Why Pinterest is 2012′s hottest website

Posted on February 9, 2012 by nicole
By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN, www.cnn.com
Tue February 7, 2012 | Filed under: Web
Pinterest, the web-based
Pinterest, the web-based “pinboard”, which launched almost two years ago, barely got a mention until 6 months ago.

 

Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about tech news and digital culture. He writes regular columns about social media and tech for CNN.com.

(CNN) — Pinterest is the breakout social network of 2012, but even technology addicts could be excused for missing its rise to success.

The web-based “pinboard,” which launched almost two years ago, barely got a mention on Silicon Valley news sites until six months ago, when early adopters suddenly realized that a site with millions of monthly users had sprung up almost unnoticed by the tech press.

That’s because Pinterest didn’t take the usual route of Web-based startups: romancing early adopters and technology journalists before attempting to “cross the chasm” to mainstream adoption. Instead, Pinterest grew a devoted base of users — most of them female — who enjoy “pinning” items they find around the Web. While clothing, home decor and recipes dominate the site, inspirational quotes and humor are also popular topics for users to add to their pinboards.

Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable.com.
Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable.com.

How successful is Pinterest? Unique visitors to the site grew 400% from September to December 2011, and just last week one study showed that Pinterest drives more visitors to third-party websites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

Demographics are surely a large part of Pinterest’s success: While technology’s early adopters have sprung upon other interest-driven networks like Quora, these sites now suffer from a form of “cumulative disadvantage” in which mainstream users are put off by how tech-centric they’ve become.

Why all the interest in Pinterest?

Delicious, a bookmarking service that hit it big during the “Web 2.0″ era, relaunched recently with a Pinterest-like interface, but has failed to attract the same audience. Canv.as, meanwhile, is a similar pinboard concept, but caters mainly to those who keep up with the latest Web memes and inside jokes. Pinterest, by contrast, provides no barrier to entry for anyone looking to bookmark, share and comment on images and ideas from around the Web.

There’s more to Pinterest than its unique audience, however. If you’d mapped out the evolution of social sharing online a few years ago, you might have predicted that something like Pinterest would emerge. As tech entrepreneur Elad Gil insightfully explained in an article on his blog last month, sharing on the Web has been following three parallel trends.

The first is that sharing involves less effort over time.

The second is that social sites are becoming more visual over time.

And the third is that “people-centric” recommendations are being augmented by “topic-centric” networks — which is to say that while Facebook lets you explore the Web through information shared by friends, newer social networks organize content by topics of interest. Some in the technology industry call this the “interest graph.”

Social networks began with blogging tools like Blogger and WordPress, where you had to write an entire blog post to express yourself. Then along came Twitter and Facebook, and a simple status update was all that was required to share a thought on the Web. These sites then discovered even simpler ways to share: “retweeting” the updates of others and “Liking” Web pages on Facebook.

Tumblr, now one of the biggest blogging platforms, also fits the trend: Not only is it largely used to share images, but “reblogging” the posts of others is a primary activity on the site.

As for the trend toward organizing content by both topics and the stuff your friends enjoy, you only need to look as far last year’s hit news app: Flipboard, which turns the news into a more visual experience on your iPad, personalizing your experience by highlighting links shared by your online connections and topics you find interesting.

Pinterest checks all the boxes: It’s a visual social network that organizes images by topic and lets you reshare with just one click.

So will we see a thousand Pinterest clones bloom, or will the site’s stellar growth continue despite others jumping on the trend? I’d say success is assured for Pinterest. Thanks to the “network effects” of these sites — you join because your friends are already there — it’ll becoming increasingly hard to compete with the new king, or perhaps queen, of social bookmarking.

Posted in IT Management, Voice & Data Services | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Apple iPad 3 Features And Release Date

Posted on February 7, 2012 by nicole
The Apple iPad is one of the best-selling tablets in the world, and the iPad 3 is one of the most anticipated devices from Apple this year. This article explains you about the new features that are to be included in the iPad 3.

In a nutshell, the Apple iPad3 will feature a new, thinner and sleeker design, down nearly 20 percent in size compared to the iPad 2. It will also support full touchscreen HD display with a screen resolution of 2048 x 1536.

Apart from that, the iPad 3 will have a lighter battery, reducing the weight of the tablet. However, the battery is reported to cost 20 to 30 percent more than the current iPad’s battery, and will also have a longer battery life.

It is also expected that the iPad 3 will have a wireless charging technology, which will be able to charge the battery and transfer data wirelessly.

iPad 3 Features

iPad 3 Features

Let’s now take a look at all the features in depth:

A6 Processor

The current Apple iPad 2 has a 900MHz dual-core ARM Cortext-A9 processor, Apple A5 chipset and PowerVr SGX543MP2 GPU. This certainly made the Apple iPad 2 a powerful tablet and a main competitor in the world of tablets. Now Apple is aiming to make the competition tougher by sporting an A6 Quad-core Processor in the iPad 3. This would make the iPad 3 as powerful as any high-end desktop.

According to Linley Group senior analyst Kevin Krewell, “We expect the A6 will be a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 design, which would be competitive with next year’s best mobile processors. In 2012, Nvidia will offer a quad-core Cortex-A9 processor, and Qualcomm will have the aforementioned MSM8960, a dual-core A15-class processor operating at 1.7GHz. Fabricating Apple’s A6 in 28nm (instead of the 40nm process Nvidia is using for its quad-core part) will reduce both die cost and power, yielding a much better product.”

iOS 5

The iPad 3 will come with the latest iOS 5, which will host the multi-touch gesture technology. However, analyst and tech enthusiasts predict that Apple would introduce OS X Lion for the tablet, since it will be powered by a quad-core processor.

This will also include multitasking features, such as notifications, task-finishing, app-switching, location and background sound.

3D Feature and New Retina Display

Apple enthusiast expected the Retina Display feature on Apple iPad 2; however, Apple has been working majorly for an improved version of it to include it in the iPad 3. The iPhone 4 currently supports the Retina Display with a screen resolution of 960 x 640. Apple explains Retina Display as: “Developing pixels a mere 78 micrometers wide, Apple engineers were able to pack four times the number of pixels into the same 3.5-inch (diagonal) screen found on earlier iPhone models. The resulting pixel density of iPhone 4 – 326 pixels per inch – makes text and graphics look smooth and continuous at any size.”

With the Retina Display feature, the screen resolution of the iPad3 will be 2048 x 1536 pixels. However, it is said that the third version of the tablet is delayed due to Retina Display issues, and Apple is expected to ship the tablet in early 2012.

There are speculations that the tablet will display the 3D view. Although it’s too early to expect features like 3D display, devices like the LG Optimus can record videos in 3D, and output the same through HDMI.

iPad 3 Features Continued:

Cloud Computing

Apple announced its Cloud services during the WWDC 2011, and will definitely include the iCloud technology both in the iPhone 5 and iPad 3. With iCloud users can store photos, apps, calendars and access songs on iTunes without having them to store in the phone’s memory.

Camera

The iPad 3 will come with an improved camera, since the previous version of the table didn’t seem impressive enough. Unlike the iPad 2, the new tablet will come with LED flash to support the camera. It is expected to have a 5MP camera with 1080p or 720p video recording quality of 60 frames per second. The technology made by OmniVision will help reduce the size of the table by 20 percent.

Fingerprint Proof

Apple has already been granted patents on this technology, and is working real hard to make the iPad3 fingerprint proof. The touch screen will be coated with oleophobic materials, which will reduce the oil and fingerprints on the screen.


Apple iPad 3 Release Date

There isn’t any official word from Apple on when the iPad 3 will be released; however, rumors indicate that it will be announced sometime early next year. Reports state the trial production is likely to start this October. One of the major reasons why the launch of the device has delayed is due to the Retina Display technology. It is also said that it could be delayed because of legal issues with one of Apple’s main supplier, Samsung.

The price and availability of the iPad 3 is still unknown. Please make sure that you keep visiting this page to stay updated.

Apple iPad 3 Price

Though the tablet promises quite a lot of new and exciting features, rumors indicate that it could be priced at a very high range. However, with the competition kicking in, I expect that the iPad 3 will be set at a reasonable price. Nevertheless, are you going to buy the new iPad 3? And what other iPad 3 features are you expecting? Let us know by adding your views below.

Posted in IT Management, Office Equipment Management, Voice & Data Services | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Teens migrating to Twitter — sometimes for privacy

Posted on January 30, 2012 by nicole

Why? Because many parents are on Facebook, but they don’t tweet

By Martha Irvine
updated 1/30/2012 8:06:57 AM ET

CHICAGO — Teens don’t tweet, will never tweet — too public, too many older users. Not cool.

That’s been the prediction for a while now, born of numbers showing that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter early on.

But then their parents, grandparents, neighbors, parents’ friends and anyone in-between started friending them on Facebook, the social networking site of choice for many — and a curious thing began to happen.

Suddenly, their space wasn’t just theirs anymore. So more young people have started shifting to Twitter, almost hiding in plain sight.

“I love twitter, it’s the only thing I have to myself … cause my parents don’t have one,” Britteny Praznik, a 17-year-old who lives outside Milwaukee, gleefully tweeted recently.

While she still has a Facebook account, she joined Twitter last summer, after more people at her high school did the same. “It just sort of caught on,” she says.

Teens tout the ease of use and the ability to send the equivalent of a text message to a circle of friends, often a smaller one than they have on crowded Facebook accounts. They can have multiple accounts and don’t have to use their real names. They also can follow their favorite celebrities and, for those interested in doing so, use Twitter as a soapbox.

The growing popularity teens report fits with findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit organization that monitors people’s tech-based habits. The migration has been slow, but steady. A Pew survey last July found that 16 percent of young people, ages 12 to 17, said they used Twitter. Two years earlier, that percentage was just 8 percent.

“That doubling is definitely a significant increase,” says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at Pew. And she suspects it’s even higher now.

Meanwhile, a Pew survey found that nearly one in five 18- to 29-year-olds have taken a liking to the micro-blogging service, which allows them to tweet, or post, their thoughts 140 characters at a time.

Early on, Twitter had a reputation that many didn’t think fit the online habits of teens — well over half of whom were already using Facebook or other social networking services in 2006, when Twitter launched.

“The first group to colonize Twitter were people in the technology industry — consummate self-promoters,” says Alice Marwick, a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, who tracks young people’s online habits.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

For teens, self-promotion isn’t usually the goal. At least until they go to college and start thinking about careers, social networking is, well, … social.

But as Twitter has grown, so have the ways people, and communities, use it.

For one, though some don’t realize it, tweets don’t have to be public. A lot of teens like using locked, private accounts. And whether they lock them or not, many also use pseudonyms, so that only their friends know who they are.

“Facebook is like shouting into a crowd. Twitter is like speaking into a room” — that’s what one teen said when he was participating in a focus group at Microsoft Research, Marwick says.

Other teens have told Pew researchers that they feel “social pressure,” to friend people on Facebook — “for instance, friending everyone in your school or that friend of a friend you met at a football game,” Pew researcher Madden says.

Twitter’s more fluid and anonymous setup, teens say, gives them more freedom to avoid friends of friends of friends — not that they’re saying anything particularly earth-shattering. They just don’t want everyone to see it.

Praznik, for instance, tweets anything from complaints and random thoughts to angst and longing.

“i hate snow i hate winter.Moving to California as soon as i can,” one recent post from the Wisconsin teen read.

“Dont add me as a friend for a day just to check up on me and then delete me again and then you wonder why im mad at you.duhhh,” read another.

And one more: “I wish you were mine but you don’t know wht you want. Till you figure out what you want I’m going to do my own thing.”

Different teenagers use Twitter for different reasons.

Posted in Office Equipment Management | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Super Bowl becoming the social media event of the season for advertisers

Posted on January 27, 2012 by nicole

 

Keeping a spot secret used to be rule No. 1 for Super Bowl advertisers. Now companies are falling over themselves to get them out on YouTube or as part of online contests, like Volkswagen has done this year.

By Martha C. White, www.msnbc.com

The Super Bowl has always been a social event, but during this year’s battle pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots, getting social will happen on screens and the sofa.

Analysts say this year is a turning point for social media’s incorporation into the biggest mass-media event of the year, and advertisers are taking note.

“The trend in social media with the Super Bowl has been building over the past two or three years,” said Tim Calkins, professor of marketing at Northwestern University. “This year, we’re really seeing it go to a totally new level where marketers are making social networking a core part of their Super Bowl efforts.”

Glen Gilmore, a social media strategist and professor of digital marketing at Rutgers University, said companies have begun to realize that social networks aren’t just for kids anymore. “There’s a recognition among big businesses that social media is the new marketplace that they’ve got to be part of the conversation.”

Last year, 111 million people watched the Super Bowl, according to Nielsen Companies, making it the most-watched TV event ever, and breaking the audience record set the year before by the 2010 Super Bowl. Advertisers pay heavily for the privilege of reaching all those eyeballs, to the tune of $3.5 million for a 30-second slot.

For that kind of cash, many companies have decided to eschew the longstanding practice of keeping a new commercial under wraps until its big reveal during the game. Instead, big advertisers like Frito Lay and Volkswagen view the commercial itself as the culmination to an entire campaign of anticipation. “For many marketers, it’s really a month-long event,” Calkins said.

To extend the life of their $3.5 million investment, companies build excitement by running teaser clips either on TV or on the Internet that allude to or provide a sneak peek to the commercial. Automaker Volkswagen has already rolled out a minute-long clip of a canine chorus barking music from “Star Wars.”

A canine chorus barks a familiar tune. Keep an eye out for our 2012 Game Day commercial—it will all make sense. Love Star Wars and Volkswagen? Create an Intergalactic Invite to your Big Game party here: http://vw.com/star-wars-invite

Some advertisers run the actual commercial ahead of time, but some marketing professionals say that can diminish its impact. “This year there seems to be more tendency to release the ads a week early. This is kind of a risky tactic to us,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix, a company that measures ad effectiveness. “With such a large audience watching the game, there’s a certain surprise appeal.”

Another way advertisers create pre-game day buzz is to create interactive elements, such as soliciting user-generated content or inviting people to vote on some element of the campaign. “Traditional advertising was just a one-way broadcast tool,” said Mitch Germann, vice president at Edelman Digital. “These efforts are a two-way conversation.” Frito Lay, which advertises its Doritos brand of tortilla chips during the game, has combined the two by asking website visitors to vote on which user-produced video will run in the commercial spot.

Sporting events are a perfect fit for interactivity and social media, according to Germann.

“Sports fans in general just love to talk. They love to talk about the game, their favorite teams and players,” he said. “They love to brag and social media provides such a great platform to allow them to have those conversations in real time.”

When Denver Broncos’ quarterback Tim Tebow threw a game-winning touchdown a few weeks ago, Germann said there were 9,000 Tweets per second about the play. “Social media has become a natural for sports… from a statistics perspective,” he said. Advertisers want that constant chatter, since it increases the likelihood that their commercial will get talked about not only during, but after the game.

Ads with a twist at the end or that are humorous prompt people to share them with others, according to Jonah Berger, assistant marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “Things that violate our expectations, or are novel or surprising in some way are going to be shared,” he said.

The action on the field itself can contribute to a state of mind that makes people more likely to post, share or tweet. “The situation itself can evoke high arousal, which can lead people to share all types of things,” Berger said. “If the game is suspenseful and if people are on the edge of their seats, they’re more likely to share anything.”

But social media, for all its benefits, isn’t without pitfalls. “I think the challenge we hear most often is that they lose control of the message when they open themselves up,” Germann said. “When they put the conversation in the hands of the viewers or audience, you never know what they’re going to say.”

While smart companies prepare talking points and replies in advance, the fallout from an ill-conceived commercial can be magnified by the extended conversation that takes place on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. ”There are definitely boundaries within the social space, and businesses at times mistake the fun and entertainment of social media for a license to ignore social boundaries,” Gilmore said.

“In most cases, when a company gets into trouble, they were deliberately trying to shock people,” Calkins said. “Shocking people isn’t the best approach on the Super Bowl. Surprise is nice, but shock is a dangerous place to go.”

The game is Feb. 5.

Posted in Document Management, Sustainability | Tagged , | Leave a comment

50 new tech tools you should know about

Posted on January 26, 2012 by nicole

By Victor Hernandez, CNN, cnn.com
Wed January 25, 2012 | Filed under: Web
Many have referred to Path as the
Many have referred to Path as the “anti-Facebook” for its attempts to make social networking more personal .

(CNN) — You may have dozens of apps on your phone and scores of websites bookmarked on your laptop, but that doesn’t mean you have all the latest tech tools at your fingertips.

New mobile apps, services, social networks and other digital tools pop up so frequently that keeping up with them is a nearly impossible task. Just when you think you’re up to date, something newer and hipper comes along.

But before you wave the white flag, let us help. Once again we have sorted through hundreds of new and emerging tech tools to bring you 50 of the most buzzworthy ones. (Last year’s list can be found here.)

These apps and services can help you do everything from shooting better smartphone photos to cataloging your bottle-cap collection to finding the best pad Thai in your city. Not all of them are brand new, but we’ve probably listed some you haven’t heard of. We hope you find them useful.

Which of your favorite new tech tools did we leave out? Let us know in the comments.

360 Panorama (99 cents): Want to enhance your smartphone landscape photos? Android users interested in capturing and sharing 360-degree panoramic photos should check out this app, the first true panoramic-photo app for the Android Market.

Alfred (free): It’s a discovery tool for your palate! Alfred starts off with your location and asks you a few simple questions about restaurants you like to frequent. Then the magic happens and the eatery recommendations start flowing. Judging by my early experiences, this iOS app is uncanny at gauging your tastes.

App.bg (free): This Web tool allows users to easily pull up nearby Instagrams, Foursquare tips and tweets using a Google Map. It offers a somewhat crude yet effective layout, available on desktop and mobile platforms. (No mobile app yet, unfortunately.)

Autostitcher ($1.99): Another interesting piece of software for producing panoramic images on your iPhone. Does a very nice job with its stitching feature for a near seamless quality image and easy sharing with friends.

Can I Park Here ($1.99) Fewer things in life are more confusing that trying to decipher the parking signs around New York City. This new iPhone app allows users to photograph the parking sign for the area in question, then find out if they can park there and for how long. The app even has a timer that starts when the user parks and lets them know how much time they have left in that spot.

CardMunch (free): This mobile app for iOS from LinkedIn converts paper business cards into digital contacts. A new 3.0 update also offers LinkedIn integration for connecting with just one click. A must-have for conference-goers and business trippers.

Catch (freemium; basic version is free but you’ll pay for advanced features): The productivity-app space is fast becoming crowded. Catch is one of the newer kids on the block and it too promises to help users manage the information overload. Freebie accounts let users upload 70MB of new content (text, Web clips, photos, voice memos) per month to a cloud service. Everything else will cost you. Available for iOS and Android, along with plug-ins for the more popular Web browsers.

Clingle (free): This location-based social net comes with a twist: It doesn’t focus the user experience on the public stream. Instead, users share multimedia messages for a specific user or group of users when they check in at a certain location. Those messages can grow into full-length conversations. Think text messaging, but with video and audio, and triggered through GPS. Don’t know if it will catch on, but it’s a very creative application.

Cuttings.me (free): This is a great tool for storing and showcasing your online portfolio. Cuttings.me allows you to upload PDF files or add links of your work in an easy format that also proves quite simple to share.

Evernote Food helps you preserve and share eating experiences.
Evernote Food helps you preserve and share eating experiences.

Evernote Food (free): From the company that brought us the popular productivity tool comes a mini-version of Evernote aimed at storing, preserving and sharing our memorable food adventures. Available for iOS; just be careful not to spill sauce on your iPhone.

Facebook Timeline Apps (free): Facebook recently announced more than 60 partners who provide apps for its new Timeline feature, in such themes as entertainment, fitness, food, giving, music, news, shopping and travel. Timeline’s integration, in a nutshell, posts your activity from these other websites and services on your Facebook page. Whether it provides added value or just more clutter to your feeds is up to you.

Find My Friends (free): Think the Find My iPhone app, but for people. Find My Friends allows iPhone or iPad users to easily locate others via via their Apple IDs and iCloud — totally contingent, of course, upon a close family member or friend agreeing to be tracked. Don’t accept requests from anyone you don’t want to know your whereabouts 24/7.

Fondu (free): Described as Foursquare for foodies, Fondu is a community for sharing bite-sized reviews about places to eat and drink. Users log in/sign up with Facebook before having a palatable digital space to opine about their meals.

Flipboard (free): The world’s first social magazine app has been turning heads (and thumbs) for a few years now. What is new is that this popular e-zine reader for iPad is now available on the iPhone as well. The same great look and feel of Flipboard isn’t sacrificed one bit on the smaller screen.

Flud News(free): One of the newer players in the ever-growing social news reader space is Flud. The app is designed to be your own collection of articles and news, all in a perfect magazine-like interface. Open the app, create your custom profile and start “Fluding.” This iOS app places heavy emphasis on the social influence of the fellow Fluders in your inner circle.

Frametastic (free): There are many mobile apps for framing multiple camera-phone pics, but Frametastic is one of the few free and extensive ones. It features lots of fun options to fool around with, plus easy exporting to Instagram or your other social networks.

Friend or Follow (freemium): Another nifty tool for displaying who’s following you on social media that you aren’t following in turn (and vice versa). It also gives you the option of doing something about it.

Google Currents (free): A ‘zine-like reader for mobile devices, Google’s new application for Android, iPads and iPhones lets you explore online magazines and other content with the swipe of a finger.

GramFeed (free): Instagram has put all of its eggs in the mobile basket. But some Instragram fanatics want to see images on something larger than a smartphone screen. GramFeed is the closest thing I’ve seen to a Google search experience for those gorgeous filtered Instagram pics.

Hipmunk aims to make searching for travel deals fun.
Hipmunk aims to make searching for travel deals fun.

Hipmunk (free): In a sea of travel apps, Hipmunk stands out for its fun, interactive and deal-scoring features. Available for iOS and Android devices, it lets users overlay heat maps on destinations to determine neighborhoods with food, nightlife and shopping that best fit their criteria. Brand new to the app is a hotel search feature.

Instagram (free): Heralded by iTunes as 2011 App of the Year, Instagram (IG) looks to expand its horizons in 2012 beyond the iPhone platform to Windows 7 and Android systems. With 16 million users in a little over a year, and only a handful of employees, IG is proving to be the little social-photo engine that could.

Kyoo (free): This Web service aggregates all the buzz around a specific topic from some of the most popular social mediums. Kyoo collects data from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Google News, Google Blog Search and social bookmarking sites such a Delicious, Digg and Reddit. The interface and video channels are particularly impressive.

LogMeIn (freemium): This service provides anytime, anywhere remote access to your PC or Mac via your iPhone or iPad. A pay version ($39.99 annual subscription) offers HD video access, file manager, cloud integration and 24/7 support.

Mlkshk (freemium): This nifty Web-curation tool allows users to easily sort through the tsunami of images and videos online via shakes. Users can also share and follow the shakes of others. It boasts lots of browser plug-in options, and even the ability to host photos that users post to Twitter.

Muuter (free): Imagine being able to remove certain friends, topics or hashtags (#winning, anyone?) temporarily from your Twitter feed. Well now you can, with Muuter. A timer feature is awesome for eliminating “noise” from your feed just when you think you’ve reached your breaking point.

My Secret Folder (99 cents): The majority of my digital life is like an open book. But all of us have something to hide: For example, my Jonas Brothers uploads are off-limits to the world. My Secret Folder acts as a private, passcode-enabled app that stores pics, movies, notes, contacts and other things you don’t want people to stumble upon. Best part is, if someone opens the iPhone or iPad app and enters the wrong passcode, the app will snap a picture of the culprit, tag a location to the incident and keep it on file for when you return.

Oink (free): This mobile app offers an easy way to rate the things around you. But instead of just rating restaurants, for example, you can rate specific dishes. Oink lets you weigh in on who has the best thin-crust pizza or chicken tikka masala in your city.

Path (free): Is this exclusive, smartphone-centric service the next great social network? Only time will tell. Path 2.0 is elegant and intimate in both design and usability. Many have referred to Path as the “anti-Facebook” for its attempts to make social networking more personal by limiting users’ friend lists and ability to share Web links (self-promote). Since its relaunch last year, Path has experienced a thirtyfold increase in the number of daily users, according to its creators. Although the app is free, users must pay for some features. But the company said it will not include ads on the site. Path is available for iOS and Android devices and integrates with Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Tumblr to allow cross-posting.

Photosynth (free): There are about 20 panoramic-photo mobile apps for iOS on the market, and one of my favorites is Photosynth from Microsoft. Its simple, clean interface provides killer results with 360-degree interactive imagery. The app integrates to Twitter, Facebook and other social nets.

Picscatter ($1.50): Generate beautiful collage Timeline covers for Facebook of your friends, images you’ve liked or your specific photo albums. The app can be finicky in certain browsers, so I recommend downloading it to your computer, then uploading to Facebook directly.

Pinterest helps you catalog your passions.
Pinterest helps you catalog your passions.

Pinterest (free): Described as a virtual pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share your passions in a visual way like no other. It’s currently still in an invite-only stage, so you’ll need a friend to help get you in — or you can sign up for the waiting list, which usually takes just a few days. It’s highly addictive, so be warned.

Road Ninja (free): Never travel the interstate alone again. Road Ninja has your back. This mobile app does a solid job of alerting you to food, gas, lodging and other essential roadway necessities by way of upcoming highway off-ramps. Users also have the ability to set up preferences of your favorite chain restaurants so you’ll never miss the comfort food you love even when away from home. For now only available on iOS.

Room 77 (free): Tired of playing hotel room-roulette, and having to guess what kind of view, if any, awaits you upstairs? Room 77 shows you the best and worst room views via Google maps, blueprints and user content to make the most of your next hotel stay.

Slice (free): Attention online shoppers! This digital tool may be your new BFF. Similar to what Mint offers for your personal finances and TripIt for your travel plans, Slice is a simple way to organize your purchases and simultaneously track orders from multiple vendors.

SlowShutter (99 cents): This camera app for iOS lets you fool around with light, blurring images on purpose. It comes with a Live Preview feature, which is helpful because a lot of figuring out what works well using this app is trial and error. I especially enjoy using SlowShutter to experiment with light trails on my phone.

Snapseed ($4.99): This pro-level photo editing software will set you back a few bucks but if you’re serious about your images and don’t want to settle for the many freebies out there, this is definitely the way to go. It performs particularly well on the iPad.

Springpad (free): Another useful productivity tool for curating your personal notes and tasks. One part virtual notebook, one part personal assistant, Springpad helps you remember stuff today so you can make better decisions tomorrow.

Spool (free): This app allows users to save articles and videos for later. No biggie, right? Here’s where it impresses: Spool will access this content later, even if you’re offline. Now you can catch up on kooky cat videos when you’re out of network.

Swackett (free): Sweater, jacket or coat? (Get it?) This neat little weather app for iOS gives you simplified outerwear recommendations so you can hurry up and be on the go. For those interested in more than wardrobe advice, it also provides detailed weather updates via AccuWeather service.

Thumb (free): There’s nothing scientific about this mobile app, but that doesn’t prevent it from proving highly addictive. It’s crowdsourcing made supersimple: Vote thumbs up or down. Thumb offers a good balance of news-ish questions along with some fun escapes.

Total Recall ($7.99): This powerful call recorder app for Android allows users to automatically or manually record phone calls. It also works nicely for recording short voice notes, reminders, lectures, meetings, etc.

TourWrist (free): This is an interesting host for your panoramic images. Upload your 360s to this tool for a highly effective rendering treatment that allows your panos to pop and sizzle in a truly remarkable way.

Tweepi (freemium): Ever feel like your Twitter account could use a tune-up? Tweepi may be just what the doctor ordered. It promises to help make sense of your Twitter account through easy-to-use features for cleaning up followers, lists and activity streams.

Tweetbot ($2.99): This is my newest favorite full-featured iPhone Twitter client: a Twitter mobile app with an attitude. There are plenty of decent Twitter apps for iPhone, including the official version, but none seem to bundle the best of the best features (multiple timelines, smart gestures, native push notifications, customizable navigation) with Tweetbot’s polished feel. Worth a few bucks if you take your mobile tweetin’ seriously.

Tweetsheet (free): This very cool Web tool from Vizify pulls together an instant infographic of your personal Twitter universe: retweet info, geographic impact, best followers, a word cloud of your tweets and more.

TwitWipe (free): Ever wish there was a reset button on life? Now there is for Twitter. TwitWipe deletes all your tweets in one fell swoop. Why would anyone want to do this? Well, maybe you need to clean out an account before handing it over to someone else. Or maybe you’ve just realized how crappy your tweets are.

Unroll.me (free): This service allows users to unsubscribe from unwanted e-mails in bulk. Unroll.me, which is currently in private beta, promises to not store your e-mail address and password. It’s compatible with the major e-mail services in the United States.

Voxer (freemium): Created by a former communications specialist with the U.S Army, Voxer is a walkie-talkie app for smartphones. It allows users to send instant audio, text and photo messages to friends (individual or groups). Messages stream live as you talk, and your friends can join live or access later. Available for iOS and Android.

Zite customizes news sites to create a personalized digital magazine.
Zite customizes news sites to create a personalized digital magazine.

Zite (free): Similar to the aforementioned Flipboard, Zite has been around for a while but only recently made its debut on the small screen (iPhone). This news reader goes beyond manual customization and leverages smart technology to intuitively fill up your feeds with content reliably relevant to your interests. (Full disclosure: CNN purchased Zite.com in 2011.)

ZocDoc (free): Think Open Table for physicians. Discover and research medical professionals in your area, then book your in-patient visit online. It even offers synching for your Google or Microsoft Outlook calendars, with text reminder options. ZocDoc is currently only available in 12 markets but should expand as it catches on further.

ZoomSphere (free): Imagine a Billboard Top 100 for social nets instead of songs. ZoomSphere provides especially detailed stats for major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn — great for keeping up with surging brands and social-media megastars.

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Lexmark and Anheuser-Busch ink MPS deal

Posted on January 25, 2012 by nicole

Jan. 23, 2012, 12:00 p.m. EST

LEXINGTON, Ky., Jan. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Lexmark International, Inc. LXK -0.76% today announced it has signed a five-year agreement with Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of leading global brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, to provide world-class managed print services (MPS), deploy a standardized fleet of innovative printers and multifunction products (MFPs), and improve business processes for the leading American brewer. The scope of the agreement spans Anheuser-Busch locations across the U.S., including corporate offices and breweries, as well as Labatt Brewing Company locations in Canada.

Lexmark will manage the printing assets and deliver the following elements of a custom-tailored MPS solution to drive efficiency in Anheuser-Busch’s print infrastructure:

Assessment and Fleet Optimization: Lexmark will assess print environments, collect data on the current fleet of printing devices and recommend improvements designed to take unnecessary pages out of its environment.

Hardware Deployment: Lexmark will install color and monochrome printers and MFPs, which will include the award-winning Lexmark X792, X658, T654 and C54x Series of workgroup products.

Proactive Consumables Management: Lexmark’s printers and MFPs will be configured to notify Lexmark when toner cartridges are low and in need of replacement. Toner will be shipped automatically to locations in a timely manner with no manual intervention needed.

Advanced Reporting: Lexmark’s Print Release solution will be utilized to capture and provide important end-user usage data that will equip the company with critical information to better understand and make more informed decisions about its print environments.

Lexmark is also the MPS provider of choice for AmBev, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev and the biggest brewery in South America. In 2010, AmBev recognized Lexmark with the honorable distinction of Best IT Infrastructure Services Provider.

Supporting Quote:

“For more than 10 years, Lexmark has successfully executed global MPS strategies for many of the most trusted and recognized brands in the world,” said Marty Canning, Lexmark executive vice president and president of Imaging Solutions and Services. “The proof here is in the results-driven MPS methodology Lexmark has implemented with AmBev, and we look forward to expanding our relationship with Anheuser-Busch in North America to drive even greater cost savings and efficiency across the enterprise.”

Supporting Resource:

Lexmark MPS Brochure

About Lexmark

Lexmark International, Inc. LXK -0.76% provides businesses of all sizes with a broad range of printing and imaging products, software, solutions and services that help customers to print less and save more. Perceptive Software, a stand-alone software business within Lexmark, is a leading provider of enterprise content management software that helps organizations easily manage the entire lifecycle of their documents and content, simplifying their business processes, and fueling greater operational efficiency. In 2010, Lexmark sold products in more than 170 countries and reported more than $4 billion in revenue.

To learn more about Lexmark, please visit www.lexmark.com . For more information on Perceptive Software, please visit www.perceptivesoftware.com .

For more information on Lexmark, see the Lexmark Facebook page and follow us on Twitter.

For more information about Perceptive Software, please visit the company’s Facebook and Twitter profiles.

Lexmark and Lexmark with diamond design are trademarks of Lexmark International, Inc., registered in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Lexmark International, Inc.

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

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How Rochester Saved $2 Million With Managed Print Services

Posted on January 23, 2012 by nicole

The IT department for the City of Rochester was bogged down by managing more than 450 individual printers scattered throughout its agencies. A move to managed print services not only saved dollars but freed up tech workers to take on other projects.

How many printers was the IT department of the City of Rochester managing in 2010? More than 450. . .and this was no joke.

“We had accumulated 459 of them,” says David Mayor, Rochester’s CIO. “We just had so many printers.”

And those printers were costing the city money.

“We had just closed a $50 million gap in our budget, which, for a city of our size–a population of a little over 200,000 people–is a significant reduction in our operation budge,” explains Mayor. “Our senior management team was faced with driving down operating costs and was looking at every opportunity to do that without compromising our services to our constituents.”

One of the city’s strategic priorities is leveraging information technology to re-engineer business processes, Mayor says. “Probably every other government agency faces similar challenges, but we see technology as a key enabler to driving down operating costs” he notes. “We are very open to looking at technology to reduce costs.”

To that end, the city inventoried what technology it was using across all of its departments. Its printers, for example, had been bought by individual departments prior to the establishment of the CIO’s office, in 2006. “Until we did the assessment I had no idea we had that many printers,” Mayor says.

It was at this point that city neighbor Xerox reached out and said, ‘How can we help you?’” Mayor says. With Xerox’s assistance, Rochester created a roadmap for revamping its entire printing environment. It shed hundreds of machines and wound up with just 168 printers–including 24 Xerox ColorQube 9200 Series multifunction printers.

The assessment also made Mayor aware of how much money was being wasted on consumables for all of those devices. Before it began to make the printer swap in October 2010, the city had 220 different printer models, each requiring its own consumables.

“Every time we had to purchase new toner, we had to issue a purchase order that went through a whole bureaucratic process, which was costing us money just in procurement, let alone the toner,” he says. “Those are the hidden costs.”

The city is also saving money now on power by running fewer devices.

Selling the city’s upper management on the project, Mayor says, was easy: “It was a lot of low-hanging fruit. I came in and said we’re going to upgrade our printers to world-class technology, improving the quality of our printing while saving $2 million. This was an easy discussion at that level.”

That $2 million in savings for equipment, consumables, and maintenance was calculated across the five-year life of the city’s contract with Xerox.

While management was sold on the idea, employees initially weren’t. “[The plan] was met with a little bit of resistance up front, because people didn’t want to give up their personal printers. Taking someone’s personal printer off their credenza is no way to win a popularity contest,” Mayor jests. However, things went much smoother once the city’s mayor was on board. “As is the case with most technology initiatives,” says Mayor, “it really helps if you can get top-down support. After we deployed the printers, I received no resistance.”

Senior managers also helped by communicating the need to reduce costs across all departments. “When you save $2 million, you’re saving jobs,” says Mayor. “You can consolidate your printers or you might have to ante up additional headcount.”

Key to making the change happen, Mayor said, was help from Xerox in conducting the initial assessment and helping build the business case for moving to managed print services. “Our budget director didn’t believe all the numbers at first, but after some due diligence he realized there were some real savings to be had. And there are more benefits. Moving to a managed service has helped free the IT team to work on other projects.

For other CIOs challenged with keeping printing costs down, Mayor says it’s important to step back and take a look at your print environment holistically. ” When you’re buying the onesies and twosies, you end up with lots of models and different types of printers. You must, therefore, devise a strategy that really drives an overall governance process for the acquisition and deployment and maintenance of printers.”

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A new breed of 4G phones emerges

Posted on January 20, 2012 by nicole
Mark Milian, CNN
By Mark Milian, CNN
Fri January 13, 2012 | Filed under: Mobile
Samsung's Galaxy Note for AT&T is one of about a dozen new 4G LTE smartphones announced at CES.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note for AT&T is one of about a dozen new 4G LTE smartphones announced at CES.

Las Vegas (CNN) — The International Consumer Electronics Show, the giant gadget convention that wrapped up on Friday, has brought some frustrating news for AT&T or Sprint customers who bought a cutting-edge 4G smartphone last year.

That phone will soon be outdated.

AT&T Mobility and Sprint Nextel unveiled some of the first smartphones that will tap into their new, even faster fourth-generation networks.

But wait, Sprint has been talking about its 4G network since launching one in 2008 followed by its premier phone, HTC’s Evo 4G, in 2010. And AT&T began adding “4G” to the names of many of its smartphones early last year.

Now, two of the largest U.S. cellular carriers are ramping up yet another 4G system. They will have LTE, or Long-term Evolution, to compete with the one Verizon Wireless launched more than a year ago.

T-Mobile USA says it has 4G, which is similar to AT&T’s old 4G, but the carrier has not talked about plans for 4G LTE deployment. (Get all that?)

Since AT&T and Sprint have already exhausted their usage of 4G in marketing, it’s unclear how they will explain to customers the major investments they’ve made to have the latest network technology.

“I don’t think the majority of our customers understand the monikers,” AT&T executive Glenn Lurie said in an interview here at CES.

Sprint product chief Fared Adib declined to comment on the company’s marketing plans. Lurie, who serves as AT&T’s liaison to Apple, declined to comment on why Apple refused to adopt the 4G moniker in the iPhone 4S, which uses last year’s HSPA+ technology that AT&T also describes as 4G.

“Forget the G’s for a second,” Lurie said. “What it’s called doesn’t matter.”

Verizon has emphasized the speed enhancements offered by its version of 4G, and makes an effort to refer to the network as 4G LTE, rather than just 4G, to differentiate from competitors, David Small, the technical chief for Verizon Wireless, has told CNN. Verizon is on track to have its 4G network match the coverage of its 3G network by next year, a spokeswoman said Friday.

At CES last year, Verizon hosted two large news conferences and operated a huge booth to promote the launch of its 4G network. This year, Verizon has kept a low profile.

AT&T announced eight new LTE products at CES, including smartphones and tablets. The world’s first LTE Windows phone, the Lumia 900, will arrive in March, Nokia wrote in a message to partners on Friday.

“We use this as a way to kick off the year,” Lurie said. “CES is becoming more wireless-centric than ever before.”

AT&T’s loss in its bid to acquire T-Mobile has not affected operations, according to Lurie. The first 4G LTE phones for AT&T hit stores in November, before the breakup with T-Mobile was announced.

At many of the large CES exhibits, 4G was pervasive. For example, a station at the entrance to LG’s booth displaying a row of phones was called True LTE Expert.

Sprint announced three new devices at CES: a portable wireless hotspot, a Samsung phone made from recycled materials, and the Galaxy Nexus from Samsung and Google.

Sprint’s new 4G LTE network is expected to match its older, slower 4G network by the end of this year, Steve Elfman, the carrier’s network operations president, said in an interview. The company will stop selling devices that support its old 4G around that same time, and it will turn off access to that network in 2015.

“The ecosystem is going to be larger in LTE,” Elfman said.

Not only will it be larger, but this 4G is likely to remain king for some time.

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6 Phrases You Should Never Say Again

Posted on January 19, 2012 by nicole

Love catchy business speak? Before your next meeting or presentation, make sure you aren’t guilty of one of these useless (& annoying) verbal tics.

By Jeff Haden |  www.inc.com   | Jan 11, 2012

businessman covering his mouth

Years ago, I worked for a manager that was the poster child of buzzwords. He loved slipping “cones of precision” and “silos” and “drill down” and… well, let’s just stop there.

(Oh, he also bought one of the first Palm Pilots, so roomfuls of people often sat waiting while he laboriously entered timelines and schedules into his calendar. Yep, he was one of those.)

One of my colleagues maintained a running list of this manager’s buzzwords. If this colleague heard a new one, he pulled a small notepad out of his shirt pocket and wrote it down. Whenever he whipped out his pad two things happened: 1) the manager looked smug and proud because he thought he had just said something so insightful the supervisor wanted to capture for it for posterity, and 2) the rest of us tried not to laugh because we knew what was really going on.

Guess how productive those meetings were.

Unfortunately, we all have a little of that manager in us. We use the same words too often, or without noticing use irritating speech patterns, or simply fall in love with certain expressions. (I’m definitely guilty; I once carried on a passionate and all-too-public affair with “that’s neither here nor there.”) When we do, whatever we hoped to say gets lost.

See if you’re guilty of any of these:

1. The Double Name: Using a person’s name twice– especially your own– in the same sentence as a way to justify unusual or unacceptable behavior.

Typical usage: “What can I say? That’s just Joe being Joe.” (Or even worse, “What can I say? That’s just me being me.”)

Whenever you say a person’s name twice as a way to describe them you’re actually making an excuse for behavior you would never tolerate from someone else.

And everyone knows it.

2. The Fake Agreement: Pretending to agree while expressing the opposite point of view.

Typical usage: “I can definitely see what you’re saying, but I just don’t think we should take on that project.”

In fact, you don’t really see what I’m saying because otherwise you would agree with what I’m saying. Beginning a sentence with, “I hear you…” is like a condescending pat on the head.

Don’t try to couch a different opinion inside a warm and fuzzy Fake Agreement. If you disagree, just say so professionally.

3. The Unsupported Closure: Ending a discussion or making a decision without backup or solid justification.

Typical usage: “At the end of the day, we’re here to sell products.”

Really? I had no idea we’re supposed to sell products!

Unsupported Closure is a go-to move for people who want something a certain way and don’t feel like, or can’t, explain why. Whenever you feel an, “At the end of the day…” coming on, take a deep breath and start over, otherwise you’ll spout inane platitudes instead of objective reasons that may actually help your employees get behind your decision.

Quick note: A Fake Agreement combines nicely with an Unjustified Closure: “I hear what you’re saying, but at the end of the day revenue concerns must come first.” Win-win!

4. The False Uncertainty: Pretending you’re not sure when, in fact, you are.

Typical usage: “You know, when I think about it I’m not so sure shutting down that facility isn’t the best option after all.”

Oh yes, you’re sure; you’re just trying to create buy-in or a sense of inclusion by pretending you still have an open mind… or you’re planting seeds for something you know you will eventually do.

Never say you aren’t sure unless you are truly willing to consider other viewpoints.

5. The First Person Theoretical: Pretending to be another person in order to explore different points of view.

Typical usage: “Let’s say I’m the average customer. I walk in your store. I want to buy a shirt…and so on.”

You can get away with this occasionally, but more than once a year is really irritating.

Think about it. Let’s say I’m the average reader and I know someone who uses the First Person Theoretical to pretend they’re putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. And let’s say I’m thinking it’s really irritating. In fact, let’s say I’m thinking we can just move on.

6. The Favorite Word: Using a word so often that word is all anyone hears.

Typical usage: Simply pick a word and hammer it to death.

I had a boss who never met a sentence he couldn’t find a way to shoehorn “in other words,” “in general,” and “regarding” into. Often he could cram all three into the same sentence, sometimes multiple times. I kept track one time and counted thirty-seven “in other words” in a four-minute span.

Hey, I’m not proud. I’m also not worried about him reading this since he’s probably off somewhere clubbing baby seals.

When you fall in love with a word or expression, other people not only tire of it but they hear nothing else. Whatever you hoped to get across gets lost as people think, “Oh jeez, for once could he leave out the ‘that’s neither here nor there’”?

Ask someone if you overuse a word or phrase. At first they’ll look uncomfortable and try to avoid answering. Insist.

Eventually they’ll tell you, and I promise you’ll never use that word again.

 

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White House blasts Internet piracy bills

Posted on January 18, 2012 by nicole

By David Kravets, Wired
 Mon January 16, 2012 | Filed under: Web

(WIRED) — The Obama administration said over the weekend that it would not support legislation mandating changes to Internet infrastructure to fight online copyright and trademark infringement.

“Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security,” the administration said in a statement on Saturday. “Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.”

The announcement follows a whirlwind week in which leaders in the House and Senate, apparently buckling to widespread pressure, announced they would at least temporarily remove DNS-redirecting requirements in the Protect IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House. The White House move likely signals that Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) would not likely re-introduce the Domain Name System redirecting provisions in their bills.

The DNS-redirecting provisions in both bills were designed to prevent American citizens from visiting sites the attorney general maintains are dedicated to infringing activities.

The Obama administration’s announcement appears to have conceded to opposition from security experts who say the plan would sabotage U.S. government-approved efforts to secure DNS against hackers and break the Internet’s unified naming system by introducing lies into infrastructure. The government is agreeing with experts who maintain that the SOPA and PIPA and the Senate’s Protect IP Act would break the Internet’s universal character and hamper U.S. government-supported efforts to roll out DNSSEC, which is intended to prevent hackers from hijacking the net through fake DNS entries.

Online piracy bill debate

However, both bills essentially grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against so-called rogue websites and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them. They would allow rights holders to seek court orders instructing online ad services and credit card companies from partnering with the infringing sites. The administration’s announcement was unclear on whether it would support those provisions.

The White House announcement was penned by Victoria Espinel, the White House copyright czar; Aneesh Chopra U.S. chief technology officer; and Howard Schmidt, special assistant to the president for cybersecurity.

David Hirschmann, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, urged lawmakers to move forward on the bills without the DNS provisions, saying it was “much needed legislation.” Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of digital rights group, Public Knowledge, said the White House statement underscored that the Obama administration has concluded that the legislation “poses real risks to the security and stability of the internet.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) was scheduled to conduct a hearing Wednesday on the cybersecurity issue before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Issa, the committee’s chairman, has called prominent internet security experts and others to testify about the security ramifications of DNS redirecting. But in response to the White House announcement, that hearing has been tentatively postponed.

Among those summoned by Issa was Stewart Baker, a former Bush administration Department of Homeland Security policy director, who has said tinkering with the Domain Name System “would do great damage to Internet security.”

 

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