Weekly Wrap-Up: Many Millennials Don’t Have More Than Basic Computer Skills and More

Weekly Wrap Up Despite a strong grasp of social media, many millennials lack real computer skills. Richard contrasts three types of social media users. Klint explains how to find out which programming language is the most popular. Learn about these stories and many more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-Up. After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web – Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web – plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Millennials: They Aren’t So Tech Savvy After All

Even as millennials (those born and raised around the turn of the century) enter college with far more exposure to computer and mobile technology than their parents ever did, professors are increasingly finding that their students’ comfort zone is often limited to social media and Internet apps that don’t do much in the way of productivity. One professor at the University of Notre Dame, for example, reports that many of his students don’t even know how to navigate menus in productivity applications. More

Which Of These 3 Social Media Profiles Are You?

You’ve got a new piece of content you want to share, but where do you put it? Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, your WordPress blog… all of the above?! With these and many other options to choose from, posting on the Web can be confusing – even a little stressful. But never fear, ReadWriteWeb is here to help. We’ve identified three main social media profiles, based on the Big 3 networks: Facebook, Twitter and Google+. More

5 Ways to Tell Which Programming Languages are Most Popular

Are older programming languages like Java and Perl giving way to newer languages like Python and Ruby? Is HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript overtaking Flash and/or native mobile application development? Do Microsoft’s languages still have a large developer following, even as Microsoft promotes other languages as first-class citizens on platforms such as Windows 8 and Azure? Finding the answer to these questions can be harder than you think. More

Making the Most of Social Media Analytics

Don’t believe the next social media expert who tells you “social media is intangible” when it comes to building your brand. Sure, it’s difficult to calculate a precise return on investment for social media marketing efforts: Just ask General Motors, which pulled $10 million in Facebook advertising last month because it couldn’t track measurable results. But social media reach is more measurable than some people would have you believe. More

Why London’s Police Just Set a Horrifying Precedent on Mobile Privacy

London’s Metropolitan Police recently started using machines that allow law enforcement to tap into any mobile device and download call registers, photographs, videos, SMS, email and even social networking data in under 20 minutes. Even more shocking, the information they collect will remain in the police’s possession long after the suspect is released, even if no charges are filed. A machine of this sort sounds like something that would have been found in the dank depths of some palace in Tripoli after the downfall of Gaddafi, not in a British police station. More

The United Nations Could Seize the Internet, U.S. Officials Warn

Several emerging countries are rallying behind a campaign to have the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.’s global standards body for telecommunications, declare the Internet a global telecommunications system, U.S. officials testified on Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Led by China, Russia, India and now Egypt, which recently launched its own proposal, such a move would allow state-owned telephone networks to expand into VoIP. It would also give them the opportunity to charge fees for Internet service – and put the Internet at the mercy of international politics. More

What Ever Happened To… Start Pages

In this new ReadWriteWeb series, we look back on products that were important innovations of their time. But this isn’t merely nostalgia. As Confucius said, we’ll make it relevant by identifying lessons to apply now and in the future. We start with a product category that was all the rage in 2005-06, but is an endangered species in 2012: start pages. More

Avoiding Password Breaches 101: Salt Your Hash

“Change your passwords now. Like, every password you use on every website you have ever visited.” You may have heard this advice from tech publications and mainstream rags after password leaks were discovered at LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm. It is a good idea to change passwords at least a couple times a year anyway. But the problem does not lie solely with the users. It also lies with the way companies approach password security. More

How to Jailbreak Your iPhone, iPad or iPod Running iOS 5.1.1

Looking to do a little more with your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch? The latest untethered jailbreak tool for iOS arrived last week, racking up a million downloads in just a few days. Absinthe 2.0 works on most iOS 5-compatible devices, except for a later model of the iPad 2 that contains the 32-nanometer chipset. The process is incredibly straightforward and requires no technical sophistication – only a few clicks and a little bit of patience. More

Apple is Trying its Best to Kill HTC (And Doing a Pretty Good Job)

There is blood in the water, and the big fish are circling to put the struggling, wounded little fish out of its misery. The little fish, which has some good qualities to offer the world, is having more and more trouble keeping the big fish away. This is happening now to smartphone manufacturer HTC – and the biggest fish of all, Apple, is circling in for the kill. More

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