. Honest.

Martha Payne (known as VEG online) set up a food blog called NeverSeconds back in April to document her school dinners. She took photos of them, rated how healthy they were and commented on how they tasted. Scrolling back through Martha's photos it's clear some of the dinners were a little unhealthy and looked kinda gross, but I'm pretty sure my nine year old self would have given an organ for a diet that didn't consist of 4,557,789 potato croquettes and a jam roly poly EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Due to support from her dad and Jamie Oliver (remember when this man was reduced to tears by school food?) the blog became a big hit, she clocked up more than two million visitors and Martha's goal to share her eating habits with the world became a reality. Well this week it all came crashing down as her local council has told she can't take any photos of her gross dinners anymore. AWH.

She wrote a pretty sad goodbye post today:

"I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I'll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don't think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary's Meals either."

It seems that after the media started paying attention to Martha's efforts the dinner ladies (and... laddies?) at her school began to get a little worried. Argyll and Bute Council released an official statement about the decision and said:

"The council has directly avoided any criticism of anyone involved in the 'never seconds' blog for obvious reasons despite a strongly-held view that the information presented in it misrepresented the options and choices available to pupils.

"However this escalation means we had to act to protect staff from the distress and harm it was causing.

"In particular, the photographic images uploaded appear to only represent a fraction of the choices available to pupils, so a decision has been made by the council to stop photos being taken in the school canteen."

Martha had been using the blog to raise money for the Mary's Meals charity, which helps disadvantaged kids all over the world. Although the fact she can no longer blog about her dinners is a big shame, we hope the media attention has raised even more money for Mary's Meals and that little Martha will get a job as a top food journo in the not so distant future.

[Via The Verge]

Some people choose to avoid the inane ramblings of celebrities online like the plague, whereas others seem to have made it their sole purpose in life to get re-tweeted by Katy Perry.

If you fall into the second camp you'll probably already be stalking/following your favourite celebrities on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any other place they tend to hang out online, but do you know what they're up to on Pinterest?

Here are five celebrities that we think you should be following, for useful tips, great photos or just pure comedy value. Be sure to look out for part 2 next week.

N.B. It's important to remember that it's pretty much impossible to tell whether these are the actual celebrities they claim to be given there's no approved account system like there is on Twitter.

Ahh Sweden, it's just full of hot women, blonde people and Vikings, right? Well no, they're all stereotypes and part of the reason the Swedish tourist board has its own Twitter account, so you can find out what the nation and its people are REALLY like (many of them are hot and blonde though, FYI).

However, the @Sweden Twitter account isn't controlled by some PR person or government official. For the past seven months it's been passed around various Swedish citizens who can do with it what they please. It sounds like a nice idea, right? The Swedish government can just let Swedes talk about how awesome it is to be Swedish/live in Sweden/visit Sweden. Thomas Brühl, CEO of VisitSweden, told Mashable:

"No one owns the brand of Sweden more than its people. With this initiative we let them show their Sweden to the world."

Awh. Sweet. But in practice it's just a huge car crash waiting to happen and even a toddler could have told you that. The most recent Swede to man the fort (Sonja) has made a few social media fails, which have involved tweeting about Nazi Germany, what it means to be Jewish and how to tell whether someone is Jewish or not. None of the tweets have been super offensive, they're all just a little bit weird and the kind of questions your gran might ask after she's had a bit too much wine.

Some users think the @Sweden social media experiment is great and shows that the country respects freedom of speech, some think the person in charge this week is awesome and challenging conventions, but we can't help but think if you're discussing the motivations of the Nazis in a 140 character tweet then you're doing something wrong.

[Via Mashable]

Despite all of the commotion about leaked passwords, hackers and the end of the world last week, LinkedIn has reassured its userbase that no accounts were breached. Hackers are believed to have got their hands on some 6.5 million passwords in what was the biggest security attack the business-focussed network has ever experienced to date.

LinkedIn has claimed that it took quick action to disable all of the affected passwords and quickly notified the users in order to prevent any further damage being done.

LinkedIn director Vincente Silveira said on the company blog:

"Thus far, we have no reports of member accounts being breached as a result of the stolen passwords.

"As soon as we learned of the theft, we launched an investigation to confirm that the passwords were LinkedIn member passwords.

"Once confirmed, we immediately began to address the risk to our members.

"We have built a world-class security team here at LinkedIn including experts such as Ganesh Krishnan, formerly vice president and chief information security officer at Yahoo!, who joined us in 2010. This team reports directly to LinkedIn's senior vice president of operations, David Henke.

"Under this team's leadership, one of our major initiatives was the transition from a password database system that hashed passwords, i.e. provided one layer of encoding, to a system that both hashed and salted the passwords, i.e. provided an extra layer of protection that is a widely recognized best practice within the industry."

There's been no official word yet about who carried out the attack, but it's cear LinkedIn is taking the whole incident very seriously indeed as it's enlisted the help of the FBI to catch the perpetrators.

[Via Tech Digest]

Facebook announced that it would be launching a shiny new app store last month and it's now here for us all (well most of us, a few of you might have to wait a little longer) to play with.

The app store, known officially as the Facebook App Center, is a comprehensive directory of all kinds of apps (not just Facebook ones) and you can access it from your desktop or mobile too.

The experience you get within the App Center is very similar to what you'd expect from the iTunes store or Google Play. It's all rather simple and intuitive, there's a list of categories down the left hand side, you can preview apps, flick through screenshots, read a blurb, check out other people's ratings and then download those you like the look of.

The App Center is available in the Facebook iOS and Android apps and can obviously be accessed from the main site too. If you're on your mobile you can download apps straight to your device and even if you're accessing the site from your desktop you can get them sent there too.

Go take a browse around now: www.facebook.com/appcenter