Yogi Land

Foursquare has just gained its highest-profile user yet: President Barack Obama.

“The White House is now on Foursquare, a location-based social networking website, which is the latest way for you to engage with the administration,” The White House said on its blog. “There are over 10 million people already “checking in” around the world, and now you’ll be able to discover “tips” from the White House featuring the places President Obama has visited, what he did there, plus historical information and more.”

The White House says that it will be posting tips about the President’s visits around the country as he embarks on an economic bus tour across the Midwest. The White House will also be creating checkin locations for different presidential events. The White House posted its first tip on its page on Monday, revealing that the President delivered a speech in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, where he discussed ways to grow and strengthen the economy.

Obama joining Foursquare comes just hours after the geosocial network unveiled Tip Lists, a feature that lets users and brands bundle and curate their best tips into easy-to-follow lists. It seems that the White House will be using Tip Lists as a way to track the President’s visits across the country as he begins his campaign for reelection.

The addition of the President of the United States to Foursquare’s 10+ million users could be a watershed moment for the mobile service, especially as the 2012 campaign kicks into high gear. Expect a lot more people to join Foursquare very soon.

More About: barack obama, foursquare, president obama, White House

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Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) shut down cell service at four San Francisco stations Thursday night to thwart a protest attempt. The decision has drawn the ire of many, including members of hacker collective Anonymous.

In July, a BART police officer shot and killed Charles Blair Hill, a transient who reportedly pulled a knife on BART officers. The incident enraged protesters who disrupted BART service a week later.

Another protest was planned for Thursday night. Protest organizers were said to be coordinating via mobile devices; this prompted officials to interrupt wireless service for three hours.

Anonymous, inflamed over what it believes to be cellphone censorship, has initiated an #OpBART campaign against BART and is taking to Twitter and other channels to rally supporters.

Anonymous is asking followers to file a complaint with the FCC and bombard BART with emails and faxes. The group posted BART contact information in a post on Tumblr. The @YourAnonNews Twitter account also hints at more disruption to come.

BART, meanwhile, stands by its actions. “Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police,” says a statement from BART. “BART asked wireless providers to temporarily interrupt service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform.”

James Allison, deputy chief communications officer for BART, later told CNET it had disabled mobile services at Embarcadero, Montgomery Street, Powell Street and Civic Center stations. “BART staff or contractors shut down power to the nodes and alerted the cell carriers,” he said.

BART’s decision to shut off cell service comes just days after UK rioters used BlackBerry Messenger to communicate and coordinate efforts.

Image courtesy of Twitter, YourAnonNews

More About: anonymous, BART, social media

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Inviting your friends to Google+ just got a lot easier, thanks to a subtle change that Google+ has rolled out to its users.

The update gives you the ability to share Google+ invites by simply sharing a link. By sharing your unique link with your friends, up to 150 of them can instantly sign up for Google’s social network. The search giant still offers inviting friends via email as an option.

The update was announced earlier this week by Google+ engineer Balaji Srinivasan. “Since we’re still in field trial, we’re limiting sign-ups from these links to 150 per person for now,” Srinivasan noted in his Google+ post.

SEE ALSO: GOOGLE+: THE COMPLETE GUIDE | VIDEOS | REVIEW

While Google has decided not to make Google+ public yet, this should provide yet another boost to Google+’s growth. The social network has amassed approximately 25 million users in its first five weeks, and it continues to grow. One study even predicts that Google+ could have more users than Twitter and LinkedIn within the next year.

To kick things off, I thought that I would share my 150 invites with Mashable‘s readers. If you’re fast enough, you can get an invite by clicking here. And if you need some people to follow, you’re always welcome to add me, Pete Cashmore or the entire Mashable staff to your circles.

More About: Google, Google Plus, invites, social networking

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to launch the most comprehensive antitrust investigation of Google’s business practices yet, according to a new report.

The investigation will begin with a series of civil subpoenas that will be sent in the next few days, according to The Wall Street Journal. The FTC’s probe will include official requests of information from Google. Requests to other companies about their relationship with the search giant will likely come during the course of the investigation.

This isn’t Google’s first rodeo with the FTC; many of its acquisitions have been reviewed thoroughly, and the FTC nearly challenged Google’s acquisition of AdMob last year. It recently settled a case with the FTC over Google Buzz privacy issues. The European Union opened a similar antitrust investigation against Google late last year.

This investigation promises to be more comprehensive than any other U.S. investigation to date. At the center of the antitrust investigation will surely be claims that Google manipulates search engine results pages (SERPs) to its advantage. Google products such as Places are often placed prominently on SERPs, which some argue draws clicks away from companies such as Yelp, Expedia and Microsoft. The latter actually filed an antitrust complaint with the EU against Google earlier this year.

It’s inevitable that people will compare this investigation to the famous Microsoft antitrust investigation of the late 1990s. That case, United States vs. Microsoft, ended with a settlement that stopped Microsoft from using Windows to push its other products and lock out its competitors. Microsoft’s growth came to a halt after the case, and the company has never fully recovered.

The FTC seems serious about pushing forward with a case against Google. The WSJ reports that the FTC fought the Justice Department for the right to handle this case. That can only signal that the FTC doesn’t intend to walk away empty-handed.

More About: Antitrust, FTC, Google, justice department

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WordPress.org is forcing users to reset their passwords after several popular plugins were compromised by hackers.

“Earlier today the WordPress team noticed suspicious commits to several popular plugins containing cleverly disguised backdoors,” Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg said in a blog post. “We determined the commits were not from the authors, rolled them back, pushed updates to the plugins, and shut down access to the plugin repository while we looked for anything else unsavory.”

Mullenweg says that AddThis, WPtouch and W3 Total Cache were the plugins that were compromised in the attacks. However, there are more than 15,000 WordPress plugins, so though there could be more that are compromised.

As a precautionary measure, WordPress.org is force-resetting all passwords on WordPress.org. This doesn’t affect WordPress-powered blogs, but does affect WordPress.org forums, trac and code commits to plugins or themes.

This isn’t the first time WordPress has been targeted by hackers; WordPress.com (owned by Automattic and separate from WordPress.org) was the victim of a low-level root access breach in April.

More About: security, WordPress

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Google is in the final stages of acquiring AdMeld, a firm that specializes in ad optimization and ad inventory for publishers, according to several reports.

AdMeld gives publishers the ability to get the best prices for their ad inventory. The New York-based company helps publishers choose their ad buys across dozens of advertising networks and get the best price possible. Competitors include Rubicon Project and PubMatic.

Google is apparently willing to pay a lot for AdMeld’s technology and customers: around $400 million, according to The New York Times. This is an area of the online advertising market segments Google doesn’t already dominate, so the acquisition makes sense on Google’s end. However, this acquisition is likely to undergo heavy scrutiny from government regulators, as Google is already the dominant force in text and display advertising.

If acquisition talks are indeed underway, Google isn’t talking. “We do not comment on rumors or speculation,” a Google spokesperson told us.

More About: acquisition, AdMeld, business, Google

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Internet traffic has come to a halt in Syria after the government blocked Internet services in an attempt to quell a growing revolt in the Middle Eastern nation.

“Starting at 3:35 UTC today, approximately two thirds of all Syrian networks became unreachable from the global Internet,” Internet intelligence firm Renesys reported on its blog today.

“Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table.”

Most mobile phone and Internet networks are affected by the blackout. According to The Wall Street Journal, government-run websites such as the Oil Ministry’s website are still operational.

Syria has been banning social media services in the last few months, but this is the full time there has been a widespread Internet outage.

The move comes as protests have intensified in the troubled nation. 34 people were killed Friday after security forces opened fire. The uprising, which began in late January, has been focused on ousting Bashar Al-Assad from his role as President of Syria. Al-Assad ascended to the presidency in 2000 after his father’s 29-year rule.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shut down Internet services during the Egyptian revolution so protesters couldn’t easily organize. It didn’t quell the revolt though, and on February 11, Mubarak resigned.

More About: Bashar Al-Assad, Egypt, internet, Internet outage, Syria, Uprising

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More than a year after its debut on the iPad, iWork, Apple’s suite of productivity apps, is now available on iPhone and iPod touch.

Apple’s iWork apps — Keynote, Pages and Numbers specifically — have been available on the iPad since the device’s debut last year. The apps, which retail for $9.99 each, provide users the ability to create presentations, documents and spreadsheets using Apple’s multi-touch interface. The apps were only for the iPad, though — iPhone and iPod touch users were out of luck. It made sense at the time: advanced word processing didn’t seem like an ideal task for the phone.

Today though, Apple announced that it has updated the iWork apps to work on the smaller screens of the iPod touch and iPhone. Pages, Keynote and Numbers each retail for $9.99 on the iPhone, although they’re free to download if you’ve already purchased the iPad versions. The apps have almost the same functionality as they have on the iPad. Users are able to write work proposals and create spreadsheets with their iPhones, though their thumbs may appreciate the larger screen of the iPad more. A few rulers and toolbars aren’t present on the iPhone and iPod touch versions, but that’s not a surprise given the smaller screen.

One other catch: Pages, Keynote and Numbers only work on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, the third-generation iPod touch and the fourth-generation iPod touch. We’re a little surprised that Apple didn’t decide to release these apps during Steve Jobs’s keynote at WWDC next week, but it has plenty of other goodies up its sleeve.

More About: iOS, ipad, iPad 2, iphone, iphone 4, iPod Touch, iwork, keynote, numbers, Pages

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