Today in its quarterly earnings call, Groupon reported that it did not meet fourth quarter expectations. The company posted a $43 million loss, or $0.08 cents per share. Despite the loss, Groupon's revenue in the fourth quarter 2011 grew 194% to $506.5 million, up from $172.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. In fact, the fourth quarter 2011 was the company's first quarter of operating profitability since it opening international operations in the second quarter of 2010. This brings everyone back to the same question: Is the daily deals model a real, legitimate business, or is it just a…
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Most Topular Stories
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Groupon's First Earnings Call Missed the Mark, But It May Not Matter
ReadWriteWeb8 Feb 2012 | 9:28 pm -
‘Bachelor’ Contestant Courtney Gets Auto-Tuned [VIDEO]
Mashable!8 Feb 2012 | 9:19 pmFans of The Bachelor are all too familiar with this season’s over-the-top contestant Courtney, who makes snide comments at the camera and likes to take off her bikini top. Now, a video has popped up on YouTube that has turned some of her signature phrases — from “Winning!” to “I do modeling” — into a catchy Auto-Tune clip. The contestants are vying for a rose from winemaker Ben, and Courtney has rubbed many of them the wrong way, and this video shows why. This is not the first time YouTube users have turned pop culture moments into Auto-Tuned videos. -
From the Tips Box: Chrome History, Amazon Prime on iOS, and Chrome to Phone [From The Tips Box]
Lifehacker8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmMore » -
Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting
louisgray.com7 Feb 2012 | 10:53 amLast fall, shortly after I joined Google, Michelle Greenlee contacted me for a quick interview about the Google hiring experience, and what tech-savvy job seekers can do to leverage the influence of social media to influence hiring managers. The story was finally posted this morning.The biggest take-away is probably my last note in an answer to her final question: "The world is becoming social and the new world of business and hiring can find great candidates through how you present yourself online."See: Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting/via My Google+ Profile.More:… -
3 key differences between Tesla and Fisker
GigaOM9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amTesla Roadsters lined up outside of the Model S Beta Customer event This week two Valley-backed and government-supported electric car companies — Tesla and Fisker — have been taking two very different paths: one up and one down. As you read this, I’ll shortly be heading down to Tesla’s design studio to attend the company’s Model X electric SUV launch event. The Model X is the company’s third electric car — which will be one of the first electric SUVs ever in the world — and Tesla could start selling the first Model X cars by the end of 2013. By…
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ReadWriteWeb
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Groupon's First Earnings Call Missed the Mark, But It May Not Matter
8 Feb 2012 | 9:28 pmToday in its quarterly earnings call, Groupon reported that it did not meet fourth quarter expectations. The company posted a $43 million loss, or $0.08 cents per share. Despite the loss, Groupon's revenue in the fourth quarter 2011 grew 194% to $506.5 million, up from $172.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. In fact, the fourth quarter 2011 was the company's first quarter of operating profitability since it opening international operations in the second quarter of 2010. This brings everyone back to the same question: Is the daily deals model a real, legitimate business, or is it just a… -
Daily Wrap: January's List of Apps You Need to See and more
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 pmDan Rowinski rounds up the best apps, in our opinion, of January 2012. This and more in today's Daily Wrap. Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well. Sponsor New iPhone, iPad and Android Apps for January 2012 In what is surely a labor of love, Dan Rowinski combs through the mass of apps released… -
Stop Saying "Finally"
8 Feb 2012 | 5:50 pmFIIIINALLY! Google released a Chrome beta for Android! GODDDDD. What took them so long? All the Ice Cream Sandwich users have been waiting, like, FOREVER! Finally, Tweetbot for iPad came out. I've only been asking them for, like, EIGHT MONTHS! Jeez. Apple fiiiinally released iTunes Match after a whole month, and it didn't even work right! Listen to how this sounds. How do we, the tech bloggers, get away with headlines like this? Where do users get off complaining impatiently about updates to a service that costs them $2.99? Or a free service? Let's have a reality check. Remember how awesome… -
10 Ways to Win Over Writers
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmAs a PR person, product developer, CEO or whatever, you're probably more interested in getting noticed by the media than developing a relationship with a particular writer. That's one way to go about it. Then there's that old-fashioned "building a relationship with a real person not a robot" idea. You know, treating people like people and taking the time to get to know them. Oh right, yeah, forgot about that. Writers, like artists, are sensitive to ideas and people. But not every writer will get you or your product - and in the tech world as in any world, each writer has their own… -
Nginx Continues Growth, Adds Commercial Offerings
8 Feb 2012 | 4:30 pmAccording to the Netcraft Web Server Survey for February 2012, Nginx was "the only server to experience a non-negligible market share increase this month" by picking up 0.27 percentage points. Good news for the upstart Web server, just as the brand-new company behind Nginx takes the wraps off its commercial packages. Nginx has had quite the growth spurt over the past year. In February of last year Nginx had 7.57% of the market, or about 21 million domains hosted with Nginx. Microsoft had 20.04%, or about 57 million. Apache was at 60.10%, with more than 171 million domains. Sponsor…
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Mashable!
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‘Bachelor’ Contestant Courtney Gets Auto-Tuned [VIDEO]
8 Feb 2012 | 9:19 pmFans of The Bachelor are all too familiar with this season’s over-the-top contestant Courtney, who makes snide comments at the camera and likes to take off her bikini top. Now, a video has popped up on YouTube that has turned some of her signature phrases — from “Winning!” to “I do modeling” — into a catchy Auto-Tune clip. The contestants are vying for a rose from winemaker Ben, and Courtney has rubbed many of them the wrong way, and this video shows why. This is not the first time YouTube users have turned pop culture moments into Auto-Tuned videos. -
Facebook Talks About Social Games and Mobile Apps for 2012
8 Feb 2012 | 9:09 pmFacebook revealed its roadmap for social games and mobile apps for the rest of the year at the Inside Social Apps 2012 conference on Wednesday in San Francisco — and it’s good news for app developers. Want to create an app for Facebook’s Open Graph? The mobile space presents a huge opportunity to create cross-platform social games, said Carl Sjogreen, director of product management at Facebook, who spoke to a packed conference center filled with IT insiders about Facebook’s projections for the mobile social gaming and app space for this year. “You sort of had to… -
What Digital Non-Profits Can Learn From Companies Like Google
8 Feb 2012 | 8:46 pmDaniel Atwood works with organizations in the social sector to craft meaningful experiences for customers and constituents, and to find innovative product, campaign and messaging ideas in unexpected places. We live in a world where new digital products are solving problems daily — from managing our finances to remembering the groceries. Often, they’re solving problems we didn’t know we had, like the need to connect several times a day in 140 characters or less. Occasionally, they’re creating new problems (but that’s a topic for another conversation). What… -
Comment and Highlight on Websites with commentto
8 Feb 2012 | 8:30 pmThe Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: commentto Quick Pitch: Comment anywhere. Genius Idea: Commentto is a browser add-on service that allows users to highlight, bookmark, comment, save and share bookmarks and excerpts on websites. Do you ever want to add extra knowledge to a news story or other content on the web? Well, browser add-on commentto lets you comment on anything you want. Commentto allows users to highlight… -
Twitter Comedy: How to Be Funny in 140 Characters
8 Feb 2012 | 7:37 pmComedy is king on Twitter. Professional humorists and armchair standups alike have amassed legions of followers that hang on every 140-character quip. Twitter humor is a brand-builder, a great writing exercise, and if you’re really good, it might even land you a job (but probably not, so settle down). So, what does it take to get laughs at this 24/7 digital cocktail party? We asked some of the funniest tweeters around for their tips on cracking wise in the one-liner Renaissance. 1. Start by Being Funny in the First Place Bill Corbett knows a thing or two about landing short quips. He's…
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Lifehacker
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From the Tips Box: Chrome History, Amazon Prime on iOS, and Chrome to Phone [From The Tips Box]
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmMore » -
Microsoft OneNote Comes to Android, Syncs with Microsoft SkyDrive [Onenote]
8 Feb 2012 | 4:30 pmMore » -
Remains of the Day: Windows 8 Consumer Preview Launches Feb. 29th [For What It's Worth]
8 Feb 2012 | 4:00 pm -
How to Set Up Windows 7 Homegroups for Seamless, Instant Sharing Between PCs In Your Home [Emailable Tech Support]
8 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmMore » -
Amazon Prime Expands Its Video Streaming Library, Adds 2,000 More Titles [In Brief]
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 pm
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louisgray.com
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Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting
7 Feb 2012 | 10:53 amLast fall, shortly after I joined Google, Michelle Greenlee contacted me for a quick interview about the Google hiring experience, and what tech-savvy job seekers can do to leverage the influence of social media to influence hiring managers. The story was finally posted this morning.The biggest take-away is probably my last note in an answer to her final question: "The world is becoming social and the new world of business and hiring can find great candidates through how you present yourself online."See: Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting/via My Google+ Profile.More:… -
50 Things a +1 Can Mean
7 Feb 2012 | 12:15 amA +1 is simple. It’s one of the easiest ways on the web to take an action that endorses the content and says you saw something. But it can mean many different things. That’s the beauty of +1. You can +1 things you like. You can +1 bad news. You can +1 things you love. You can +1 casual status updates or items that change the world.Often, we get asked what it means to +1. Here are some ideas. We’d love to see yours./via The Google+ Page (Which I maintain)1. A +1 can say you agree with the post.2. A +1 can say your photo is beautiful.3. A +1 can say your joke was funny.4. A +1 can mean… -
Two Numbers: 1 and 90 Million
7 Feb 2012 | 12:10 amBy now, you all have seen the dual bits of news today - first that Google+ has achieved 90 million users with at least one new feature every single day, over 1 million businesses and brand pages, and sign in of 60% daily, 80% weekly.Also, earlier today, Google was (for the 3rd time) named the best place to work by Fortune Magazine (see http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html). We're working on making Google+ the best place to be for you so you can be just as proud about these numbers and this news. To stay on top of all this great stuff,… -
Daria Musk Visits Google+ for Live Performance
7 Feb 2012 | 12:08 amLast Monday, I had the great pleasure of meeting Daria Musk and interviewing her on stage, to learn more about her story and rise from relative obscurity to becoming a Google+ sensation. As I told the Google+ team, assembled in the private concert, in my introduction, Daria epitomizes the community here as well as anyone I know.She is fully invested in this platform, is tireless, upbeat, and to boot, is incredibly talented. I'd heard her sing in many a hangout, but to hear her sing live at Google was transformative. Nothing beats a live performance by an artist with passion, energy… -
10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+
7 Feb 2012 | 12:04 amAs social networks evolve, so to do your circles. Even in the few months since our launch, you’ve probably added a lot of people to your circles who you didn’t know before - people who share common interests, or came by recommendation of a trusted friend or expert. Some people have rocketed their way to high visibility, added to hundreds of thousands of circles, by virtue of their actions on Google+. So while I can’t promise you the big numbers, here are ten ways you can get found on Google+, and examples to boot.1. Embrace the Community While Doing Something Unique and Creative.Daria…
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GigaOM
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3 key differences between Tesla and Fisker
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amTesla Roadsters lined up outside of the Model S Beta Customer event This week two Valley-backed and government-supported electric car companies — Tesla and Fisker — have been taking two very different paths: one up and one down. As you read this, I’ll shortly be heading down to Tesla’s design studio to attend the company’s Model X electric SUV launch event. The Model X is the company’s third electric car — which will be one of the first electric SUVs ever in the world — and Tesla could start selling the first Model X cars by the end of 2013. By… -
RSS dashboard company Netvibes acquired by Dassault Systèmes
8 Feb 2012 | 11:32 pmNetvibes, the San Francisco-based company that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS and social media feed dashboards, announced Wednesday evening it has been acquired by French enterprise software firm Dassault Systèmes. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini The deal makes sense on a few levels, as Netvibes’ engineering team is based in France (CEO Freddy Mini splits his time between France and California.) The company has also been around for a while — since 2005 — and in that time has grown from being a personal RSS… -
Report: Google gets Drive cloud storage ready to roll
8 Feb 2012 | 9:41 pmGoogle is finally about to big-foot its way into the cloud storage business, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. With its “Drive” or “G-drive” service — which has been talked about for some time — Google would take on some very popular consumer-oriented cloud storage entrants, notably Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud. People use these services as virtual closets for their digital photos, documents and music. Once their material is in the cloud, they can access it from many devices. According to the report, posted late Wednesday: The Google… -
Forget the People’s Choice Awards, we’ve got Twitter
8 Feb 2012 | 4:09 pmWho needs an awards show to tell us what movies and actors fans prefer when we have Twitter? In yet another partnership with the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, IBM is turning its skills in social-media sentiment analysis to Hollywood awards so the world can see which movies and stars are generating the most buzz on Twitter. IBM has done similar analyses of both the World Series and the Super Bowl, and although they’re no doubt part of a marketing effort to demonstrate its big data prowess, the projects are pretty fun and rather insightful. It’s new Senti-meter, which appears as… -
Is Ericsson rolling out 3G using someone else’s technology?
8 Feb 2012 | 4:09 pmWhen Ericsson bought Nortel’s wireless business in 2009 it instantly propelled itself to the top of the North American mobile infrastructure heap, largely because the deal exposed the Swedish vendor to the dominant network technology in the U.S., CDMA. But the CDMA portfolio Ericsson bought wasn’t entirely Nortel’s own. Rather than develop CDMA’s 3G component, EV-DO, internally, Nortel licensed the technology from radio specialist Airvana. Now Airvana is claiming that Ericsson is reneging on its licensing deal and is instead selling a “knock-off” version of its EV-DO technology to…
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Copyblogger
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The “New” SEO Secret Weapon
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you have a web site, you may have noticed one of two things about the traffic you get from search engines. Your search traffic may have dried up overnight, with once-healthy streams turning into a sad little trickle. Or you may have noticed a nice, steady improvement as you’ve climbed higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), while other sites that used to outrank you suddenly evaporated. There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO. It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see… -
8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read
7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIt’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it. Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them. Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day. What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of: You’d better know how to write a compelling headline You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. -
7 Crucial Tactics for Writing a Wildly Successful Guest Post
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amWe all know that guest posts grow blogs. But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers. Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits. In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post. Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals. Who am I to teach you about guest blogging? -
7 Smashing Social Media Marketing Links
4 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amThis week on The Lede … What really works on Twitter One thing social media copywriters should never do 9 productive social media hacks A reminder of the power of the original social media If you just can’t wait for The Lede every Saturday, and you want even more practical, useable links than the seven we highlight here every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter. It’s painless. Really. // 9 Social Media Hacks You Need to Embrace Now Mr. Baer makes a good case that though social media is inexpensive in monetary terms, it can get good and costly when it comes to spending your… -
Whether You Call it Blogging or Not, Online Content Still Rules
3 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amWhat if most of the business world stopped blogging tomorrow? Would you stop as well? No, if that happened, you’d find yourself sitting on the opportunity of a lifetime. Social networking sites would explode with likes and retweets and pins and +1s of your original content all day long. This is why the annual “blogging is dead” claim is so dumb. Even if it were true, your continued content production would dominate the web in every way. So, instead of worrying about the latest claimed trend or alarming decline of the moment, stay the course. Original content creation is the…
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CenterNetworks
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Deal Site Smackdown: The Valentine’s Day Edition
8 Feb 2012 | 6:06 amNext Tuesday is the annual holiday known as Valentine’s Day. The day is named after St. Valentine and over 150 million cards are exchanged – here’s the full history of this very special day. This year the new deal sites are holding a cage match with each site offering a deal with a national floral delivery service. Most of these deals expire asap so you should be quick if you want to grab some flowers for your sweetie. Also note that the delivery fees are higher for a delivery on Valentine’s day. Lastly, I see some of the local cities within the deal sites are also… -
Top 10 Russian Web Startups of 2011
7 Feb 2012 | 5:37 amYakov Sadchikov, President & CEO of visual search engine Quintura, has put together the following list of the top 10 Russian web startups for 2011. In September 2011, Russia became the largest Internet market in Europe with 51 million online users. Who are the top emerging internet companies that disrupt the Russian market. Find out below a list of top 10 Russian web startups of 2011. 1. Oktogo.ru Having raised $5 million in venture capital from European early-stage investors, Oktogo.ru is #1 in Russian online travel. Russia’s ‘Booking.com‘ Oktogo.ru has not only collected the… -
NCR Sells Blockbuster Express Kiosks To RedBox
6 Feb 2012 | 4:27 pmSomehow I thought this year would be the end for the Blockbuster Express kiosk machines. Back in November they changed their pricing model and it seemed like it just became a lot more expensive to rent from Blockbuster Express versus rival RedBox. As an infrequent movie renter, I found the Redbox machines to have a better selection and a better price – and you can nearly always find a free movie rental code for RedBox. Today RedBox has agreed to acquire the kiosks and “other assets” from Blockbuster Express. RedBox notes in their release that the deal is worth up to $100… -
Shark Tank Recap – February 3
3 Feb 2012 | 6:48 pmBelow is a recap of the February 3, 2012 episode of the ABC show Shark Tank (episode 301). If you are unfamiliar with Shark Tank, the concept is simple – entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and the investors have to provide at least the amount the entrepreneur is seeking for a deal to be completed. Pitch #1 – Chord Buddy Founder Travis Perry created a plastic gadget that you place onto an acoustic guitar to help you learn how to play the guitar. As you learn how to play, you remove pieces of the Chord Buddy until you have completed removed the gadget and are… -
SXSW Releases 2011 Demographics
1 Feb 2012 | 1:46 pmAnother year, another SXSW festival coming up in just a few weeks. What will this year’s event hold? Last year seemed like a big shift for both the event and for attendees. The event was split up into many locations (I think this was a huge mistake), more commercialization than ever and it seemed like lots of people came to Austin but didn’t buy a badge – they just surfed the hallways of the convention center and also attended lots of Sixth Street non-official events. Each year the event grows larger and hotel rooms display sold out signs earlier and earlier. I wonder if…
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AllThingsD
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Breaking News Rules
9 Feb 2012 | 12:01 amBut when it comes to the verdict, surely the reporter should rush to the live microphone or camera first – even if that means being beaten by a rival tweeter? – BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC’s new guidelines that prohibit its reporters from breaking news on Twitter -
Alibaba Seeking $3 Billion Loan to Buy Back Yahoo Stake
8 Feb 2012 | 9:12 pmChinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is in the process of raising a US$3 billion loan from around six banks to buy back the stake that Yahoo Inc. owns in the company, people familiar with the situation said Thursday. Yahoo owns 40% of Alibaba Group. The six banks — Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Credit Suisse Group AG, DBS Bank Ltd., Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC and Mizuho Financial Group — are in the process of getting internal credit approval to underwrite the loan, which is said to have a tenor of three years with a yield of around 4%. The… -
For iPad and Mobile Devices, a 'Port' out of the Norm
8 Feb 2012 | 6:04 pmThe pocket-size USB flash drive has become nearly ubiquitous in the PC world, for moving files among machines and for adding extra storage. But it can’t be used with most tablets because they lack standard USB ports. [ See post to watch video ] Now, there’s a special, modified, pocket flash drive that works as usual with PCs and Macs, but can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports, such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and many other Android devices. Its secret: It has built-in Wi-Fi to beam the files to and from… -
An iPhoto Slide Show on CD
8 Feb 2012 | 6:01 pmQ: How can I burn a slideshow that I made in iPhoto on my MacBook Pro onto a CD? A: You can export the slideshow as a video (a QuickTime movie in Apple parlance) and then burn that video to your CD. Here’s how: In iPhoto, after you’ve created the photo slideshow, with titles, music and so forth, click on the “Export” button at the bottom of the slideshow-creation window. Choose an option for the resolution of your movie and click “Export.” Then, choose a destination on your hard disk where you’ll temporarily store the movie. Next, insert the… -
Google: That 2.25 Percent MoMo Patent Royalty Sounds About Right to Us
8 Feb 2012 | 5:20 pmMotorola Mobility’s demand that Apple pay it patent royalties of 2.25 percent on sales of some iPhones and iPads raised a lot of eyebrows. But not at Google, which could close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility as early as next week. Evidently, Google has no trouble with that percentage at all. In a letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) today, Google said that should it complete its proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility, it will license the company’s standard-essential patents under “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” terms…
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chrisbrogan.com
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Throw Away the Maps
6 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amPeople judge us by the path they’ve seen us walk before. They can’t anticipate our future steps. We, ourselves, look to how things have been, what seems to be the lay of the land, without realizing that the maps are not the territory. Want to succeed at work? Then don’t try to do your job. Instead, work towards something larger, more meaningful, and something that blends your convictions internally with your best ability to help others externally. Want to create something new? Then throw away the old, or maybe join two disparate old things together into something new. The… -
The Next Social Networks
5 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amThe rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos. What I’m interested in, though, is Gentlemint, which I keep calling “Pinterest for… -
Learn From Adele – Build Your Platform
3 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amJacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience. What Adele Could Teach You About Impact I’m writing something about this right now for my upcoming book with Julien Smith, but I had to share some of the… -
Rob Gokee is a Musical Wizard
2 Feb 2012 | 8:05 amI had such a great experience working with award winning musical composer Rob Gokee. We did some musical work together, and the process was so amazing. Rob helped me create my theme song for Shhh! The Secret Show. So anyhow, he and I sat down to do an interview, and it’s a bit long, but it’s totally worth it. We talk about what collaboration feels like at a distance, what it takes to get music like this made for your own show, and a lot more. Rob’s a hero to me, and has been part of the community for a while. I was so fortunate to have worked with him. Can’t see the… -
Build Your Platform – Start
30 Jan 2012 | 1:30 amThe following is part ONE of a series called Build Your Platform. If you find it interesting, please consider subscribing for free to get the rest of the series. This post is long. You might want to bookmark it for later. The age of social media oversaturation is upon us. People are declaring Twitter bankruptcy to go along with their email bankruptcy. They cite not wanting to start on yet another social network as their reason for not getting more involved with Google+. And just as soon as you start getting into Pinterest, you hear about Path, but wait: there’s Gentlemint, which is…
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WordPress.com News
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New Themes: Splendio and Suburbia
7 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amHappy Tuesday! We’ve got two unique free themes for you today, and they are quite a study in contrasts. Our first theme, Splendio, dazzles with an unconventional yet stylish design from Design Disease that pops out of the box — literally. How you use this theme is limited only by your imagination! It comes loaded with features: six widget areas (one in the right sidebar and up to five in the footer), featured header images, and a custom background. In addition, there’s a showcase page template (pictured in the screenshot above) that includes a featured slider for sticky posts,… -
Post Videos from Your iPhone or iPad
3 Feb 2012 | 3:01 amWould you like to post videos to your blog while you’re on the go? Are you interested in a photography theme that’s also video-friendly? Well, look no further, because we have some news for you. The VideoPress upgrade, which allows you to upload and embed your own videos on your blog, now comfortably handles videos from iPhones and iPads. You can shoot vertically or horizontally, and we’ll take care of rotating it for you so that your video looks great when it’s published on your site. If you don’t already have VideoPress on your WordPress.com account, head on… -
New Themes: Currents and Debut
2 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmToday, I’m excited to introduce the latest additions to our collection of premium themes. Designed by Andy Rutledge, Currents, is a responsive, minimal yet attractive premium theme from WooThemes. Currents is perfect for news driven sites. The phrase, “less is more” couldn’t be more true. This clean and minimal design maximises your reader’s focus on the content. Having said that, the theme is packed with many customization options — a wide featured post slider, custom news areas, six alternative color styles, and more. Together, all of these features help… -
Import from Tumblr in 3 Easy Steps
2 Feb 2012 | 4:06 amWe’ve recently noticed that a fair number of you have been bringing your tumblelogs over from Tumblr to WordPress.com using one of the variety of Tumblr to WXR conversion tools which exist on the web. We thought you would appreciate an easier way to import your content, so we bring you 3 easy steps to import your content. Authenticate with Tumblr To bring your tumblelog’s content to WordPress.com, head to Tools → Import in your WordPress.com dashboard and look for the Tumblr importer. If you don’t already have an account here on WordPress.com then head over and sign up… -
Chrome Users: Try the WordPress.com Extension
27 Jan 2012 | 11:54 amWant to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com? Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser: Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications: Start following new blogs without visiting WordPress.com The Chrome extension also makes it easy to follow sites from your WordPress.com account by displaying a Follow button whenever you’re browsing a site that has an RSS feed. Clicking the Follow button…
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Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg
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How to Select an Interactive Marketing Agency
31 Jan 2012 | 5:42 amThis is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Check out his earlier posts on How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner and How to Hire Your SEO Partner. It’s very difficult for small and mid-size firms to select the right interactive marketing agency — as evidenced by how often agencies get fired, and how frequently client-agency relationships subsist at a low level of productivity and mutual satisfaction. The best way to prevent agency angst is to select the right agency to begin with. Here are 25 selection criteria to help you do this. I’ve listed the most important ones first,… -
5 Things I’ve Learned from Running BizSugar
24 Jan 2012 | 5:03 amThis is a guest post by Anita Campbell. When my company, Small Business Trends, LLC, first purchased BizSugar in the summer of 2009, the best way I could describe it was as a miniature version of Digg, except that BizSugar focused soley on sharing information geared toward small and mid-sized businesses. This is still true. But as BizSugar has grown over the last couple of years, it’s also become a small business networking site where business owners can discuss issues, get and give advice, and gain insight into the ins and outs of running a small business. As the site has changed and… -
Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online
17 Jan 2012 | 6:04 amThis is a guest post by David Rodnitzky. Having the best prices and largest selection of products means nothing on the Internet if you don’t back it up with incredible customer service. Treat customers badly and you will be out of business – period! Bad customer service will get you banned from major advertising networks, skewered in organic results, and ridiculed on social networks. Here are the top ways consumers can crush your business online. Advertising Bans If consumers complain about your business, your money won’t be green enough to buy advertising online. Both eBay and Amazon… -
How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner
11 Jan 2012 | 5:51 amThis is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Want more? See How to Hire Your SEO Partner from November. After taking the social media plunge, companies quickly discover that it is vastly more complicated and time-consuming than they thought. The normal response is, HELP! But companies must avoid a panicky response, because hiring a social media marketing (SMM) partner requires careful study. As I’ll run down in a minute, SMM involves a wide range of activities that require totally different skills. So, First, we’ll take a look at what the activities are, to help clarify the type of support you… -
Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011
5 Jan 2012 | 5:19 amIt’s my birthday and I have some great news! In January of 2011, I said that I’d make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only. And I did. Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content, the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends – the stuff you use for presentations and proposals, for arguing that social media and online marketing does have a firm place in today’s landscape. The newsletter, which was sent within the first…
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Lorelle on WordPress
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Prove It: What Makes You Trust a Website?
6 Feb 2012 | 8:48 pmWhat makes you trust this site? What makes you trust me? What makes you trust any website you visit? What is it about the site that earns your trust? I’ve asked this question at most of the conferences and keynotes I’ve given over the past seven years. The answers are all over the map but [...] -
This Site Will Blackout Against SOPA and PIPA
17 Jan 2012 | 12:09 pmI’m joining Wikipedia, Reddit, and millions of other concerned web users across the United States to blackout my site on January 18, 2012. WordPress is even against this. Traction is happening. SOPA appears to be dead in congress but PIPA is still alive and just as bad. When you land on Lorelle on WordPress on [...] -
Clark College WordPress Class in the News
16 Jan 2012 | 12:42 pmWow! I knew my Introduction to WordPress course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, was getting a lot of attention around the world from those eager to get WordPress into their curriculum, I didn’t realize it would make so much noise so close to home. Check out “Blogging pioneer blazes trail for WordPress at Clark [...] -
Prove It: Kym Huynh Exposed
16 Jan 2012 | 12:08 pmAfter reading Prove It: It’s Starts With Defining Who You Are as part of my Prove It Campaign, one of my best friends volunteered himself for a bio tearing and ripping as he is now involved in several startups that are gaining the attention of investors, which means everything he does online is now subject [...] -
January 18: Join Reddit in a National Blackout Day of Protest Against SOPA
11 Jan 2012 | 9:25 pmOn January 18, join Reddit and the country in protesting SOPA. Reddit announced they will black out their site January 18 for 12 hours in protest of the US government’s pursuit of the horrible SOPA act: The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will [...]
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Mark Evans Tech
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Warning: Watch Out for Startup Roadkill
8 Feb 2012 | 4:30 amWhen it comes to startups, I’m a glass half-full person. To me, every startup has the potential to be successful, although it does depend on a combination of their ability to execute, some luck, and being in the right place at the right time. Although I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, here’s another reality: For all the enthusiasm and entrepreneurial bullishness, there’s going to be a lot of startup “roadkill”. Maybe not over the next few months but it’ll happen, and it ain’t going to be a pretty. It goes against the grain for an… -
How Generous Should Startups Be with Stock Options?
6 Feb 2012 | 4:30 amOne of the many fascinating aspects of Facebook’s S-1 filing for its $5-billion IPO was how it handed options to employees, freelancers and contractors. This included graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted options rather than a few thousands dollars for painting Facebook’s first office. It put the spotlight on the question about how generous startups should be with option grants. On one hand, options are an effective tool to motivate and reward employees and people who have helped a startup and/or provided services. For employees, it gives them skin in the game, particularly… -
The Week in Startup Land (Edition #2)
4 Feb 2012 | 5:07 amAfter kicking off my weekly look at the Canadian startup landscape last week, here’s edition #2. It features highlights of the Canadian landscape, as well as some other interesting startup-related information and content. Leave a comment if there’s something interesting I should add. 1. Extreme Startups (a rebranded and recapitalized version of ExtremeU) kicked off with $7-million in financing, including a big chunk from BDC, which will be handing out $150,000 in convertible debt financing. 2. Of the posts on MET this week, “You’ve Raised Venture Capital; Now… -
Forget About Lean. It’s All About Lunch for Startups
3 Feb 2012 | 4:37 amThere are lots of different “secrets” for startups to be successful. There’s the lean approach, minimal viable products (MVP), bootstrapping, crowdsourcing, strategic seed capital, etc. But in working closely with startups, here’s a key ingredient few people talk about: lunch. Yup, lunch. Think about it. Lunch is not just about nutritional intake, it’s about community and collegiality, and a time for a startup employees to take a break from the go-go-go nature that can be stressful and exciting. Lunch is a time when everyone – founders, developers,… -
You’ve Raised Venture Capital, Now What?
2 Feb 2012 | 4:30 amFor many startup entrepreneurs, raising their first venture capital round is like winning the Super Bowl. It validates what they’re doing, their vision and all the hard work that’s happened. When the deal is signed, there are lots of high fives and the champagne flows. It’s good times, baby! The funny thing is you wake in the morning with a whack of cash in the bank, and realize the work has just started. For all the effort that happened pre-deal, there’s even more work ahead post-deal because there’s another party (or parties) who have a vested and financial…
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TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog
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App usage doesn't drop during Super Bowl -- except during halftime
8 Feb 2012 | 8:00 pmMobile advertiser Flurry's latest report, on app usage during the Super Bowl, is fascinating for those of us who have been following the "second screen" phenomenon: The tendency of mobile device users to use their devices while also watching television or other media. Flurry notes that during last week's big game, not only was the app audience (according to the apps that the company is actually monitoring) almost as large as the Super Bowl audience as a whole, but as you can see above, app usage steadily grew throughout the game. With one interesting exception, that is: During the Madonna… -
Daily iPad App: Tweetbot emerges as a top Twitter client for the iPad
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmI admit I was late to the Tweetbot bandwagon. I was tempted by the initial reviews, but wasn't keen to spend the money. Yeah, it was $2.99. But, if I wanted to spend money on a Twitter app, I wanted to buy one and have that be it for awhile. The free native Twitter app, which evolved from Tweetie, suited me until the overhaul in December. While there were some features I liked, others drove me up the wall. I found that I was using Twitter less and less because I didn't care for the redesigned iPhone app and web interface. So, I finally turned to Tweetbot, and I haven't looked back. Steve… -
You're the Pundit: Does a 7" iPad make sense for the education market?
8 Feb 2012 | 4:00 pmWhen it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is Education and the iPad. Last month, Apple introduced iBooks Author and expanded iTunes U. It was a big presentation and a big commitment to the textbook market. The problem is, of course, whether the desire to embrace digital textbooks can live up to the costs and grim realities. Granted, Apple's probably going to start pushing the iPad to schools much more enthusiastically now that it's ceased educational sales of the… -
White MacBook reaches end of life, education sales to cease
8 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmAlthough discontinued for consumer sales last July, the plastic MacBook remained available for sale to educational institutions as a (relatively) low-cost option for schools seeking portable Macs for students. If you were wondering how long that would last, wonder no longer; seven months later, Apple has ceased distributing the MacBook to educational institutions, according to Mac Rumors. Apple has notified resellers that the plastic MacBook is now classified as "End of Life," meaning it will no longer be produced or sold to anyone. Production of the old model may have ceased as long ago as… -
Apple resellers in Europe say inventory delays affecting business
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 pmLife is a bit difficult for Apple's Premium Resellers in Europe now that the company is expanding retail locations throughout the continent. A post by France's Les Echos profiles a complaint by eBizcuss, the largest and first authorized reseller of Apple products in France (through their ICLG subsidiary), about the impact that the popular Apple Stores are having on the company. TUAW first covered this story in December, when we noted that eBizcuss has filed a lawsuit against Apple. eBizcuss saw sales fall 22 percent in the third quarter of 2011, and the company is teetering on the edge of…
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MacNN | The Macintosh News Network
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Foxconn server hacked, CEO's password published
8 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pmA hacker group calling itself SwaggSec has published data from internal Foxconn servers that the group hacked into, including usernames and passwords for management officials right up to and including CEO Terry Gou. While initial analysis of the data hasn't turned up any other sensitive information, the security breach prompted company officials to shut down its servers to prevent fraudulent orders that could appear to be from Foxconn's clients using the passwords.... -
Lenovo results: tops in work, desktops, 6.5m phones shipped
8 Feb 2012 | 7:15 pmLenovo as part of record results for its fall quarter clinched the top spots in key parts of the PC business. While it wouldn't give exact numbers, it mostly sided with IDC rankings that saw it claim 14 percent of the computer market worldwide, or second place. It was now large enough that it was the leader for shipments in work PCs of any kind as well as in home desktops.... -
Amazon Kindle Fire ad: three of these less than one iPad
8 Feb 2012 | 6:35 pmAmazon has started running one of its first TV ads for the Kindle Fire this week in a conspicuous jab at Apple. The spot (below) recalls Amazon's earlier ads criticizing the poor readability of the iPad but, this time, has an answer to the regular Kindle's lack of features. The $79 Kindle, combined with two $199 Kindle Fires, lets a mother at the beach give herself and her children a device each at under the price of an iPad.... -
White MacBook model for schools discontinued
8 Feb 2012 | 6:30 pmApple has now informed resellers that the educational version of the white MacBook, the last such model, is now discontinued, MacRumors reports. The $999 notebook was marked "end of life" for consumers last July, but the company continued to offer the model to educational institutions. The move marks the end of any non-aluminum Macs, and reflects the growing tendency of schools to focus on significantly-cheaper iPads as digital learning portals.... -
iBank developers to expand to iPad with iBank Access
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 pmIGG Software, which is planning to release a version of its iBank financial software for the iPad sometime later this year, has teased a new feature of the unreleased app on its developer blog. The product now has a name -- iBank Access -- and will feature a new optional service to automatically keep bank records and the app in sync every time the app is launched. The new feature, which expands the number of institutions available, will be available by subscription....
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SheGeeksSheGeeks | SheGeeks
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Brisk and Stars Wars Join Forces For BriskSaber Gaming App
13 Jan 2012 | 10:36 amYou can now find Brisk Iced Tea in a galaxy both far far away and as close as your iPhone or Android device. I’m talking about the BriskSaber game that is making a splash in the App Store and Android Market. In preparation for Stars Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3-D, Brisk joins forces with LucasFilms to put a modern and techie spin on classic Star Wars action and fun that’s hard to resist. Price: FreeDownload: iOS App Store | Android Marketplace Since its January 3rd debut, Brisksaber has amassed 520 reviews in the App Store rating it an incredible 4.5 star out of 5! -
The Next Generation RAZR: Motorola Droid RAZR Review
13 Jan 2012 | 7:26 amThe Motorola RAZR was a mobile icon during my early teen years. Just about everyone I knew had one. It was surprisingly thin for a phone! The screen was impressive and it could do one thing very well that all of my friends love: transfer ringtones via bluetooth. Fast forward to today and the Motorola RAZR doesn’t compare to my iPhone 4. So, I was skeptical and intrigued when Motorola announced a successor; the Motorola Droid RAZR. With the help of Verizon’s 4G LTE network, could the Droid RAZR recapture the swagger and appeal of the original RAZR? The Look & Feel Though the… -
How To Get The New Facebook Timeline Look Right Now
16 Dec 2011 | 7:49 pmFacebook Timeline is a drastic departure from the currently tired look of your Facebook profile. Announced at Facebook’s F8 conference in October, don’t be too quick dismiss Facebook Timeline as yet another new redesign from Facebook. It’s a complete departure from Facebook’s past! If you’re not afraid of change, here’s how you can get Facebook Timeline right now. If you don’t want to wait, you can get Facebook Timeline right now by visiting: Facebook.com/Timeline. In the bottom right corner of the page, you’ll see a green button with the… -
The Life of an Instagrapher: GE, Jet Engines, and Instagram
9 Dec 2011 | 1:47 pmAre you a frequent Instagram user? Would you like a free trip to a world-class GE jet engine facility in the UK to take pictures and send them to Instagram? If you answered yes, then great because you only have 3 days left to enter GE’s Instagrapher contest to make this wish come true! “For our next Instagram photo shoot, we’re going to a world-class GE jet engine facility in the UK to capture some amazing technology. Help us decide who the photographer should be. Because it could be you.” Get your iPhones ready and load up Instagram to begin entering the contest. But… -
Finding Great Content on Twitter Gets Easier With #newnewTwitter Redesign
8 Dec 2011 | 7:00 pmTwitter’s got a brand new look and not just a tweak here and there. Trending as the #newnewTwitter, it’s a fresh with a simplified and streamlined design, most of the changes center around getting the best content as quickly as possible. The redesign doesn’t stop at your desktop either. Twitter’s iPhone app, Android apps, and mobile website have received the new makeover too. Facebook, take notes! Readers, let’s take a look at what’s new, shall we? The new design may seem very different at first, but honestly it’s not. Mainly, a lot of things have…
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Digital Photography School
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How to Use Dome Diffuser to Eliminate Shadows and Harsh Light
8 Feb 2012 | 10:40 amA Guest Post by PhotographersOnUTube. One question I frequently get asked is how to get rid of shadows in the picture when the subject is close to a wall? Well, it depends on if the shadow is being created due to a specific angle of the speed light or you’re using some sort of a flash diffuser. A lot of photographers assume that the omni dome diffuser you get with your speed light is essential to making the light softer, which is not always true. In most cases that dome diffuser is used to spread the light in a very challenging lighting situation when you can’t bounce anything off the… -
Beginner’s Tip: Get Closer
8 Feb 2012 | 5:48 amI work with a lot of people just starting out in photography. People who want to move off of Auto mode and on to something more. And they show me their images, asking, “What can I do better?” I’ve started noticing a pattern in many of the images I have seen from new photography enthusiasts. It’s not absolute, but it is common enough that I write here today offering this bit of advice: Get closer. Here’s the pattern I see when I ask new photographers to photograph something of interest. I’ll illustrate the flow with photos most students start out with. First, they find something… -
Canon Update 3 Lenses including EF 24-70 F/2.8L II USM
7 Feb 2012 | 4:35 pmYesterday saw some excitement among our Nikon readers with the launch of the new Nikon D800 DSLR – but also announced yesterday were 3 new lenses from Canon. The main one of interest is the EF 24-70 F/2.8L II USM. Version I of this lens has always been a popular choice with photographers for quite a few years so an update is a logical one. The main updates included: More durable body Smaller Size (only slightly) Redesigned Optics New Zoom Lock lever to prevent damage in transit Unfortunately the update didn’t bring any Image Stabilisation to this lens – something that will… -
View a Short Film Shot on the New Nikon D800 DSLR
7 Feb 2012 | 4:10 pmWith the announcement of Nikon’s new D800 DSLR yesterday came a short film shot on the D800 that shows off some of the D800′s video shooting capabilities. The film is called ‘Joy Ride’ and was created by photographer – Sandro. The film showcases the D800′s ability to shoot in some tricky lighting conditions and situations (fast moving motorbikes, low light etc). Here it is: Also released by Sandro today was a behind the scenes video. It doesn’t contain a heap of technical info by will give you a feel for how it was shot. Post originally from: Digital… -
The Perfect Camera Bag for the Female Street Photographer
7 Feb 2012 | 10:15 amA review by Marianne Gilhuus. For the first time ever I have a camera bag that does not make me look like a photo geek! (Or, to be honest, for the first time in my life I have a real camera bag, with room for more than just one camera)! It is a beautiful leather bag (available in several beautiful different colours), which can be used/worn at any occasion. A great bag for combining shopping or having a coffee with friends, and photo shooting. And as the bag won’t give away that you are carrying a camera, it is ideal for a female street photographer! For me it is a small drawback that…
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Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog
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Words in stone and on the wind
3 Feb 2012 | 11:05 amAfter I wrote, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, about the malleability of text in electronic books, a reader asked me to flesh out my thoughts about the different ways that "typographical fixity" - to again borrow Elizabeth Eisenstein's term - can manifest itself in a book. I've been thinking about that and have come up with four categories of fixity or stability - not all of which are typographical in nature - that influence the permanence of a book (or other written work) and that change, sometimes radically, as we shift from print publishing to electronic publishing. I'm sure this… -
Saint Zuck
2 Feb 2012 | 7:58 am"Facebook was not originally created to be a company," writes Mark Zuckerberg at the start of his letter to would-be shareholders in the company's IPO filing. "It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected." Hosanna! One of the great things about our newly transparent world is that we can peer into people's pasts - I mean, their timelines - and see what they were doing and thinking way back when. And when you scroll Zuckerberg's timeline back to Facebook's formative days, you do indeed see a young man filled with philanthropic fervor, a man without… -
The camera in the stands
30 Jan 2012 | 10:19 pmThe wisdom of Pudge Fisk, channeled through Jon Udell: Somewhere in the 2000s, [Roger] Angell asked [Carlton] Fisk to reflect on what had most altered the game of baseball since his playing days. The salaries? The drugs? No. The game-changer, Fisk said, was instant replay. His game-winning 1975 home run is one of most-remembered moments in all of sports. The video of that event is one of the most-watched clips. You might think that Carlton Fisk has seen that clip a million times. But in fact, he told Roger Angell, he never watches it. That’s because he doesn’t want to overwrite the… -
Why publishers should give away ebooks
30 Jan 2012 | 10:45 amI used to buy a lot of MP3s. I don't anymore. That's not to say I don't listen to MP3s. I have about 10,000 of the little guys squeezed like vienna sausages into my iTunes music folder, and I listen to them a lot. But when I buy music today I buy it on vinyl. I'm no audiophile, no retro hepcat, but my ears tell me that music sounds better on vinyl - warmer, more nuanced, less shrill - and I make it a point to listen to my ears. Also, I've rediscovered the pleasures of looking at the art work on record jackets. Thumbnail images are pretty weak substitutes. In fact, they suck. But the decisive… -
Power to the data!
27 Jan 2012 | 11:21 amSeth Finkelstein, a long-time crusader against online censorship, made what seemed like a jaundiced comment on my recent post Piracy and Privacy. I had raised the possibility that online activists, fresh from their SOPA fight, might now come to the support of efforts to give people more control over the personal information that companies collect and trade online. Will the activists rise up again? I wondered. To which Finkelstein replied: No. Or maybe, they will rise up AGAINST privacy, because they will be fed a line that this is going to Censor The Net. Turns out Finkelstein wasn't being…
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Wired Top Stories
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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Feb. 9
8 Feb 2012 | 9:01 pmGoogle's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills. -
GigaOM Acquires PaidContent: Interview With GigaOM CEO Paul Walborsky
8 Feb 2012 | 5:30 pmOm Malik's GigaOM has purchased media news organization ContentNext, paidContent's parent company, from the UK's Guardian News & Media. -
Purported Pictures of iPad 3's Rear Casing Emerge
8 Feb 2012 | 4:28 pmThe launch of Apple's next iPad is just around the corner, if the presence of leaked parts images are any indicator. Today, what reasonably seems to be the rear casing of the new iPad has popped up in photo form on the interwebs. -
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gregory Brothers, ACLU Team for Video on Photographers' Rights
8 Feb 2012 | 4:10 pmBenjamin Franklin kicks an informative and hilarious rhyme about transparency and First Amendment protections for pro and amateur photographers in the latest video from Joseph Gordon-Levitt?s open collaborative production company, hitRECord. -
Researchers Build Hard Drive of Future With Lasers
8 Feb 2012 | 4:00 pmA team of researchers from across Europe and Asia has demonstrated a way of using laser heat to store data rather than magnetic fields, potentially increasing the speed of your hard drive by 100 times or more. Tom Ostler -- a physicist at the University of York, which led the research project -- tells Wired that this could not only allow allow your machine to save files much faster, but also reduce the machine's power consumption by avoiding traditional magnetic storage techniques.
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TechCrunch
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Remember Netvibes? It’s Finally Acquired By Engineering Giant Dassault Systèmes
8 Feb 2012 | 11:48 pmIt’s been a long and winding road since Tariq Krim created and eventually left Netvibes, but today Netvibes has been acquired by huge French engineering giant Dassault Systèmes for an undisclosed amount. Krim continues to pursue his original dream of organising the social web on Jolicloud. -
Analytics Dashboard Netvibes Sold To Dassault Systèmes
8 Feb 2012 | 11:06 pmNetvibes has just been acquired by European product design company Dassault Systèmes (sure this isn’t the type of thing I usually write, but I like the founder Tariq Krim so bear with me here … ). French startup Netvibes is a sentiment analytics dashboard that allows Fortune 500 companies to track their social media presence throughout the realtime web. Dassault is a “3D experience” design company — which lets designers virtualize how products will work in the real world — so the acquisition actually seems jarring at first, but Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini… -
Hipster CEO Also Apologizes For Address Book-Gate, Calls For “Application Privacy Summit” [Guest Post]
8 Feb 2012 | 8:07 pmThe following is a guest post from Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow, following yesterday and today’s revelations that select apps were uploading users’ entire address books to their databases. We blew it, we’re sorry, and we’re going to make it right. It’s Hipster’s goal to provide a fun and beautiful service for our community to share where they are, and what they are doing – creating a safe environment for our users is of the utmost importance to us. However, when we built our “Find Friends” feature for iOS, we clearly dropped the ball when it comes to protecting our… -
Is A Hash Of Hash Of A Torrent Of A Torrent Of Copyrighted Data Copyrighted?
8 Feb 2012 | 7:23 pmLet’s try to parse this. Pirate Bay (.se) user allisfine just recently uploaded a torrent to the site that is a collection of all the magnet identifiers for the entire site (actually, only about a quarter of the site, but all the publicly visible ones). That is to say, it is a list of the unique identifiers, cryptographic hashes, of every .torrent file on the site. In a way, this torrent file, or indeed its magnet identifier (938802790a385c49307f34cca4c30f80b03df59c), contains millions or billions of dollars worth of pirated content. Or does it? It’s more a philosophical question… -
Stealthy Startup timeRAZOR Raises $3.4M Pre-Launch, Partners With Major Household Brands
8 Feb 2012 | 7:01 pmGot FOMO? (That’s “fear of missing out” for those of you who don’t do slang.) There will soon be an app for that, or so says the $3.4 million in angel funding the stealthy D.C.-area startup called timeRAZOR has raised. In its pre-launch state, the curious company is already lining up brand partnerships with big names like Marriott and L’Oreal in preparation for its March debut. But what the heck is a timeRAZOR? According to CEO and co-founder, Jeff White (formerly the founder of govWin), timeRAZOR is a mobile application that will help people discover…
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Techmeme
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Protests against iPhone factory conditions planned Thursday for Apple Stores (Erica Ogg/GigaOM)
8 Feb 2012 | 10:55 pmErica Ogg / GigaOM: Protests against iPhone factory conditions planned Thursday for Apple Stores — Still unhappy with Apple's response to the New York Times' series on labor conditions in Chinese factories that make iPhones and iPads, two organizations are planning a globally coordinated protest on Thursday. -
60 million users engaged with apps on Facebook mobile platform since launch; average 5 times per month (Brendan Irvine-Broque/Inside Facebook)
8 Feb 2012 | 10:30 pmBrendan Irvine-Broque / Inside Facebook: 60 million users engaged with apps on Facebook mobile platform since launch; average 5 times per month — Facebook Director of Product Management Carl Sjogreen revealed that over 60 million users have engaged with mobile applications via Facebook, 320 million times per month since the mobile platform launched in October 2011. -
Alibaba Seeking $3 Billion Loan to Buy Back Yahoo Stake (Deal Journal)
8 Feb 2012 | 10:05 pmDeal Journal: Alibaba Seeking $3 Billion Loan to Buy Back Yahoo Stake — Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is in the process of raising a US$3 billion loan from around six banks to buy back the stake that Yahoo Inc. owns in the company, people familiar with the situation said Thursday. -
Facebook Hits A New Record High Value Of At Least $103.4 Billion (Jackie Cohen/All Facebook)
8 Feb 2012 | 9:40 pmJackie Cohen / All Facebook: Facebook Hits A New Record High Value Of At Least $103.4 Billion — Facebook stock has blown past even the most bullish estimates to a value of $103.4 billion to $110 billion, based on today's SharesPost auction closing at $44 per share. — The $103.4 billion figure is based … -
Google Wallet PIN cracked on rooted Android devices (Dieter Bohn/The Verge)
8 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pmDieter Bohn / The Verge: Google Wallet PIN cracked on rooted Android devices — The security of the PIN that protects Google Wallet transactions has been compromised — though most users won't need to worry about the issue for now, as it only applies to users who have rooted their Android smartphone.
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Ars Technica
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Chrome 17 released, will preload autocompleted URLs as you type
8 Feb 2012 | 7:20 pmGoogle has just released Chrome version 17, which brings several minor enhancements to the company's web browser— including a new web address preloading feature and improved protection against malicious downloads. The new Chrome introduces a preemptive rendering" feature that will automatically begin loading and rendering a page in the background while the user is typing the address in the omnibox (the combined address and search text entry field in Chrome's navigation toolbar). The preloading will occur in cases when the top match generated by the omnibox's autocompletion functionality… -
Transactional memory going mainstream with Intel Haswell
8 Feb 2012 | 6:10 pmIntel has announced that its Haswell architecture, due to ship some time in 2013, will include hardware support for transactional memory. Transactional memory is a promising technique designed to make the creation of reliable multithreaded programs easier. It does this by using a transactional model wherein complex operations can be performed concurrently, in isolation from each other, with those operations either completing or being undone as if they'd never been started—a model that developers are already familiar with from database programming. Read the comments on this post -
Game publishers. Huh? Good god, y'all, what are they good for?
8 Feb 2012 | 5:20 pmIf you ask people what a game developer does, most of them would give a simple answer—they make games. But if you ask someone what a game publisher does, most casual observers would have a much harder time giving you an answer. And these days, a lot of people in the game industry might have some questions about that, too. The DICE Summit on Wednesday hosted an interesting discussion of whether the traditional publisher role—which primarily involves supporting developers and marketing their titles—really has a place in a gaming world that's rapidly discarding old ideas and… -
Critics slam SSL authority for minting certificate for impersonating sites
8 Feb 2012 | 4:30 pmCritics are calling for the ouster of Trustwave as a trusted issuer of secure sockets layer certificates after it admitted minting a credential it knew would be used by a customer to impersonate websites it didn't own. The so-called subordinate root certificate allowed the customer to issue SSL credentials that Internet Explorer and other major browsers would accept as valid for any server on the Internet. The unnamed buyer of this skeleton key used it to perform what amounted to man-in-the-middle attacks that monitored users of its internal network as they accessed SSL-encrypted websites and… -
Ding dong, the white MacBook is dead—for real this time
8 Feb 2012 | 4:20 pmThe white plastic MacBook is officially dead for good after Apple notified resellers that it will no longer be available to educational institutions. The 13" machine was essentially killed off for most of the public last July, but the budget laptop continued to be available to schools for the last six months. Now, however, the machine has officially been EOL'd (End of Lifed), bringing the old iBook legacy to an end once and for all. As noted by MacRumors, Apple informed resellers of the product EOL on Wednesday, saying they had ended the educational distribution channel for the machine. It's…
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AppleInsider
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Leaked photo allegedly shows outside back cover of Apple's next iPad
8 Feb 2012 | 11:40 pmOn the heels of an earlier purported leak of the back panel of the third-generation iPad, new leaked photos have emerged showing an external view of the back panel of the rumored device, as well as magnets for an "iPad 3" Smart Cover. -
Alleged Foxconn hack allowed bogus orders to be placed for vendors
8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pmA "Greyhat" hacking group announced this week that it had successfully hacked contract manufacturer Foxconn and released usernames and passwords for vendors that could be used to place fraudulent orders for companies like Apple and Microsoft. -
White MacBook sales come to close as Apple ceases sales to education institutions
8 Feb 2012 | 7:45 pmApple has reportedly notified resellers that the white polycarbonate MacBook is now officially classified as "End of Life" and has been discontinued. -
Google says it won't support fair licensing in open standards as Apple, Microsoft, Cisco have
8 Feb 2012 | 6:18 pmIn a distinct departure from the agreement voiced between Apple, Cisco and Microsoft regarding the need for fair, transparent, understandable and consistent licensing policy for open standards, Google has promised to continue to wage Motorola's increasingly hostile patent wars. -
Cisco backs Apple's ETSI request for fair and open licensing of standards patents
8 Feb 2012 | 6:16 pmCisco Systems filed its own letter to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute last week, backing Apple's position calling for "more consistent and transparent application of FRAND" licensing commitments among the standards body's members.
