Zuckerberg appearance helps propel stock above $20 for first time in 4 weeks

 Internet News  403 Responses »
Sep 132012
 

Zuckerberg has avoided public appearances and interviews over the past year, and his silence likely contributed to some of the uneasiness investors felt about the company. The stock, which was priced at $38 at the time of Facebook’s initial public offering in May, fell as low as $17.67 last month following the end of the first lock-up period. Even with today’s rise, shares are trading below 40 percent of their offering price. However, Facebook has recently been active in expanding its mobile monetization efforts and testing a new search-based advertising option. Zuckerberg said in his interview Tuesday that the company has many more products and feature to launch later this year.

MORE:  Zuckerberg appearance helps propel stock above $20 for first time in 4 weeks.

 

Google: 500 million Android devices activated

 Tech News  222 Responses »
Sep 122012
 

Google won’t be able to compete with the attention lavished on Apple for the launch of the sixth-generation iPhone, but it did announce the notable milestone late tonight of half a billion device activations.

“Today is a big day for Android… 500 million devices activated globally, and over 1.3 million added every single day,” said Hugo Bara, Android’s director of product management, in a Google+ post. It’s not clear how many devices are replacing older ones, though.

Barra said in June at the Google I/O show that 400 million Android devices had been activated and that the rate was 1 million per day.

MORE:  Google: 500 million Android devices activated | Mobile – CNET News.

 

Four secrets to enhancing creative productivity

 Art, Design  129 Responses »
Sep 122012
 

Beating your head against a project’s metaphorical wall will never help you get into a creative and productive flow. Denise Jacobs presents four unconventional ways to help you get your creative productivity on

While most people attempt to force great ideas of out themselves by relentless pursuit of an answer to a problem or straining to think up original ideas, they don’t realise that most truly great ideas are borne from a more hands-off approach that comes from the back and forth dance between concentrated and diffused focus.

The road less travelled

Creative bursts occur when discrete bits of information stored in the brain connect along new neural pathways. Unfortunately, most people are typically overloaded and exhausted mentally and in a stressed state when trying to produce good work. Despite their best efforts, their brains travel along well-worn, established pathways, and they literally have one-track minds.

Clearly, a one-track mind is no place to generate awesome ideas. But, if one thing were ever true, it’s that you can’t force creativity: it needs incubation, downtime, and the space to happen on its own schedule. However, just because you can’t force creativity doesn’t mean you can’t give it the proper encouragement. Let’s take a look at four lesser-known secrets for increasing creative productivity.

MORE:  Four secrets to enhancing creative productivity | Feature | .net magazine.

 

I cannot design or code a responsive website

 interface, Web Design  277 Responses »
Sep 122012
 

Don’t listen to the voices in your head, advises frontend developer Nick Jones. Here he explains how he got stuck creating his personal site and learned to trust his instincts instead

There’s this fallacy of a right way and a wrong way to design and code. If you spend enough time looking for it or reading about it, you’ll end up paralysed. It happened to me. But in early 2012, five years after the launch of the iPhone, I decided it was time to suck it up and create a modern website for myself. What follows are my doubts about making narrowdesign.com.

Responsive?

(INTERNAL DIALOGUE) You know nothing about ‘responsive web design’. You have no business making a responsive site for yourself or anyone else. It’s too new and untested. You aren’t capable of pulling it off. You’re not even a real programmer. In the event that you do pull it off, you’ll immediately wish you hadn’t. Something new will replace it by this time next year. You’ll look stupid for jumping on the bandwagon with every SEO expert and web guru who now drop its name. Remember what happened with microsites?

MORE:  I cannot design or code a responsive website | Opinion | .net magazine.

 

Cable’s Walls Are Coming Down

 Tech News  471 Responses »
Sep 122012
 

Cutting the cord is still an outlier activity. You have to do too much searching, use too many specialized devices, and configure too many settings to get what you want. But as devices from Google, Apple, Roku and others make internet delivery indistinguishable from cable and satellite delivery, we’re going to wake up one morning and find cord-cutting has gone completely mainstream. And those devices are pretty much already here.

All the advantages enjoyed by subscription TV today are melting away. In five years, those advantages will have been eliminated entirely. In a decade, many of today’s constraints will seem laughable. The idea that you had to pay for 400 other channels just because you wanted to watch a single show will be akin to paying for internet access by the hour.

Xfinity, Time Warner and their cohorts aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But while the cable company of tomorrow may provide the pipes, it’s certain that it won’t provide the plan. In short, subscription TV is already dead. The body just hasn’t quit twitching yet.

MORE:  Cable’s Walls Are Coming Down.

 

12 of the World’s Most Annoying Technologies

 interface, Tech News  305 Responses »
Sep 122012
 

Most consumer technologies, when wielded correctly, are magnificent. But so are bagpipes. In the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, technology can be an annoyance enabler. These 12 technologies are not the future we were hoping for.

Camera Flash

Here’s the deal with the flash on your camera: Most of the time it doesn’t help. You’re either too far away from the action or you’re too close. That photo you shot at the concert? Still dark. The flash didn’t help, and everyone within a four-foot radius is nightblind now. That photo from the girls’ night out where your friends were two feet away? The flash made them look like ghouls. Go to your smartphone or camera’s settings and turn off the flash. Do it now.

MORE:  12 of the World’s Most Annoying Technologies | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

 

4 ways to become an Instagram rock star

 Internet News, Marketing, Your Brand  430 Responses »
Sep 112012
 

First off, Instagram is obviously a visual medium. Photos should look good, tell a compelling story, or get a laugh whenever possible. Follow the old rule of “know your audience.”

Secondly, brands should use #hashtags, which is how Instagram photos are organized into albums. Brands can leverage popular #hashtags to help users discover their content and create new #hashtags to organize their own content.

Finally, whether your brand is using one of Instagram’s mobile apps or you are building a custom application that uses Instagram’s API, integrate your other social media channels. Share to your other channels, and let your users share to their personal networks. It is worth noting that Instagram is a mobile-only social media platform. But other services, via Instagram’s API, make viewing on the web possible. A favorite of mine is Web.stagram.com.

So what fundamental knowledge do brands need to succeed on Instagram? Consider these simple tips.

MORE:  4 ways to become an Instagram rock star – iMediaConnection.com.

 

Go Daddy: Sorry about the outage. And no, it wasn’t a hack

 Tech News  819 Responses »
Sep 112012
 

In his statement, Wagner said that at “no time was any customer data at risk or were any of our systems compromised.” He also apologized to customers for the mishap and thanked them for their patience

What exactly caused the outage, however, is still unclear, and Wagner didn’t offer much in the way of specifics:

We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.

MORE:  Go Daddy: Sorry about the outage. And no, it wasn’t a hack | Security & Privacy – CNET News.

 

 Older Entries  Newer Entries