Gadgets & Games & Innovation Changing Our Lives
Tech Evolves At The Speed of Light
Nobel Prize For Economics Winners 2011: Americans Thomas Sargent And Christopher Sims Win For Macroeconomic Research
BRAIN DRAIN?
After Steve, Will Apple Execs Leave?
THE FUTURE.. THE LEGACY.. THE CREATIONS.. THE MEMORY..
iCON
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8 Current Technologies That Will Shape Our Future
Google To Offer AdWords Business Credit Card
WordPress Now Powers More Than 50 Million Sites
Open source blogging platform WordPress has reached an important milestone: It powers more than 50 million websites, about half of which are hosted on WordPress.com.Also, more than 287 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages on WordPress.com each month and, on an average day, WordPress.com users create about 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new comments, according to WordPress’ official stats.
Recently, WordPress competitor Tumblr surpassed 20 million blogs, passing WordPress.com in terms of the number of blogs hosted on the platform.
However, unlike Tumblr, WordPress lets users install and use the platform on their own web host. Due to the simplicity and versatility of the platform, WordPress isn’t only used to power blogs, it can also be used for running various types of personal, business and community websites.
How Social Media Is Fueling the Food Truck Phenomenon
Food trucks experienced a boom just as the economy started to tank. Social media has played a huge role in making the trucks more accessible, but also developing a loyal community.
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7 Ingenious Resumes That Will Make You Rethink Your CV
Want to stand out from the crowd of applicants? Check out these 6 impressive resumes to get you motivated.
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- Post Weinergate: 10 More People Who Lost Jobs Over Social Media Mistakes
In the last few years we’ve seen dozens of instances where individuals, celebrities, athletes and politicians have lost their jobs or been forced to resign because of content posted to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.
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Saudi Women Ready To Defy Driving Ban, Fueled by Social Media
Saudi Arabian women plan to start driving their cars Friday, a month after a female campaigner posted a YouTube video of herself driving.
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Chocolate Website Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Browser
Portuguese brewery Sagres has gone ahead and fashioned a website entirely out of chocolate to promote its new cocoa-flavored beer.
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“Angry Birds” Hits 1 Million Downloads Per Day
Rovio CEO announced that mobile sensation “Angry Birds” is now being downloaded over 1 million times each day.
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10 Ways Angry Birds Is Taking Over the World
We’ve gathered proof that Angry Birds has transcended almost every corner of the gaming world – not to mention, cooking!
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Facebook App for iPad Launching In “Coming Weeks”
A Facebook app for the iPad is about to become a reality. Years after the release of Facebook’s iPhone app’s rollout in July, 2008, the company’s finally finished a tablet-optimized version, said…
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Days After Debate, Pawlenty Has Comeback for Romney On Twitter
Three days after the New Hampshire Republican Presidential Debate, Tim Pawlenty is following through with his attack on Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan.
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Nintendo Crashes The Tablet World With A Game-Changing Entrance
Living room entertainment just got one step closer to having a true three-dimensional virtual environment: Nintendo’s new Wii U tablet remote control scans a virtual world in 360 degrees as the user moves it in orbit around his or her body. The brand new technology opens exciting possibilities for not just gaming, but for the exploding tablet market.
Google: Gmail Attack from China Affects ‘Senior U.S. Government Officials’
By Doug Aamoth on June 1, 2011
Lady Gaga Sells Entire New Album on Amazon
Alex HoytOn the Floor Laughing
The modern trader is playing the most sophisticated, dynamic, immersive game in the world. Here’s how it works.
App Sees Faces & Tags Friends in Photos
Viewdle is a computer vision company that has been quietly working on science and technology that enable machines to “see.” The startup’s first consumer release comes in the form of an Android application that can see faces and will surely make it more conspicuous.
SocialCamera, being released for Android Wednesday, is a camera application that recognizes faces and tags friends in photos. Users can then easily share the photo with a tagged friend via MMS or email or post it to Facebook and Flickr with associated people tags attached.
“We want to take the tagging out of sharing photos and make it as automatic as possible,” says Jason Mitura,Viewdle‘s chief product officer.
SocialCamera users will need to create “faceprints” — for example, teach the application that a particular face is your friend Joe — for friends in photos. Once a face has been tagged, the faceprint is saved and the app user will no longer need to tag that friend again. Eventually, faceprints will be able to be carried over to future Viewdle applications or shared with friends, which should eliminate redundant tagging.
The SocialCamera application is only for photos. Mitura, however, says that the startup already has the same tagging features for video capture working, so users can expect video support to be included in a future release.
“SocialCamera is the first in a series of applications that leverage true computer vision to build new social experiences and gaming experiences,” Mitura says.
Lest you confuse Viewdle as just another facial recognition company — an easy mistake considering SocialCamera’s faceprint features — Mitura describes the company as working on “computer vision-powered augmented reality.”
“The first object that we’re doing is faces,” he says, “but we’re not limited to just doing faces.”
Viewdle’s technology is capable of identifying any object as seen through a computer or mobile lens, so long as it builds accompanying object detectors and recognizers, Mitura says. The company will be adding edge detection and plane detection to its SDK, for instance. The technology would enable users to rotate and augment real-world objects.
Viewdle’s raised $12.7 million in funding. Investors include Best Buy, BlackBerry Partners Fund, Qualcomm and Anthem Venture Partners.
Playstation Network suspended for weeks
An error message like this one greeted users trying to log-in to the Playstation NetworkMillions of gamers are unable to play online as the Playstation Network remains unavailable.
Users are seeing error messages stating the network is “undergoing maintenance” or is “suspended”.
In a blog post, makers Sony thanked users for their patience but warned the downtime – which has so far lasted more than 20 hours – could continue for “a day or two”.
In recent weeks, Playstation has been targeted by hackers group Anonymous.
The group appeared to deny being responsible for the attack, releasing a message stating “for once we didn’t do it”.
The network has more than 70 million users worldwide, but Sony were unable to clarify how many players had been affected.
However, Twitter messages and blog posts have been posted from all over the world.
Trending Story
Sen. Franken Quizzes Steve Jobs On iPhone Tracking
After Wednesday’s revelation that iPhones have been storing location data since iOS 4.0, now it’s time for the fallout. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., was concerned enough about it to send Apple a letter, asking how and why this happened.
In the letter (full text here), Franken wants to know why Apple collected and compiled this data, why it wasn’t encrypted, whether it’s compiled on laptops, how it’s generated, how frequently the location data is recorded, how precise it is, who’s using the data and why consumers weren’t told about it.
Adding to this congressional inquiry was Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who is co-chairman of the House Bipartisan Privacy Caucus. He wrote his own letter to Apple, asking “Is it an iPhone or an iTrack? Apple needs to safeguard the personal location information to ensure that an iPhone doesn’t become an iTrack.”
Why did Apple do this? Respected Apple watcher John Gruber writes in his Daring Fireball blog that he doesn’t have a definitive answer, but says he has some insider information about the location tracking on the iPhone, calling it “an oversight” on the part of Apple:
“…my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn’t, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that’s meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history. I’d wager this gets fixed in the next iOS update.”
Apple still hasn’t commented about that location-tracking consolidated.db file.
There is a fix for the problem now, but only if you’ve jailbroken your iPhone. An app called Untrackerd made a surprisingly quick appearance on Cydia, the app store for jailbroken iPhones, and according to 9 to 5 Mac, will remove that location data and prevent more from being recorded.
Meanwhile, tech guru Andy Ihnatko downplayed the damage done by the tracking file, pointing out that it’s not storing GPS data, but less-precise cellphone tower triangulation data that only reveals “that you were in a certain vicinity.” He adds that the consolidated.db file is inaccessible unless someone possess both your iPhone and your computer. Finally, he says it’s “a non-issue if you’ve clicked the ‘Encrypt iPhone Backup’ option in iTunes.”
We’re expecting to see a response from Apple soon, and we’re hoping for a fix (that doesn’t require jailbreaking) that will give users the ability to turn off this tracking and delete its data.
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James Cameron, Vince Pace Announce New 3D Venture
- Carolyn Giardina
Their new company, Cameron-Pace Group, aims to develop, sell and lease 3-D production technology to filmmakers, broadcasters and game manufacturers. Read more
nder the hood is what Apple calls a “dramatically faster” processor, Apple’s custom-designed dual-core A5 chip that uses the same amount of power as its predecessor, the A4, but it’s twice as fast, and Apple says its graphics processing is “up to nine times faster.” Job says that despite that new power, battery life will be the same at 10 hours.Jobs said the iPad 2 is 33% thinner than the first iPad, and a mere 8.8mm thick (down from 13.4mm of the original iPad) — thinner even than the iPhone 4. It’s also lighter, 1.3 lb as opposed to the 1.5 lb weight of its predecessor. There will be both of front and rear facing cameras on board, with the back camera capable of video recording at 720p at 30 frames per second, and the front camera is a VGA quality camera for videoconferencing.
Along with the new hardware, Apple will offer a $39 HDMI adapter that will allow users to output 1080p video in a mirrored configuration. That will allow users to watch iPad content on an HDTV while still viewing that same content on the iPad’s screen (which is the same as its predecessor at 1024 x 768 pixels).
Ordering starts for the iPad 2 in both white and black on March 11 in the U.S. (March 25 in 26 more countries). It’ll be offered in 16GB, 32GB of 64GB models, either with Wi-Fi or both Wi-Fi and 3G, all for the same prices of the original iPad:
many questioned the long-term success of the product — could Apple, a newcomer to the mobile space, make a name for itself. The answer, unequivocally, is yes.Last month, Verizon became the second U.S. carrier to sell the iPhone and some analysts have posited that Big Red has already moved 1 million units. Apple didn’t break out any carrier-specific numbers, however, by pointing out that 100 million iPhones — the company is pointing out its success in the market.
Other interesting numbers from the event:
- More than 200 million iTunes Store accounts exist — Apple believes that they may have the most accounts with credit cards anywhere online.
- $2 billion cumulative has been paid to developers in the App Store.
- 100 million books have been downloaded from iBooks
- 15 million iPads were sold in the first 9 months of release
Today’s event is all about iPad 2 and Mashable will be reporting more about the new device throughout the day.
Trending Story
Morocco & Libya Unrest As Seen Via YouTube
turned violent and fatal for some and unrest continues in beleaguered Libya.
As pro-democracy protests spread like a virus through many parts of the Middle East and North Africa, social media is still providing both a tool for organizers and a valuable window for the outside world into the volatile and intricate political situations in many countries.
Unrest in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Bahrain and elsewhere has taken center stage in world news for the past several weeks. In many of these countries, the government has completely or partially cut off Internet access during protests, especially since protesters have been using sites such as Twitter and Facebook to organize and gather support.
But the situation in Morocco, a constitutional monarchy with a notably pro-democracy king, is quite different from what we’ve seen in countries where decades-long dictatorships have predictably brewed strong and angry dissent.
The Kingdom of Morocco’s current ruler, King Mohammed VI, has reigned since July 1999. The dual-house parliament is led by Prime Minister Abbas el-Fassi, who came into office in September 2007.
Protesters are asking the king to relinquish some of his powers and dismiss the current government, in addition to other constitutional reform demands. Before the weekend, a government spokesperson noted that the administration was not too worried about the protests, saying the country “for a long time has been engaged in an irreversible process towards democracy and widening public liberties.”
The protests were not expected to escalate into lootings and arson, but that’s exactly what happened yesterday. While most protesters were peaceful at the outset, some youth and “troublemakers” began committing acts of vandalism and theft, accorrding to Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui, who spoke in a press conference today.
Currently, approximately 128 people, mostly security officers, are reported injured, 120 people have been arrested, and five are reported dead, the latter specifically due to a bank that was set on fire. It is estimated that more than 37,000 Moroccans showed up to protest in dozens of cities around the country.
Historically, Morocco has been known to censor websites that might allow for certain freedoms of expression or that facilitate or encourage negative portrayals of the government. The usual roster of social networks have been used to coordinate protests in thr country over the weekend; in particular, several Facebook groups have been formed, and Twitter users are employing the hashtag #feb20. However, we are not aware that any censorship is currently occurring in Morocco.
More peaceful protests are slated to continue today in Morocco.
Meanwhile, in Libya, the Internet was shut down for six hours during violent protests against longtime dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi. When the country’s Internet access was returned, users immediately began turning to Twitter and Google maps to spread news and alert the world of known fatalities.
Yesterday, Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam made a video statement, even as violence continued in the troubled country and foreign governments called for the end of the use of lethal force by the Libyan government.
Google has launched major updates to Social Search, integrating information from Twitter, Flickr and Quora throughout its search engine.
The search giant launched Social Search in 2009; the feature integrates search results from your friends at the bottom of the search page. It utilizes social profiles connected to your Google Account to deliver items like photo or blog results that come from your friends.
Google’s now making some prominent changes to Google Social Search, and it is announcing three new websites that will appear prominently in social search results. We had a chance to speak with Mike Cassidy, product management director for search, about the changes.
The first major change is that Google Social Search results will no longer appear only at the bottom of the page, but will instead be “blended” throughout the page. This is done through an annotation system that lets you know when a friend has shared a specific link or search result. If your friend writes a blog about how to create honey, that result will have an annotation that your friend has “shared this,” either via Google or through one of Google’s three major social integrations.
Speed Test Top 4 SmartPhones, you might be surprised !
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Is Facebook a good place for kids? U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama doesn’t seem to think so. She says she’s happy her daughters aren’t using the popular social networking service.
Obama’s daughters, Sasha, 9, and Malia, 12, aren’t allowed to use Facebook for security purposes. However, the first lady isn’t too concerned about her daughters missing out. Facebook is “not something they need,” she said.
“I’m not a big fan of young kids having Facebook,” Obama said on NBC’s Today Show Wednesday.
President Obama is also aware of the perils of social networking. Speaking to students in a Virginia high school, Obama also warned the kids about Facebook, telling them to be “careful about what (they) post on Facebook” as it will be “pulled up again later somewhere in (their) life”.
Facebook restricts user sign up to 13 years of age or older, but at what age should parents start allowing their children to use online social networking services? Please, share your opinions in the comments.
Internet Telecommunication Union estimated that at the end of 2010 there were 5.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide and that a full 90% of the world population now has access to a mobile network. In contrast, only about 2 billion people have Internet access.The high prevalence of mobile phones (even in developing countries, penetration rates were expected to reach 68% by the end of 2010) has led many non-profits to choose mobile networks as tools for positive change. Mobile banking in Kenya has helped farmers increase their incomes, 300,000 people in Bangladesh signed up to learn English through their phones, and many consider mobile phones the key to developing nations.
But Bratt, now the CEO of The World Wide Web Foundation, came up with a different hypothesis when he looked at the 3.3 billion-person gap between mobile phone users and Internet users. Theoretically, he thinks that the two numbers could one day even out as people use their phones to log onto the Internet.
The problem is that for a person in a developing country, the current Internet is nearly useless.
“Maybe they can look at scores from the playoffs, but if they want to find a local doctor, if they want to understand which crops to plant or how much money they can get for their crops, if they want to be able to teach their kids a language other than English or French or Chinese, there’s just nothing for them there,” Bratt says.
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It’s Official: The iPhone Is Coming to Verizon
Mobile After more than four years, AT&T’s exclusivity on iPhone in the U.S. is set to come to an end on Tuesday, with Verizon expected to announce the launch of the device on its network at an event in New York City.
The move has been a long time coming; rumors of a Verizon iPhone have intensified significantly in the past year, while frustration with AT&T’s network reliability has continued to mount. At the same time, rival carriers have launched dozens of Android devices,
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Social Media MySpace has officially announced that it will be reducing its staff by 47%, confirming rumors that have been surrounding the site since late last month.
A statement from CEO Mike Jones indicates that approximately 500 employees will be affected…
At a special press conference in New York City, Verizon has confirmed that it will be carrying the iPhone 4 early next month.
Apple COO Tim Cook joined Verizon COO Lowell McAdam on stage
Entertainment Can you go wrong combining Legos and ninjas?
Probably not, which is why Lego is making a big production out of a new property called Ninjago. Think “production” as in movie production.
Tech Jeremy Toeman has worked in the field of convergence between computers, the Internet and TV for more than 10 years. He is a founding partner of Stage Two, a consumer technology product experience firm in San Francisco,
Mobile Amazon has launched Amazon Deals, a free iPhone app that gives you an overview of the new daily deals from Amazon’s Gold Box service.
From the app, you can monitor deals and even act on them
Business Hotels.com is the latest brand to jump on the avatar customization trend with “Clay Yourself,” an app that lets consumers make clay likenesses.
Well, sort of. Unlike Office Max’s holiday campaign Elf Yourself, which lets you import your headshot
Business Groupon has acquired three local competitors in three countries – SoSasta, Groupoer and Twangoo – and subsequently announced the launch of Groupon India, Groupon Israel and Groupon South Africa.
Groupon has raised $950 million in a recent round of financing
Verizon Wireless is inviting the press to a special event on Tuesday morning in New York, hosted by president and COO Lowell McAdam. Could this be the long-awaited announcement of the Verizon iPhone?
That looks to be the case, at least according to All Things D’s sources. A Verizon iPhone announcement would be the culmination of years of speculation and anticipation.
In recent months, we’ve been privy to clues of the phone’s imminent arrival, and earlier this morning Boy Genius Report…
Web Video CES 2011 is drawing to a close, friends, and as we take stock of all the glimmering new technological goodies glinting on the horizon, one thought springs to mind: When will this stuff finally become self-aware and kill us all?…
Those who have always dreamed of getting their hands on some Angry Birds — literally — are in luck. Sort of. Mattel will be adapting the immensely popular Angry Birds mobile game into a board game.
![HANDS-ON: Motorola Xoom and Android Honeycomb [VIDEO]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/motorola-xoom-225.jpg)
The Motorola Xoom is the first tablet to run the Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” OS. Revealed at CES earlier this week, the device sports a 1GHz dual core processor, a 10-inch screen and 4G connectivity.
![Sharp Builds Huge Video Cube With 60 LCD Panels [VIDEO]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sharp-cube.jpg)
Sharp installed a remarkable video cube at its CES 2011 booth. There are screens on the ceiling, walls and floor — sixty-four 60-inch LCD panels in all — fashioning an immersive video environment that seems downright real.…
Business Rounding out a list of eight acquisitions in the past seven months, Zynga has purchased “social web browser” Flock.
Introduced in 2005, Flock incorporates Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn statuses via a sidebar and also boasts a link-sharing feature and a…
![HANDS ON: Intel’s Unreal Interactive Graphics Experience at CES [VIDEO]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/christina_intel.jpg)
Intel has a gorgeous installation at its CES booth, and our own Christina Warren is there to guide you through the graphical techno-thrills.
The “Visably Smart Experience” shows off second-generation Intel Core processors, running some serious graphics…
Entertainment Hulu Plus, the all-you-can-watch premium Hulu service, will soon become available on Android phones.
A Hulu Plus application for select Android devices running OS 2.2 (Froyo) will make its debut in a few months time, CEO Jason Kilar announced
There’s nothing wrong with being one of the 42 million people who have enjoyed launching virtual birds at virtual pigs when few other options for entertainment presented themselves.
But you have to admit that, especially with a resource…
Entertainment Entertainment checkin service GetGlue and cable network Showtime have struck up a first-time promotional deal that could earn fans some free DVDs.
GetGlue users will be able to check in to staple shows like Californication and newer series like Shameless…
![A Paintbrush Stylus for the iPad [VIDEO]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/stylus_image.jpg)
Finger painting on the iPhone and iPod has become something of a phenomenon, thanks to apps like Brushes [iTunes link] and SketchBook Pro [iTunes link], and the work of high-profile artists like David Kassan, the New Yorker’s Jorge…
Tech Yury Lifshits is working on algorithms and prototypes of new services at Yahoo! Research. Before that he was teaching university courses in the U.S., Germany, Russia and Estonia. He blogs at yurylifshits.com and publishes his teaching materials at yury.name/teaching.
Happy (Almost) New Year, Googlers! To celebrate the dawn of 2011, Google (
) is out with a brand-new Doodle, a festive little number (pun intended) featuring fireworks and the roman numerals signifying “2011.”
This is hardly the first holiday the Doodle has honored — Google has celebrated Halloween with sweet treats, Thanksgiving with gluttony, and the collective holidays with an array of cultural scenes.
Social Media The past year was an eventful one for the world of social networking. Facebook went on an acquisition spree. Twitter startedgrowing up. And MySpace? Well it’s the same old story over there.
In 2010, we predicted that Facebook would conquer the web. We just didn’t know the social network would do it so convincingly. We’re not oracles, though, and we did miss on some of our acquisition picks. Well, time for round two.
Startups How we engage with the people, places and things around us is ever-changing thanks to rapid improvements in mobile and web technologies. The speed at which this evolution takes place will only continue to accelerate in 2011 with the help…
Entertainment Texts messages and parents — both are entities that are rife with humor (see: Sh*t My Dad Says, Damn You Auto Correct!). And, when they come together in sweet, awkward union, well, then there’s When Parents Text.
Business AT&T has agreed to pay $1.93 billion for wireless spectrum from Qualcomm Inc. The spectrum, which should cover approximately 300 million people, is part of AT&T’s plan to upgrade its current network, while continuing to build its next generation LTE…
Business Want to get paid to tweet? Or create mobile apps? How about landing a job as an SEO/SEM specialist?
Whatever your speciality, interest or preferred method for finding a job, we’ve likely talked to experts in the past
Business Fresh off rejecting Google’s $6 billion acquisition offer, Groupon has added a new CFO, a move that will undoubtedly fuel further speculation that the quickly growing e-commerce outfit will go public.
Social Media In many ways, 2010 was finally the year of mobile for news media, and especially so if you consider the iPad a mobile device. Many news organizations like The Washington Post and CNN included heavy social media integrations
![How Consumers Are Using Smartphones in Stores [STUDY]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mobile-shopper225.jpg)
Business Smartphone-toting consumers are increasingly using the devices to scout out better deals when shopping in-store, a new survey reveals.
Thirty percent of consumers with smartphones said while at a store looking for a product, they scout out better deals
Apple Peter Meyers is a digital book producer and the author of Best iPad Apps (O’Reilly Media). He’s covered the intersection of writing and technology for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired and blogs at anewkindofbook.com.
Business Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is visiting China, and one of his first stops was the Beijing headquarters of China’s largest search engine Baidu.
Photos of Zuckerberg in Baidu quickly appeared online, said Baidu’s director of international communications
Tech Google has launched its long-awaited e-bookstore, Google E-books, bringing more than 3 million books — many of them free — to any device with a web browser in the U.S.
The initiative, previously known as Google Editions, offers an alternative sales model from the dominant players in the space, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple.
Instead of purchasing e-books through a single online store to read only on compatible software (i.e. books bought from the Kindle Store can only be read…
Social Good Twitter is getting ready to auction of signed bottles of its own Fledgling wine — along with some face time with co-founder Biz Stone — just in time for some holiday charitable giving.
Proceeds will benefit the Room to…
Dev & Design It’s official: Google Wave is now Apache Wave.
A couple weeks ago, Google made a proposal to the Apache Software Foundation to take the reins on Wave. Wave, which only launched to the public in 2009, saw lackluster adoption; Google
Tech This post is part of the Mashable 10, Mashable’s gift guide of the 10 hottest gadgets that that our editors think should be on everyone’s wish lists this holiday season. Read about all 10 gadgets here.
![This Morning’s Biggest Stories in Tech & Social Media [World AIDS Day Edition]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/morning-brief-news-225.jpg)
Tech Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on four particular stories of interest today.
Non-Profits Raise Awareness…
Opera.com has a very special front page today, featuring the entire “inbox” of Opera co-founder Jon S. von Tetzchner.
You can actually read all the messages in Jon’s e-mail folders (check them out, some of them are quite…
Tech Consumers in a recent study said they plan to spend more on gadgets and electronics during the 2010 holiday season than they did last year. On the flip side, a large percentage of the same consumers also said they’d be…
![We Hold These Tweets To Be Self-Evident [COMIC]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ben-franklin-twitter-450.jpg)
Social Media If Twitter had been invented in 1776 instead of 2006, the American Revolution would have been so much more … what’s the word … awesome.
Tech This post is part of the Mashable 10, Mashable’s gift guide of the 10 hottest gadgets that that our editors think should be on everyone’s wish lists this holiday season. To view all 10 posts, please visit this link.
…
![Where Will You Do Your Holiday Shopping: Online or In Stores? [POLL]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/holiday-shopping-150x150.png)
Business I have to admit, when I walked up to Best Buy two days ago and saw two eager consumers already waiting by the front door in a camping tent, I felt a tiny bit smug.
This year, I had chosen…
Social Media Facebook has received a notice of allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the trademark on the word “face” when used in the context of online chat rooms or bulletin boards.
Facebook filed for this trademark in December 2005. The notice of allowance does not mean that Facebook has been granted the trademark just yet, but it’s getting really close. In the next three months, Facebook must pay a fee and file a statement of use, at which time it must prove…
Social Media Sending dancing elf e-cards, streaming holiday tunes from Pandora, searching for online retail deals — yes, it’s that time of year again.
The holiday season is in full force on the web, and this year, Mashable is spreading cheer both…
Web Video So cometh that day of thanks, when we all ruminate on the events of the year past, and then lapse into the inevitable food coma.
Being reflective folk over here at Mashable, we have decided to take a brief…
Business Location-based social network Foursquare announced Monday that it has registered more than 4.5 million users. To complement its growth, the startup has also opened an office in San Francisco.
The reason? Foursquare is vying for engineer talent in the Bay…
Tech This post is part of the Mashable 10, Mashable’s gift guide of the 10 hottest gadgets that will be on everyone’s wish list this holiday season. We’ll be publishing one new post each weekday until November 26.
Social Good Charity work and non-profits are getting a shot of reality-TV inspired, crowdsourced, social gaming goodness just in time for the holidays. Yoxi, pronounced “YO-see,” is a new website that challenges teams of everyday people to create solutions for pressing social…
Business The International Business Series is brought to you by UPS. Discover the new logistics. It levels playing fields and lets you act locally or globally. It’s for the individual entrepreneur, the small business, or the large company.
Startups Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford are two Amazon alumni transferring their e-commerce background and social product discovery experience to mobile in the form of Barcode Hero, an iPhone application that is receiving a massive update today.
Tech We’ve been bombarded with a fair number of pitches for holiday-themed iPhone and iPad applications as of late (some of which we’ve profiled in a recent roundup of recipe apps for the iPad), but there’s one in particular we’d like…
Social Media Facebook’s putting up some big numbers in terms of U.S. web traffic. Right now, the site accounts for one out of every four pageviews in the United States — that’s 10% of all Internet visits.
Tech Looking for a great gift for the tinkerer in your life?
If you’ve got a gadget geek, science nerd, engineer or other electronics-obsessed loved one, this list will be a life-saver. We’ve gathered a group of DIY electronics kits, ranging…
Business Google just gained a new partner in its Google TV Ads platform: Verizon FiOS TV.
The new partnership means that advertisers who buy ad space through Google AdWords for TV now have access to more than 50 networks carried by…
![What’s on Your Holiday Gadget Wish List? [OPEN THREAD]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/presents.jpg)
Tech This post is part of the Mashable 10, Mashable’s gift guide of the 10 hottest gadgets that will be on everyone’s wish list this holiday season. We’ll be publishing one new post each weekday until November 26.
Social Media The CEO of Zynga, the company behind FarmVille, has a new vision and goal for his company moving forward: to “dog activate” the world.
During his talk at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Zynga founder and CEO Mark…
Startups Zynga, the social gaming platform valued at $4 billion, is now reporting three million concurrent users playing its suite of games at peak hours during the day.
That’s just one of many impressive stats CEO Mark Pincus shared in…
Twitter’s Director of Media Partnerships Robin Sloan spoke Wednesday about the role of tweets in the television landscape at the NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco. Specifically, he focused on three key areas where he believes Twitter is…
Social Media BreakingNews.com, an extension of the popular @BreakingNews Twitter account that MSNBC Digital Network bought in December 2009, has added new social crowdsourcing features to its site enabling users to submit their tweets, photos or videos. The site also recently unveiled…
Popular note-taking platform Evernote continues its hockey stick-style growth and is today celebrating 5 million users. Evernote is now signing up new users in record time; the jump from 4 million to 5 million users happened in just…
![E-Book Market Surges to $1 Billion [REPORT]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/tornbooks.jpg)
Business Customers will have bought $966 million in e-books by the end of 2010, according to a new report from Forrester.
The report says the e-book market still has tremendous room to grow, as only 7% of online adults who…
![PlayStation Move Gets Visualized [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/move-infographic-225.jpg)
Last week, Sony announced that more than 1 million PlayStation Move units have been shipped in North America. That’s a pretty solid start for Sony’s take on motion-controlled gaming, a category that is getting plenty of attention this…
Social Media David A. Yovanno is the CEO of Gigya, Inc., a leading social optimization platform for online business. He can be found on Twitter at @daveyovanno or e-mail dave(at)gigya(dot)com.
When it comes to Facebook, if you’re uncertain where and when to…
Facebook Makes Signing Into Mobile Apps Incredibly Easy
Already quickly becoming a login standard across the web, Facebook is now making moves to do the same in the mobile world.
At a press conference today in Palo Alto:
The company revealed a new platform feature than enables developers to add single click Facebook sign-in to their mobile applications. A number of major partners have already implemented or are planning to add the option, including Groupon, Yelp, Loopt and social gaming giant Zynga.Previously, Facebook offered Facebook Connect for iPhone and Android. Single sign-on, it would appear, offers a somewhat simpler experience that, much like the Open Graph API on the web, enables users to be persistently logged in via their mobile device and simply click a Facebook branded “login” button on apps that implement the option.
From there, apps and mobile sites would conceivably be able to add similar functionality to that we see in web apps, like the ability to “like” stories or interact with friends. We’re still live at the Facebook press event and will update when we know a bit more about the specifics.
Social Media The Future of Social Media Series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. See how it works here.
Politicians are brands. Like their counterparts in the private sector, we’ve seen some pretty interesting things when it comes to using social media on the campaign trail.
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Social Good In response to increasing concerns about teenagers’ safety on Facebook, SafetyWeb.com, a web-based monitoring site, has introduced a new “Find Help” application on Facebook.
The app allows users to report any violation or cyber-bullying to Facebook officials…
LinkedIn is looking to get brands more involved with the site’s users through the launch of a suite of features designed to give them a stronger presence on the business social network.
Social Media Leveraging the continuing popularity of food blogging and its own vast content collection, WordPress.com has just launched FoodPress, the service’s first swipe at niche content aggregation.
Social Media Facebook has once again teamed up with app developer Involver to release the Facebook Polling Place Locator on the U.S. Politics Facebook Page as part of the Voting Information Project.
Social Media Twitter will begin today expanding its ad platform, Promoted Tweets, to the individual streams of its users.
The new ads, like their Twitter Search counterparts, will be targeted based primarily on keywords; it’s designed to only serve ads
Tech BlackBerry users in India, you’re in the clear. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed in an announcement that discussions with BlackBerry maker RIM have led to an interim agreement.
![Drupal Founder on Why Open Source is Good for Business [INTERVIEW]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Dries.jpg)
Fresh off of an $8.5 million round of funding that was announced earlier today, Acquia co-founder Dries Buytaert is feeling pretty good about the open source business model. The company that he co-founded in 2007 sells software and…
Social Media The launch of the new MySpace begins today; it marks not only the release of a completely overhauled design, but the start of a fundamental shift in focus for what was once the world’s preeminent social network.
MySpace will roll out a completely revamped interface to its users starting today, but the rollout won’t be complete until the end of November. And because so much has changed, we can’t possibly cover every aspect of the new website and mobile experience
Business As of today, ads on Yahoo are now being served by Microsoft, the latest integration to come of the search and advertising partnership the two companies signed last year.
Business Josh Peters is a social media and Internet marketing consultant and the co-author of Twittfaced. He blogs at Shuaism and can usually be found hanging out on Twitter, Facebook or …
Mobile Not satisfied to sit on the sidelines of checkin games, the NBA is releasing NBA Turnstile, a mobile checkin service that lives inside NBA Game Time.
Entertainment We see you out there — the future musicians of the world, pouring coffee, mixing drinks, designing websites for shifty moving companies, all the while dreaming of making it big: signing to a label, cutting a record, reaping the benefits…
![How iPad Magazine Sales Stack Up [REPORT]](http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ipad-magazines-225.jpg)
How iPad Magazine Sales Stack Up [REPORT]
Ad Age has taken an in-depth look at the first six months of iPad magazine sales. The verdict? Depending on the genre and the type of engagement, iPad sales represent a sliver or a sizable chunk of newsstand results.
The data, which didn’t include Hearst’s new Esquire app for iPad, unsurprisingly showed that Conde Nast’s Wired is the most successful magazine on the iPad.
The first issue of Wired on the iPad sold 105,000 copies, according to Ad Age. That was significantly higher than the print sales for the same issue. Since then, Wired for iPad has sold an average of 30,000 copies per month, or about 37% of the newsstand sales.
The fact that the core Wired audience aligns well with many iPad owners (raise of hands – how many of you hadn’t purchased a copy of Wired in years before it hit the iPad? I know I hadn’t), not to mention its marketing campaign, is likely responsible for the continued success of the magazine on the new medium. Likewise, the fact that sales of Popular Science for iPad are equivalent of about 12% of newsstand sales is probably indicative of a tech/science connection with early adopters.
In comparison, lifestyle magazines like Glamour and Men’s Health are pulling in less than 1% of iPad sales when compared to their newsstand counterparts. People magazine for iPad is averaging 10,800 copies a week. However, the People app is unique in that it is free for print subscribers. Time Inc. declined to breakdown how many of its downloads were from print subscribers. Regardless, like Glamour and Men’s Health, iPad downloads only equal about 1% of People’s single-copy newsstand sales.
Magazines like GQ and Vanity Fair, which like Esquire, go for more in-depth articles and longer sustained reading experiences, are doing better than the lifestyle magazines but not as well as tech. GQ for iPad is averaging about 7% of its newwstand counterparts while Vanity Fair is doing about 2%.
Just Getting Started
As Ad Age notes, most advertisers that are embracing the iPad as a platform recognize that the digital magazine world is in its infancy. As impressive as iPad sales continue to be, they still only represent about 5.2 million US owners and the device is only six months old.
It’s also important to note that where digital magazines are really poised to take off is with subscriptions. Apple and major publishers continue to hash away at terms that will bring subscription pricing to the iPad. We agree with Ad Age and with publishers, once subscriptions become an option, the iPad magazine game will get a lot bigger.
Don’t Forget to Offer Value
When looking at what magazine titles are succeeding on the iPad and what titles are faltering, we can’t help but draw some direct correlations between those titles that have invested the most in the technology and those that are simply just putting a glorified PDF in an iPad-app wrapper.
Esquire and Wired are two examples of magazines that are really designed to make the most of the iPad as a medium. As Josh Koppel of Scroll Motion, the company responsible for Esquire for iPad, expressed to us, “it’s about being additive, not reductive.” In other words, it’s not going to be enough to just offer a digital copy of text on a screen. Readers want a better experience.
At least right now, providing that experience takes time. However, in the future, more tools and solutions for creating more robust experiences on the iPad will be available to publishers.
It will be interesting to re-evaluate the state of the magazine industry on tablet devices in another six to 12 months. We think this is an area that is only going to get bigger over time.
Business Beginning Wednesday, Starbucks customers who use the free Wi-Fi at more than 6,800 U.S. company-operated stores will be greeted with the Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) — an exclusive content network curated by the company and designed to enhance the customer’s in-store experience.
Starbucks has been teasing SDN for months, but now that the network is about to go live we have a much clearer idea about the type of content provided and the purpose behind the digital endeavor.
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Tech An investigation by Canada’s privacy commissioner confirmed that Google violated Canadian privacy law when its Street View cars collected data from the country’s Wi-Fi networks.
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