We will update this thread regularly, so please check back with us often!
All information shared is credited to the owners, and if you re-share any of it please credit the owner as well. We will have first hand interviews, photos and other media by the end of this weekend.

Occupy Houston Official Information:

http://occupyhouston.org/
Twitter: @OccupyHouston
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/OccupyHouston
UStream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupyhoustontx
When: October 6, 2011 the occupation begins.
Where: Herman Square Plaza (outside City Hall)

Find out where to go, “Protest Do’s and Don’ts”, what to bring, how you can help if you are Occupying or at home, and other helpful information and media.

If you have a UStream channel you would like us to share with others, please feel free to leave a comment and we will post the link here.

Mainstream News:

Protestors target bank, City Hall in Houston this morning – via Houston Chronicle

The demonstration was an outgrowth of a New York event focused on what the protesters called social and economic inequality and corporate greed. It began at 8:30 a.m at Market Square Park with about 150 protesters — many carrying placards and chanting — who then marched to the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank Tower before moving on to City Hall.

The crowd grew to more than 200 by midmorning, according to a police officer at the scene.

“We have officially occupied Hermann Square Park,” a speaker told the crowd, referring to the reflecting pool area on the east side of City Hall. “We are not going anywhere until the people are heard.”

Occupy Houston set to start Thursday in Houston – Local Houston Television Channel 39

(Video from online article here)

HOUSTON, TX— Welcome to Occupy Houston.

A movement of what exactly is the question many are asking. Change is on the plate for sure but those changes seem to vary depending on who you`re talking to.

Local Houston Television Channel ABC 13’s online photo slideshow

Inside the Occupy Houston march: Lots of characters, even more police & real, angry passion by Whitney Radley- CultureMap Houston

The protesters were well prepared, with Houston Police Department escorts to block traffic, legal observers in fluorescent caps prepared to help if anything got out of line, and an Ustream channelbroadcasting the march for those who couldn’t make it in person.

The group marched first to theJ.P. Morgan Chase tower, directed by mounted police at every stop light and encouraged by honking downtown drivers. On the plaza outside of the skyscraper, the protesters yelled and complained about corporate greed, explaining instances in which it says the company spent dollars stolen from the people of the United States.

The dozen or so Chase employees sipping coffee outside of the glass doors didn’t seem phased by the hundreds of angry protesters.

We will add more as time goes on, so check back soon…

Malaysian firm buys social network pioneer Friendster

Read the full story

Since May of this year, Google Wave has been highly anticipated by the Internet community. It’s Google’s newest project that they are slowly releasing to the public. On September 30th, the beta version of Google Wave was launched and access was given to a select few 100,000 people for testing.

It has been referred to as a game-changer for communication and even the death of e-mail. So how is Google Wave going to back these statements up? With key features that make Google Wave much cleaner, more efficient and just more fun than e-mail. Let’s take a look below. Read the full story

Hey, Tiger Woods: Why so dumb about tech?

When it comes to digital embarrassment, celebs are apparently just stupid

updated 7:59 a.m. CT, Thurs., Dec . 3, 2009

Not since Prince Charles of Wales told then-mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles of his desire to be her feminine hygiene product has an adulterous celebrity been so humiliated by a telephone communiqué. We’re talking about Tiger Woods here, and the voice mail message he left to an alleged mistress, released earlier this week by Us Weekly. In review:

“Hey, it’s, uh, it’s Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Um, can you please, uh, take your name off your phone. My wife went through my phone. And, uh, may be calling you. If you can, please take your name off that and, um, and what do you call it just have it as a number on the voice mail, just have it as your telephone number. That’s it, OK. You gotta do this for me. Huge. Quickly. All right. Bye.”

Read the full story

Undoubtedly by now you’ve heard about Tiger Woods’ car crash. Early reports had him in serious condition (which remember, is better than critical condition) after he apparently hit a fire hydrant and a tree while leaving his home in his SUV. The latest reports say he has been released from the hospital and is “fine.” But I’m not going to speak to any of that because that’s not what we do (you can find out more here). Read the full story

(BROMONT, Quebec) — A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.

Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife. Read the full story

Facebook Denies Hijack Read the full story

A U.S. District Court judge in San Jose has awarded Facebook $711 million in damages in an anti-spam case the social-networking giant filed against online marketer Sanford Wallace, who is known as the “Spam King.”

The Palo Alto company claimed Wallace and two associates registered as Facebook members in November 2008 to start a spam and phishing scheme.

According to court documents, the firm said Wallace sent numerous Facebook members a link to a Web site that tricked them into revealing their login information. Some messages sent the Facebook user to other sites that paid Wallace for that traffic.

The spammers would repeat the cycle by logging into the compromised accounts and sending more messages, the suit said.

Facebook claimed there were 14 million violations of the federal anti-spam law known as CAN-SPAM. In March 2009, Judge Jeremy Fogel issued a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction against Wallace.

In an order filed Thursday, Fogel said Wallace violated the law “with blatant disregard” for the rights of Facebook and its members. Fogel also wrote that he is referring Wallace, who did not appear in court for scheduled hearings, to the U.S. attorney’s office for criminal contempt charges for violating the restraining order and the injunction.

Fogel rejected Facebook’s request for $7.5 billion in damages.

In November, Facebook won a record $873 million judgment against a Canadian resident accused of sending more than 4 million bogus messages from members’ profiles, many advertising male enhancement drugs.

In 2008, Facebook rival MySpace won a $234 million judgment against Wallace and another Internet marketer, Walter Rines.

Wallace, however, filed for bankruptcy in June.

“While we don’t expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals,” Sam O’Rourke, the company’s associate general counsel, said in a Facebook message. “This is another important victory in our fight against spam.”

http://www.sfgate.com/

Facebook Memorializes Dead With New Reconnect Feature

Facebook is giving users a way to stay in touch with the dearly departed with its Facebook Reconnect service, which is now touted as a way to memorialize the deceased.In addition to its recently implemented News Feed and Live Feed formats on its homepage, the social networking giant released a Reconnect tool, which offers a service designed to “reconnect” members with old friends and contacts if they haven’t communicated in a while. Read the full story

There has been a lot of talk about a deal between Twitter and Microsoft. This morning it was reported that Microsoft would in fact announce to the world that a deal to integrate real-time status updates into bing has been reached not only with Twitter, but Facebook as well.

Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Group, has made official the integration of Twitter and Facebook into Bing. However, the Twitter integration has gone live first today, you can access it at Bing.com/Twitter, Facebook will follow later. Read the full story

Secret Service Probing Facebook Poll That Asked Whether Obama Should Be Killed

The Secret Service is investigating the origins of a poll that appeared on Facebook that asked whether President Obama should be killed.

Posted over the weekend, the poll was removed by Facebook after the Secret Service received a tip and contacted the company, which was not aware of the survey, sources tell ABC News.

“When the Secret Service became aware of the poll we worked with Facebook to have it taken down and are conducting an investigation,” said a spokesman for the Secret Service. Read the full story

The Future of the Internet

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. Read the full story

That was the double-barreled announcement Tuesday from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who thanked the site’s users for helping its online community cross the 300 million threshold. There are about 307 million people living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone,” Zuckerberg wrote on the company’s blog. Read the full story

A rumor circulating among Facebook users claims the popular third-party application Fan Check should be avoided because it allegedly downloads a virus to your computer. Here’s an example:

We've received tips about a Facebook application called Fan Check; reports say this application is actually a virus, and should be avoided at all costs.

The first thing you need to know is that this has NOT been confirmed as true. According to the developer of the software, Fan Check is a safe, legitimate Facebook app that doesn’t require the downloading of anything other than Adobe Flash. No evidence to the contrary has surface so far, according to antivirus software vendor Sophos. Read the full story

iTunes 9 was announced today at this year’s annual music event from Apple. Named the “It’s Only Rock and Roll event,” Apple didn’t disappoint with the return of Steve Jobs, upgraded (and cheaper) iPod Nanos and Shuffles, and plenty of new iPhone app demonstrations from third-party developers. As many predicted, iTunes 9 (Mac or Windows) was also on the agenda and it received a number of cool new feature enhancements to make navigation and syncing to your devices easier. iTunes 9 is available today, but has not yet been added to Apple’s software update service.

iTunes 9 has been cleaned up for easier navigation, redesigned with a new layout and a new black tabbed-menu system across the top of the iTunes Store interface. These new tabs replace the old left-side navigation to choose between categories like music, apps, movies, and podcasts. The layout for new content in the iTunes Store has been improved as well, with more browsable content in every category.

Along with the iTunes Store interface enhancements, Apple announced newly packaged digital content it referred to as “LPs.” According to Apple, buying the full album will now give you new content, kind of like extras on a DVD. You can show songs with lyrics, explore bonus content, and check out extra content created by the musicians themselves. Additionally, you get the same new content for movies, with extras, bonus content, chapter selection, character details, and more.

The way you interact with apps on the iPhone and the iPod Touch has also been improved. Now your home screen can be interacted with visually, right inside the iTunes window, letting you drag apps wherever you want before syncing to your device. Apps can be dragged from page to page and within pages, and when you’re done you can apply the changes to sync them to your device. iPhone syncing has been improved as well, with the ability to selectively sync specific artists or playlists, or sync your photos by specific albums or faces.

The new interface buttons across the top act as pull-down menus so you can drill down to the content you want.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Steve Jobs also announced that iTunes now offers Home Sharing. This new feature will let you share purchased songs across a home network. As long as all the computers on the network are on the same iTunes account, you can drag to copy songs to other computers. iTunes 9 also will automatically sync new purchases across your computers.

Overall, with new interface enhancements to the iTunes Store, a better way to organize apps on your iPhone or iPod Touch, and improvements to syncing, the new iTunes update offers plenty of improvements for iTunes users. As a free update, iTunes 9 is a no-brainer for those who use the program.

http://reviews.cnet.com/

Today is Apple’s Rock and Roll keynote, where the company is expected to announce a range of new products and software upgrades. One of new products has leaked a little early though: iTunes 9.

While iTunes 9 is not yet downloadable, we were able to gaze over Apple’s promotional feature list. We’re still processing all of the new features, but here are the basic additions to the new version of Apple’s music software:

- Easier iTunes Store browsing and navigation (which was a sorely needed upgrade)

- Previews of any song, TV show, album, or movie from the Apple Store

- iTunes LP, which allows you to download a digital version of specific albums with animations, videos, and other visual items.

- iTunes Extras: It essentially turns movie downloads into true DVDs, with the video commentary, cast interviews, and photo galleries in-tacty

- Genius Mixes: It turns your playlists into something akin to a radio station. It knows what songs just go together.

- More detailed and improved syncing

- App management: Yes, you can finally manage your iPhone apps in a clean way. This is something we’ve been dying for.

As for the rumored integration with Facebook (), Twitter (), and Last.fm, we haven’t heard or seen anything about it, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Stay tuned for more.

http://mashable.com/

Facebook & The Central Intellegence Agency

SEO Champion Firm out of Las Vegas and Seo out of Los Angeles issues that, Facebook.com has been reported to be under fire by the Wall Street Journal for Privacy Lawsuit. The Wall street journal reported today that facebook faces charges of privacy violations, which I had a feeling would happen. It is against the law to post pictures without permission and tag peoples names for indexing in the search engines and also videos.

This is a minor report. I would imagine that facebook.com will set aside a Billion dollars and will need to buy websites that are clean to clean up their name now. Websites like http://www.plentyoffish.com and http://www.universityloveconnection.com are high in value, as they take 15,000 hours to build a new platform. So why doesn’t Facebook buy those and start coverting people over and dividing their platforms to control more eggs then just one. If you control only one egg and it drops, what do you have left? Read the full story

By Douglas MacMillan

After failing to acquire Twitter last fall, Facebook went shopping for what may be the next best thing.

On Aug. 10, Facebook said it had acquired FriendFeed, the Mountain View (Calif.) social aggregation service founded by Google (GOOG) alumni Bret Taylor and Jim Norris in 2008. The deal, which The Wall Street Journal reported to be valued at nearly $50 million in cash and stock, gives Facebook top talent and advanced technology in an area many see as the next great frontier on the Web: real-time search. Read the full story