When Smart Apps Get It Wrong

In the Newton and Palm days, I had a rather popular software solution for helping automate my Task List creation. The discussion came up recently that the world of iOS/Android users could have their lives made easier by a new version of the old app. The first attack was to simply rewrite the software using more modern interfaces and current work flows. While this would be a very usable answer to many people’s life challenges, it isn’t the direction everyone is going with repeatable steps. Now, apps are attempting to watch and understand how a person works then automatically presents completed information instead of asking for users to plan or type.

So, do I rethink the app with magic automation or keep people in charge?

To help with the answer, I turned to watching people do task management. Also, I started paying more attention to how the current interactive apps impacted my life. Normally, I would keep an eye on the default calendar app, finding the smart interactive apps interesting but didn’t risk missing a meeting on them guessing things right.

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Standing in the rain with the dog, the clouds got it wrong since SkyMotion said it wont be raining for two hours. I let the app know through the provided interface that the clouds didn’t get the memo and dropping water now. An hour later, drinking my coffee and looking outside at the rain, SkyMotion still says it wont rain for another hour.

Osito’s Red lettered alert pops up on the screen, my meeting is in a half hour and my drive to the office is now showing 25 minutes long due to traffic. Great info, but since I’m already at the office, I just walk down the hall to the meeting room and hang out for the half hour I’m early.

Directions and timing of my morning drive to work is also highlighted by Google Now. Which, rather than going straight through the vineyards two lane highway for 20 minutes, would very much rather I went on the four lane highway South for 15 minutes then turn North West for another 15 minutes. A month ago, I found on Google’s Web site that there is no way provided to tell Now the path I prefer but it will learn over time.

EasilyDo has it right with; it’s raining outside, I’m at the office, I have a friend with a birthday coming up, a package has shipped from my ebay purchase and a coworker has a stressful post about his mom isn’t well. Uh… well, all the data is right, UI isn’t great, but I guess I can’t say EasilyDo got anything ‘wrong’. The shipping window goes to the shipper but there is no info, let’s blame that on the email or shipping company.

Siri, loves my wife’s voice, thinks I’m talking jibberish (apologies to the people of Jibberish). Gets the words wrong, wont open a requested app… I’ll go load iOS7 beta and see if that voice personal assistant is a better listener. Voice entry is cool, but with the shrinking desk space and less Work-From-Home time available, talking out loud is heard by everyone around. Funny times when right in a the middle of a meeting someone asks Siri out loud what a word is the boss just used in a arm waving lecture.

The smart auto complete of Tempo reminds me of the built-in capabilities of the Newton OS. While I replaced the Newton OS handwriting entry was quickly with Graffiti, the quick meeting creation was a hit for me every time. Tempo outlines similar features in their demo… just enter a name and a type of meeting, the app knows who I’m talking about and where we will be meeting. “Brian @ movie” got me a meeting for the current time with that same text. “Afternoon movie with Brian” gave me a meeting for the current time showing the 9 different “Brian” in my Contacts invited… no way to select which. And… it continued when I put in the theater, the movie… Hey, I’m late to get to the movie!

Finally, top-of-mind is FourSquare. I have mentioned before that the service has gone away from the gamification angle. Instead of going to the app and checking in, then seeing where friends where checking in. Now, I can check in and maybe receive a discount (not much good if I check in after I order) as well I can search for things around where I am that have been reviewed. Interesting, since the app knows it is 11:30 and I have not checked in for lunch… and the service knows where I have gone to lunch off and on for the last year, I would think it would pop up with a recommendation. “Hey, I see you like Pizza, you have not ate lunch today and you have not had pizza for a couple days so here is a Pizza place within walking distance to where you are”. Without smart interaction like that, why wouldn’t I just go to Google Maps on my handheld and look up local places than add to FourSquare’s database?

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It would appear that smart assistant is what everyone is buying into, but I am not seeing a lot of actual users relying on any one solution yet. So, no roadmap forward based on other solution successes. Rather than second guessing task creation, the initial re-release of the app will have auto complete based on history and the task timing can be calculated as well. Giving a bit more time for the continued development of databases that assumptions can be based on. Assumptions? Well, I’m sure someone will call it intelligent forecasted suggestions based on user history and best practices.

Apple’s new ‘iWatch’ found on Kickstarter

Fans of Apple will call it part of the company’s genius. Those that love to find things wrong with Apple will say nothing new comes out of Cupertino. Either way, the reality is that Apple watches what is available in the world, has their design group redo the look and feel, then connects it to everything else they produce. While there were smart phones prior to the iPhone, they didn’t have all the dots connected so they didn’t receive the emotional connection that people had with the iPhone. Now of course, there are many other options in the field, all of which where copy/redesigns of the smartphone before it. Apple learned their lesson after the Newton, people didn’t understand the PDA concept of a computer being part of a person’s life rather than hardware used to write, calculate and draw with. The device showed that introducing completely new takes a highly unlikely ah-ha moment of the public, it is better to work into the use by modifying a currently accepted device… the phone.

OK, jump to today and the future of the Apple iWatch on Kickstarter. Towards the end of 2010, a company called Minimal offered a Kickstarter project for a touch screen watch. The project, Tik Tok, was a watch band and two creative ways of holding a iPod Nano. It received pledges of close to 1 million dollars. The Nano at the time was a small square device that was all 240 pixel touch screen on the front, a couple buttons on the outer edges, headphone jack and a 30 pin connector. There was basic built-in apps on the iPod, with no way of adding more. Music can be loaded and played, as well pictures and it was set up from the factory to work with Nike running devices. There was no video playback, camera, or games. There was a couple different watch faces. The second year of the Nano came with more (17) watch faces from Apple.

After the Kickstarter project wrapped up, the Tik Tok was available online, many gadget stores and even Apple’s stores. There appeared to be a market for an Apple watch that could be used as a timepiece, a radio, a audio playback and view pictures. A lot of people complained about no audible alarms unless the headphones where plugged in and the need to connect via the 30 pin connector to a computer to put things on and remove content from the Nano. Even though the Nano had a large clip on the back, runners started reporting liking the watch band mounting over the clip as way to gather running data (Nike), timing their run and listening to music. Just about everything needing to be done to interact with the Nano watch is a tap or swipe across the screen.On a personal note, no one with knowledge of the subject told this to me, it was interesting to see the Nano go back to the rectangle shape and video play back like the hardware prior to the square device. Perhaps, it was to avoid the comparison when a ‘iWatch’ was introduced to the Nano watch option.

More recently is the Pebble Kickstarter Project. The team that put the project up for Crowd Funding actually stopped accepting more money after they passed 10 Million dollars. Their concern was how long it would take to fill that many orders on a new device being created by a very small group of talented folks.

The Pebble connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth. It receives text messages, mail (limited qty of characters), alerts, alarms and caller ID. The watch has multiple watch faces, loaded via the iPhone. It can also be used to control music being played on the iPhone. The hardware is nicely done. Not what anyone would call high-end, but it meets the need. Like the Nano, it is sealed hardware with a few buttons around the outer edge. The only connector is a specialized magnetic charging cable (7 days use per charge), which doesn’t have a positive connection so I always doubt myself that I have it connected properly.

Between the two, if Apple was to do a ‘smart’ watch, a person can back into what it will have. Of course, there will be surprises, but using Apple’s recent history of using available information they will use what is working.

Video playback and a camera would be nice, but not likely.

Both Tik Tok and Pebble has shown that the iPhone is the watch/clock that people use now. Unless a watch is a fashion statement or tied to data, watches are not being worn since a smartphone has everything.

Apple didn’t jump onto the cable less charging and wireless only content management on the iPhone, instead releasing a special plug so expect to see that continue on a watch. Though, Apple does seem to be heading in the direction of no more wires as the Cloud solutions mature. Bluetooth is assured but will Wifi appear to start backup and data movement though iCloud?

Touch screen, but the hardware buttons are in question. The buttons will need to be easier to access than the Nano and high quality than the Pebble. It is a good time to move volume control to the headphones only.

Pebble has shown that pushing information from the iPhone to the watch is very handy, as long as there is a vibrate notification. Otherwise, having to look at your wrist all of the time, particularly with long sleeve shirts/jackets, it’s easy to pull the iPhone out of the pocket to check.

Loading apps will not be supported since it would mean a new version of all non-Apple developed apps. I can see the Apple OSX apps like Reminders being viewable on the watch, syncing with the desktop. Since there will be no way to enter data, beyond viewing desktop/iPhone created data, there is only the need to control music, app selection (Nike will continue to be built in), images viewing and watch/alarms.

Unless Apple is doing the face/head and band as a single unit, the Pebble has a nice option of being a standard band size so it can be replace by a user without factory help.

All of the ‘concept drawings’ floating around the Internet are fun to see. But, remember the Apple history over the last 10 years. Tweak and making better without being so radical that the finished product requires people to be told how the device will integrate into their lives. Clean, nice looking, easy to use and well connected… all lessons learned from the Apple’s iWatch predecessors available through Kickstarter.

Apartment Managers, rethinking communications – A Big Picture Project

There is an apartment get together this weekend… I know because there was a color paper flyer on our door. At the end of the month, I get an email from another company offering the opportunity to pay rent online. And today I did a USPS tracking to find out my Pebble arrived a few days ago, delivered to the complex office. Some sort of communication would have been nice.

The apartments have tenant’s cell phone numbers. Perhaps a bit of software is needed.

How about a list of apartments with tags to sort by. Choose the apartment address or group of apartments, enter the text (HTML via WYSIWYG) and hit send. A very easy solution to get the word out about a neighborhood party. A quick reminder for folks to pick up after their dogs would be nice. Each household could have one or several cell numbers to send the messages to so everyone is aware they need to set the date for those pool parties. Why not have the calendar link included in the text so adding to a person’s cell calendar is as simple as a tap?

Jumping on board with PayPal would be the next step. Both a link in the text ‘pay rent online’ and a iPhone card swiper in the office. Finally, I could get rid of my checkbook!

There is nothing magical about all of this. There are services that will send the text messages (Google App?), it just needs a apartment management user interface. Who wants to build that, every complex big and small needs it!

Did we miss the message in The Terminator?

We all know the three rules that govern all robots:

  • A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

This is great for what we think of as robots. Usually; a body, a head, some arms and legs. They will walk around, working with their human counter parts. Doing construction work where parts are too heavy for humans. They will make sure a person does get in harms way where they can avoid it. They will of course make sure no harm comes to themselves either.

Two fine details get in the way with the three rules perfect plan.

What if a robot doesn’t know something will harm a human. If a robot is told something is good for humans or the robot doesn’t understand the device it is in control of, harm could happen because there isn’t an understanding that the rules apply. This isn’t the case with the movie The Terminator reference.

Where the harm will actually come from is computer programs. There is no rules of good conduct built into software. A program has not appreciation of negative impact to a human. It could be told that a certain outcome is bad, but there is no reasoning that an action could lead to harm. I thought of this tonight when 60 Minutes was covering computer programs that buy/sell stocks in a fraction of a second without knowing anything about a company, it’s leaders or employees. The program only knows that there is a movement that matches a pattern which has an expected action to be taken. I doubt most stock brokers are worried about keeping an employee of a company happy, if the CEO is spending personal time wisely, but it plays into how the company stock is bought and sold. A computer has no concept that in it’s program to make money, employees will loose jobs effecting crime rates and possibly creating harm to humans. This is just a small example. The point being, risk comes from outside of the robots that resemble humans with their physical duties, rather the bits and bytes that control what makes the world go around.

 

February with 229 links

Five days with Pebble: After months of waiting, my Pebble arrived Thursday. It sounds like I’m among the first to receive one, a matter of luck in my timing and choosing the black-colored model, which was the first go to mass production. – http://danilocampos.com/2013/02/five-days-with-pebble/

Would push notifications for HTML5 apps kill native apps?: Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Viktor Marohnić, CEO and co-founder at ShoutEm, a self service mobile website and mobile apps creator, a ‘WordPress for mobile apps.’ You can follow him on Twitter as @vikot. – by Viktor Marohnić – http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/02/09/would-push-notifications-for-html5-apps-kill-native-apps/

The Idealist: On Jan. 4, 2013, Aaron Swartz woke up in an excellent mood. “He turned to me,” recalls his girlfriend Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, “and said, apropos of nothing, ‘This is going to be a great year.’ ” Swartz had reason to feel optimistic. – by Justin Peters – http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/02/aaron_swartz_he_wanted_to_save_the_world_why_couldn_t_he_save_himself.single.html

Watch this guy use a Raspberry Pi and Siri to control his garage door, alarm, thermostat, lights, and even TV: Siri is great and all, but it’s limited to just your iOS devices. What if you could hook it up to a Raspberry Pi and then control everything in your house? That’s exactly what a YouTube user by the name of Elvis Impersonator spent three days hacking together (over a long weekend). – by Emil Protalinski – http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/02/06/watch-this-guy-use-a-raspberry-pi-and-siri-to-control-his-garage-door-alarm-thermostat-lights-and-even-tv/

What is a book in the age of the iPad? An interview with Craig Mod: Craig Mod is a writer and designer who splits his time between Japan and the US. Formerly of Flipboard, much of his writing is concerned with ebooks and digital publishing — the pitfalls the industry falls into, and how best to avoid them. – by Sam Byford – http://theverge.com/2013/2/6/3836234/what-is-a-book-in-the-age-of-the-ipad-craig-mod-interview

Subcompact Publishing — by Craig Mod: … Zip drives ate floppies.CDs ate Zips.DVDs ate CDs.SD cards ate film.LCDs ate CRTs. Telephony ate telegraphy. Text messaging ate talking. Tablets are eating our paper … Imagine a table: Hundreds of meters long and wooden. Worn and oiled. Old and knotted. Wide enough for a person. – http://craigmod.com/journal/subcompact_publishing/

Creative Ways to Use Wide Apertures in Landscape Photography: Your camera’s aperture has the ability to control your depth of field – which is a powerful creative tool that many photographers use to evoke depth, mystery, and intrigue. – by Christopher O’Donnell – http://www.photographyblogger.net/creative-ways-to-use-wide-apertures-in-the-landscape/

Quora Inverts Itself by Offering a Blogging Tool: Quora started its life as a Q&A site, one where people ask questions and get (hopefully) solid, well-written answers from a range of perspectives. But not every A needs a Q to get started. Some people just have cool stories and information in their heads that they want people to read. – by Liz Gannes – http://allthingsd.com/20130123/quora-inverts-itself-by-offering-a-blogging-tool/

Script Reveals the Lost Ending of The Shining: Back on May 23, 1980, when The Shining was first released, audiences saw something slightly different from what viewers obsess over today. – by Forrest Wickman – http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/23/the_shining_original_ending_read_the_screenplay_for_stanley_kubrick_s_lost.html

5 easy Instagram tips from a professional food photographer: hate to break this to you, but that brunch photo of brioche French toast with bacon marmalade you just posted on Instagram? It’s not very good. It’s so terrible, in fact, that we can’t be friends anymore. Just kidding. (Kind of. – by Chris Gayomali – http://theweek.com/article/index/239176/5-easy-instagram-tips-from-a-professional-food-photographer

: People who worked with Steve Jobs (I’ll call him Steve) usually don’t talk about it. It’s kind of an unwritten rule, partly because he was obsessive about his privacy. I think that has all changed now, but I’m not exactly sure. – Tags: – http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-like-working-with-steve-jobs.html

bunker an infrequent blog: Hardcover this time – fancy. So here we are in 1986, and Pentagram must have been really busy because they appear to have phoned this one in. No analysis of design agency life, but a tepid introduction from ad man Peter “Year in Provence” Mayle – how very 80s. – http://www.neuromantics.net/blog/

Become the Ashton Kutcher of Subscription Swag, Before He Does: If you’ve always wanted to create your own monthly subscription box, social commerce startup The Fancy will now do the hard work for you. And here’s the beauty part: They pay you a chunk of every sale. Starting now, anyone – yes, you – can sign up to make their own Fancy subscription box. – by Sarah Mitroff – http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/make-your-own-subscription-box/

The Stock Market: Haven’t blogged in a while. So I decided to look back and pull out one of my first blog posts, from 2004.  An oldie, but goodie ! The Number.I recommend that anyone with an interest in the market jump at the chance to buy it. – http://blogmaverick.com/2013/01/10/the-stock-market-2/

“The Tinkerers”: How corporations kill creativity: A few years ago I engaged my then two-month-old smartphone, a BlackBerry of some sort or another, in a very nontechnical road test: I sat on it. I only noticed the damage when one afternoon I reached to check my email. – by Alec Foege – http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/the_tinkerers_how_corporations_kill_creativity/

Underlined Book Quotes Become Clever Illustrations: Bookworm or not, you can’t help but enjoy these black and white illustrations of literary quotes by Evan Robertson. The New York-based graphic designer has taken some of the cleverest lines written by famous authors such as William Faulkner and Oscar Wilde and turned them into wonderful posters. – by alice – http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/favorite-book-quotes-become-fantastic-illustrations

The Leica M9, as a pro-hobbyist photographer – Marco.org: As a gift to my wife, I rented a Leica M9 with the Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH lens, a setup that would cost nearly $10,000 to own. Most fans describe Leica’s benefits in vague, unverifiable terms, much like a wine aficionado describing the taste of a $200 bottle of Pinot Noir. – http://www.marco.org/2012/12/28/leica-m9

Making The $35 Raspberry Pi Mini Computer: Quickly And Carefully Does It: It’s a safe bet that a fair few children of geeky moms and dads will be finding a rectangular-shaped parcel under their holiday tree tomorrow. – by View Staff Page – http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/24/making-raspberry-pi/

Tim O’Reilly’s Key to Creating the Next Big Thing: One of the marquee attractions at the MIT Media Lab is a camera that can take photographs of objects sitting out of sight, around a corner. It’s the result of years of sophisticated science. But the MIT researchers might have figured it out faster had they simply studied Tim O’Reilly. – by Steven Levy – http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/mf-tim-oreilly-qa/

Awesome iOS Tweaks You Can Do Right Now Without Jailbreaking (How-To): Jailbreaking your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch opens up your iDevices to a whole slew of possibilities that are otherwise not possible with Apple’s default operating system. – by Patrick Gumban – http://jaxov.com/2012/12/ios-tweaks-without-jailbreaking/

MARK CUBAN: Here’s What You Need To Know Before Starting A Business: He also gave advice on what made him famous before he became the high profile owner of the Dallas Mavericks and his incredible success as an entrepreneur. “It’s not about the idea, it’s about how prepared you are. Everyone has ideas, most don’t do the work required to get the job done. – by Max Nisen – http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cubans-advice-on-success-2012-12

Pixplit Is a Photo App That’s Actually Social: Okay, so let me be upfront about this: It’s another mobile photo app. But Pixplit actually has an interesting spin that makes it more social and interactive — almost like a simple game. – by Liz Gannes – http://allthingsd.com/20121214/pixplit-is-a-photo-app-thats-actually-social/

How I Instagram: I remain steadfast in my belief that one of the best examples of the disproportionate value of the iPhone is the fact that we are able to completely ignore the fact that its form factor is horrible to use as a camera. – http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/12/09/how_i_instagram.html

I Don’t Need No Stinking API: Web Scraping For Fun and Profit: If you’ve ever needed to pull data from a third party website, chances are you started by checking to see if they had an official API. But did you know that there’s a source of structured data that virtually every website on the internet supports automatically, by default? – http://blog.hartleybrody.com/web-scraping/

Byliner, Atavist push forward with ebook subscriptions — paidContent: Byliner and Atavist, two publishers that focus on e-singles (digital longform journalism), are experimenting with online subscriptions. While the programs are still in early stages, they could serve as models for other publishers who want to try the same thing. – by Laura Hazard Owen – http://paidcontent.org/2012/11/30/byliner-atavist-push-forward-with-ebook-subscriptions/

With new digital imprints, Random House taps self-published authors — paidContent: Publishers are increasingly experimenting with digital-only imprints, where a book is published as an ebook first and may never appear in print. Earlier this week, HarperCollins launched a digital YA (young adult) imprint. – by Laura Hazard Owen – http://paidcontent.org/2012/11/29/with-new-digital-imprints-random-house-taps-self-published-authors/

The Rise of 3D Printing: Want to turn your creative thinking about objects into a reality? Of course you do. What if you could just magic up a new button for the one that fell off your favourite shirt? What if you could invent a new way for carrying hot items in the kitchen? What if? – by Thomas Offinga – http://thenextweb.com/2012/11/30/the-rise-of-3d-printing/

Eyeist Looks To Disrupt The Traditional Portfolio Review: Eyeist is the first Web-based photography review service founded by Allegra Wilde, a Consultant to the Photography Industry; Micah and Jesse Diamond, both veteran professional photographers; that launched in October. – by A Photo Editor – http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2012/11/28/eyeist-looks-to-disrupt-the-traditional-portfolio-review/

The gorgeous Fantastical for iPhone re-invents the calendar as a timeline of events: I’m not what you’d call a productivity guru. I don’t use any interesting methods or cool combinations of software to do what I do. My philosophy is more along the lines of ‘start doing and stop when you’re dead’. That’s one of the reasons that I love Fantastical for the Mac so much. – by Matthew Panzarino – http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/29/the-gorgeous-fantastical-for-iphone-re-invents-the-calendar-as-a-timeline-of-events/

7 tactics lean startups need to build great products — Tech News and Analysis: If you’re running a lean startup, “launch and learn” is undoubtedly a familiar mantra. But launching a new feature can take weeks or even months, and for a scrappy startup that’s a potentially make-or-break issue. – by Braden Kowitz – http://gigaom.com/2012/11/17/youre-doing-it-wrong-7-tactics-lean-startups-need-to-build-better-products/

A worrying trend in behavior change in Human Computer Interaction: Research in HCI must move away from technology as a solution to behavior change towards a model that enables users to be active agents in the feedback mechanisms embedded in ambient, ubiquitous and gamified interfaces. – http://www.rioleo.org/a-worrying-trend-in-behavior-change-in-human-computer-interaction.php

Mind Blowing Overlapping Paintings by Ho-Ryon Lee: paintings by Korean artist Ho Ryon Lee. The blurred effect you’re experiencing is actually a calculated design choice by the Korean artist, who chooses to have several overlapping depictions of the same subject within each image. – by Ho-Ryon Lee – http://amazingworldpictures.com/2012/11/mind-blowing-overlapping-paintings-by-ho-ryon-lee/

Don’t Call It a Redesign: More impact, better engagement, stronger aesthetics — for TheAtlantic.com’s new home page, there’s method to the makeover. For much of the last year, my colleagues and I have been working through a redesign of the home page of our flagship site, TheAtlantic.com. – by Bob Cohn – http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/dont-call-it-a-redesign/265317/

Interaction Designer: Wanted: Compulsive problem-solvers with excellent visualization, collaboration, and communication skills. At Cooper, interaction designers work in pairs, forming a partnership that supports and encourages leaps of imagination while maintaining cohesion. – http://www.cooper.com/careers/interaction-designer.html

How To Make a Truly Spectacular Cup of Coffee: The first cup of coffee that 2012 U.S. Barista champion Katie Carguilo served tasted rich and flavorful to me, but it wasn’t up to Carguilo’s high standards. “This coffee is really chocolatey, really nutty, but it tastes a little bit too bitter in the finish,” she explained. – by June Thomas – http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doers/2012/11/the_secret_to_making_great_coffee_revealed.html

Startups Learn The Hard Way That The ‘Dropbox Effect’ Is A Myth: The logic works something like this: Devote the bulk of your funding to designing the product. CIO’s will fork over a piece of their sizable budget if enough employees get hooked and use it at work. – by Christina Farr – http://www.businessinsider.com/the-dropbox-effect-is-a-myth-2012-11

Is Taylor Swift being taken too seriously?: “Red” (Big Machine), Swift’s fourth album released three weeks ago, is a beneficiary of our lowered expectations from the Bush years. – by Mark Guarino – http://www.salon.com/2012/11/11/is_taylor_swift_being_taken_too_seriously/

13 don’ts I learned while writing, editing, marketing, and promoting my book.: So I guess I am still in the middle of promoting my latest book, and I would like to pass along some tips or reminders in the form of Don’ts for y’all out there if your book is coming out soon. – http://danielnester.com/2010/05/10/13-donts-i-learned-while-writing-editing-marketing-and-promoting-my-book/

8 Tips for Marketing Your Business on Instagram: This popular smartphone app barely makes two years since its launch from October 2010, but it is definitely on a hot run with an impressive growth, reaching more than 100 million users worldwide. – http://socialmediatoday.com/aleks-atanasov/981386/8-tips-marketing-your-brand-instagram

Online viewers start leaving if video doesn’t play in 2 seconds, says study — Tech News and Analysis: As revenues decline for traditional forms of online advertising, video is emerging as a bright spot for many media companies. It offers an opportunity for long engagement and hefty ad rates — but also a challenge to make it work. – by Jeff John Roberts – http://gigaom.com/2012/11/09/online-viewers-start-leaving-if-video-doesnt-play-in-2-seconds-says-study/

Stop Saying ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’: Before we get to the Kool-Aid part, let’s recap some horrible American history. Jim Jones was a complex man. – by Chris Higgins – http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/11/stop-saying-drink-the-kool-aid/264957/

The WordPress Editor: Taking Content Creation To The Next Level: WordPress is famous for a lot of things, not the least are the multiple features and components it has to offer. – by Sufyan bin Uzayr – http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/the-wordpress-editor-taking-content-creation-to-the-next-level-72837.html

App design pioneers: Hipstamatic: Whatever your take on skeuomorphism in app design – and Apple itself is guiltier than most – in some cases it fits the required aesthetic perfectly. – http://www.computerarts.co.uk/features/app-design-pioneers-hipstamatic

Shpock Wants To Be A Flea Market In Your Pocket: In response to the unworldliness of uber-marketplaces like eBay, Shpock (“shop in your pocket”) is a new iOS and Android app from Austrian startup, Finderly, which wants to return the local classified ads model used for selling goods peer-to-peer, to something resembling its original simplicity. – by View Staff Page – http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/06/shpock/

Can you really live on the Surface? First impressions from a week leaving the laptop at home: After nearly a week with the Surface Tablet (more like a five-day work week), I’ve retired my laptop and large tablet, replacing them both with this one product. This is a generation 1.0 product, and I had a lot of worries based on some of the first reviews. – by Rob Enderle – http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/can-you-really-live-on-the-surface-first-impressions-from-a-week-leaving-the-laptop-at-home/

Three Ways I’ve Simplified My Life Using Pen and Paper Instead of Technology: Technology is awesome. With a smartphone in your pocket and a laptop on your desk, you only need to remember which programs you’re using as your external brain. While the bulk of those processes work great for me—I’m still a die-hard pen and paper addict. Here’s why. – by Thorin Klosowski – http://lifehacker.com/5955721/three-ways-ive-simplified-my-life-using-pen-and-paper-instead-of-technology

Big Data Right Now: Five Trendy Open Source Technologies: Big Data is on every CIO’s mind this quarter, and for good reason. Companies will have spent $4.3 billion on Big Data technologies by the end of 2012. But here’s where it gets interesting. – by View Contributor Page – http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/27/big-data-right-now-five-trendy-open-source-technologies/

Thick Skin Thinking: How To Use Negative Feedback To Your Advantage At Work: It goes against our nature to shout “Hooray!” when someone calls us out. But studies show that people who solicit and accept feedback are more effective leaders and more successful at work. Here’s how to take the sting out of feedback and make it work for you. – by Denis Wilson – http://www.fastcompany.com/3002460/thick-skin-thinking-how-use-negative-feedback-your-advantage-work

Stressed Out? Relax With These 5 Free Apps: While technology is supposed to make our lives easier, it has also left many of us feeling more stressed. We have emails rolling in at all times, phone calls in the car and, thanks to Wi-Fi, we can conduct business almost anytime from anywhere. – by Cynthia Boris – http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224752

Review : iBooks 3′s new scrolling view, collections, sharing — Apple News, Tips and Reviews: As part of its Mac and iPad mini event on Tuesday, Apple also unveiled iBooks 3. It’s free, and it’s the first significant update to the ebook software since January. – by Mark Crump – http://gigaom.com/apple/review-ibooks-3s-new-scrolling-view-collections-sharing/

Vizify blends the best bits of Prezi and About.me, and soft-launches with a slew of new features: Back in July we brought you Vizify, a new platform along the same sort of lines as About.me, but helps users display a far more holistic personal profile online. It’s not necessarily an About. – by Paul Sawers – http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/24/prezi-meet-about-me-vizify-soft-launches-its-graphics-based-personal-profile-platform-to-the-public/

Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: Self-publishing, cell phones and startups: This was my first year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the annual trade show that brings over 200,000 publishing professionals to Germany, so I can’t say whether the event had more of a digital focus than in years past — but I assume that it did, because there was plenty of news about ebooks and di – by Laura Hazard Owen – http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/14/frankfurt-book-fair-2012-self-publishing-cell-phones-and-startups/

No Filter: How Instagram Caused Hipstamatic To Lose Focus And Gamble On Social: The inside story of Hipstamatic’s struggle to keep pace in the white-hot photo-sharing space. In part two of the saga, Facebook’s billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram rattles Hipstamatic, which fumbles through a series of half-baked products and social features that never stick. – by Austin Carr – http://www.fastcompany.com/3002034/no-filter-how-instagram-caused-hipstamatic-lose-focus-and-gamble-social

Why Polaroid Was the Apple of Its Time: It’s easy to forget now, but instant camera maker Polaroid once matched the mythos — and ubiquity — of Apple. Much like Steve Jobs, founder Edwin Land was single-minded in his determination to create unique products with a strong affinity for design. For Jobs, Land was an all-time hero. – by Geeta Dayal – http://www.wired.com/design/2012/10/instant-the-story-of-polaroid/

The “Lost” Steve Jobs Speech from 1983; Foreshadowing Wireless Networking, the iPad, and the App Store: In 1983, Steve Jobs gave a speech to a relatively small audience at a somewhat obscure event called the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA). The theme of that year’s conference was “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be”, which looking back seems all too fitting. – by Marcel Brown – http://lifelibertytech.com/2012/10/02/the-lost-steve-jobs-speech-from-1983-foreshadowing-wireless-networking-the-ipad-and-the-app-store/

It’s Ridiculous How Good You Have It: Sure–like all entrepreneurs–you’ve got challenges. But I’m sure you’d rather be running a business in 2012 than in 1906. Every day I get a few hundred emails. Most of them I glance through or delete. But a few I read religiously. One of these comes from the vintage photo site Shorpy.com. – by Gene Marks – http://www.inc.com/gene-marks/entrepreneurs-today-its-ridiculous-how-good-you-have-it.html

Learn Some Awesome Photography Techniques and Take Amazing Images This Weekend: You’re only scratching the surface of photography when you’re simply snapping photos. This weekend, learn to paint with light, create amazing star trails, and alter space and time as we know it. – by Adam Dachis – http://lifehacker.com/5947169/learn-awesome-photography-techniques-and-take-some-amazing-images-this-weekend

FixYa Allows You to Post Videos and Ask Repair Questions from Your iPhone: iOS: Have a busted car making a strange noise when you start it up? Or a Coffee maker that’s spilling coffee everywhere? FixYa is a new app for iPhone that lets you record short videos of your problem, and share it with a community of DIYers and experts for help. – by View Profile – http://lifehacker.com/5947244/fixya-allows-you-to-post-videos-and-ask-repair-questions-from-your-iphone

Gmail’s Priority Inbox v. Apple’s VIP: fight!: Apple recently announced VIP, a new feature in Mail for iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion. Two years ago, Google released Priority Inbox for Gmail. – by Jared Goralnick – http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/gmails-priority-inbox-v-apples-vip-fight/

How Journalists Are Using Instagram: Social photo sharing is quickly finding its way into newsrooms. Even though the payoff might not be immediately clear, many media organizations are turning to Instagram as a place to experiment. (Part 1 of a 4-part series on how journalists are using social networks beyond Facebook and Twitter.) – by John Paul Titlow – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-journalists-are-using-instagram.php

3-D Printing Software Helps Designers Avoid Rookie Mistakes [Video]: It seems the future of 3-D printing is limited only by one’s imagination. The process is already used to build—layer by layer—jewelry, toys and a variety of prosthetics, with some predicting that additive fabrication of space station spare parts and even food isn’t far behind. – by Larry Greenemeier – http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/09/20/3-d-printing-software-helps-designers-avoid-rookie-mistakes-video/

The 10 Commandments for Giving a Perfect Presentation: Looking out into a sea of faces while standing on a stage can be one of the most intimidating experiences of your career. It doesn’t matter if it’s a group of 12 people in a board room or an auditorium filled with thousands of people — giving the perfect presentation is no easy feat. – by Kipp Bodnar – http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33553/The-10-Commandments-for-Giving-a-Perfect-Presentation.aspx

Android, Apple, Starbucks & NASA: What inspired these four world-famous logos?: Imagine you’re a newbie fresh out of design school (and I don’t mean one of those faux-accredited hipster schools where all you have to do is turn up, swagger around with your fixed gear bike and strike pretend nonchalant-poses with your strategically positioned dirty-fake tatts showing). – by Mez Breeze – http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/09/08/the-stories-inspiration-behind-world-famous-logos/

Power your iPhone photography with the Golden Ratio: In our last installment, we took a look at an age old principle of composition: the ‘Rule of Thirds’. I hope everyone enjoyed experimenting with it. In this installment, we are going to explore the foundation of this rule. Before that, I want to mention something about having fun. – by Justin Balog – http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/09/01/iphone-photography-golden-ratio/

Passive Income Strategies For Web Designers: Finding ways to earn passive income is a growing concern among many freelance designers. I’ve always loved client work, but I have to admit that the pressure of juggling multiple bosses and constant deadlines eventually started to wear me down. – by Sacha Greif – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/27/designer-passive-income-experiments/

How Apple’s victory over Samsung will affect you: The good and the bad: We go over the many ways Apple’s $1 billion victory over Samsung could hurt Android users, and a few ways it could help. On Friday, a jury of nine unanimously decreed what we already knew: Samsung copied the iPhone. – by Jeffrey Van Camp – http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-apples-victory-over-samsung-will-affect-you/

5 Ways to Use Google+ Events for Your Business: Google+ Events is yet another way Google+ is competing with Facebook, representing a new opportunity for marketers. Most marketers and businesses have been using Facebook Events to promote everything from webinars to company fundraising events within their Facebook community. – by Lisa Peyton – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/google-plus-events/

How to Convince Your Boss to Let You Try a Four Day Work Week: A lot has been made about the productivity benefits of the four day workweek—either in the form of a 32 hour week, or a 40 hour week. That’s all well and good, but convincing your boss to let you change your schedule completely is tough. – by Thorin Klosowski – http://lifehacker.com/5936834/how-to-convince-your-boss-to-let-you-try-a-four-day-work-week

Why Topic Pages Are The Next Big Thing: Chronological and real-time consumption of content just doesn’t work anymore. It’s time for topic pages to add a layer of organization on top. In last week’s post, 5 Reasons Why Web Publishing is Changing (Again), we explained why online publishing is going through another sea change. – by Richard MacManus – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why-topic-pages-are-the-next-big-thing.php

How to Automatically Archive Your Life with IFTTT and Evernote: Keeping a journal can be fun, but it’s hard sometimes to keep up with recording all your memories or important thoughts. Brilliant webapp automating service If This Then That (IFTTT) can create an automatic journal for you by archiving your events, pics, and social media posts to Evernote. – by Melanie Pinola – http://lifehacker.com/5935658/how-to-automatically-archive-your-life-with-ifttt-and-evernote

Medium is well done, but is it the future of publishing? — Tech News and Analysis: Obvious Corp. – by Mathew Ingram – http://gigaom.com/2012/08/15/medium-is-well-done-but-is-it-the-future-of-publishing/

Why it’s the right time for the Lean Startup Accelerator — European technology news: For the last year and a half, I’ve been working with one of Europe’s top accelerators, HackFwd, as their marketing geek. But now it’s time to make the entrepreneurial leap: I’m founding Vuact, a platform for finding and delivering interesting video to the right audiences. – http://gigaom.com/europe/why-its-the-right-time-for-the-lean-startup-accelerator/

An iPad user reviews the Nexus 7: A review for an Android device is probably the last thing you’d expect to read on iDB. – by Sebastien Page – http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/08/11/nexus-7-review/

From Information to Understanding: Moving Beyond Search In The Age Of Siri: Editor’s note: Nadav Gur is the founder and CEO of Desti, a virtual personal assistant for travel incubated by SRI. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Worldmate, the first mobile travel app. – by VCs – http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/28/from-information-to-understanding-moving-beyond-search-in-the-age-of-siri/

Kevin Rose reflects on Digg, the dangers of outside investors, and his legacy — Tech News and Analysis: By the time Digg was portioned off for sale this year, company founder Kevin Rose wasn’t visiting the site anymore. He had already left Digg for other projects, including his own startup and a role at Google Ventures, and says it had become hard to see what happened to his “baby. – by Eliza Kern – http://gigaom.com/2012/07/25/kevin-rose-reflects-on-digg-the-dangers-of-outside-investors-and-his-legacy/

Freemium has run its course — Tech News and Analysis: “We are now seeing the end of the freemium model — signing up users for free and trying to upsell,” said Christian Vanek, CEO of the Boulder-based SurveyGizmo, in a recent phone conversation. “6.5 million unique users is not all that it’s cracked up to be. I don’t want hits. – by Rags Srinivasan – http://gigaom.com/2012/07/21/freemium-has-run-its-course/

iMore’s choice: Best apps for iPhone: The absolute best App Store apps for your iPhone, carefully curated and often updated by the staff of iMore. With hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store it can be difficult — and expensive — to find the perfect one to fit your needs. That’s where iMore comes in. – by Rene Ritchie – http://www.imore.com/imores-choice-best-apps-iphone

These Are The Top Five Features Of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean: Today Google announced the latest version of its mobile operating system: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It’s an incremental upgrade — a number of valuable features have been added, but there’s no real revamp to be seen. – by View Staff Page – http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/27/these-are-the-top-five-features-of-android-4-1-jelly-bean/

Using Web Design to Solve Creative Problems: Our modern technology has come about from centuries of human evolution. Even before computers we were using cars to get around and radio/television to broadcast media across large areas of the population. – by Jake Rocheleau – http://speckyboy.com/2012/06/25/using-web-design-to-solve-creative-problems/

How to Build New Habits with Mind Maps: Recently I had the opportunity to read a fantastic book on habits and how they really work backed with some scientific research. What really stood out how the author was able to break down habits into different components that would make it much easier to adapt new habits and change old ones. – by Thanh Pham – http://www.asianefficiency.com/habits/how-build-new-habits-mind-maps/

How To Filter Your Gmail Like a Pro: Your Gmail inbox is taking over your life. At least, that’s probably how it feels sometimes. Waking up to an inbox filled with a few dozen unread messages makes you want to close the browser in defeat. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. – by Chelsea Stark – http://mashable.com/2012/06/22/gmail-filters/

FileMaker Releases Bento 4 for iPad: With the debut of the original iPad back in March 2010, Apple subsidiary FileMaker released an iPad version of Bento, the company’s personal database software. – by Eric Slivka – http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/19/filemaker-releases-bento-4-for-ipad/

Reimagining Books: How Citia’s iPad App Compares to a Paper Book: Kevin Kelly’s book What Technology Wants was one of my favorite non-fiction books of 2011. In my April 2011 review, I gave it 5 out of 5 stars. It’s fitting that Kelly’s book is the first to be turned into an iPad app on a new iOS platform called Citia. – by Richard MacManus – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reimagining-books-how-citias-ipad-app-compares-to-a-paper-book.php

Are You Ready For Your : For Steve Gadlin, the I Want to Draw a Cat For You guy, it all started with a stick figure cat comic strip in high school. – by Shawn Graham – http://www.fastcompany.com/1840237/are-you-ready-for-your-shark-tank-moment

Photomatix HDR Workflow: 2012, Abandoned, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Photoshop, DSLR, England, HDR, High dynamic range imaging, Olympus E 500, photography, Photomatix, Photomatix Pro, Raw image format, Tagged Image File Format, Techniques, Tone Mapping, Tonemapped, Workflow – by ChrisdMRF – http://chrisdmrf.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/photomatix-hdr-workflow/

I Wrote A Book — It Only Took 5 Years And Was Edited Down From About Ten Million Words: When most people write books, they sit down with the goal of writing one. I cheated. Instead, I blogged non-stop for five years, writing about hundreds of different topics on various different sites and had someone edit a collection of those together into a book after the fact. – http://parislemon.com/post/25034761959/i-wrote-a-book-it-only-took-5-years-and-was-edited

– Tags: – http://mylifescoop.com/featured-stories/2012/05/8-highly-effective-ways-to-promote-your-personal-blog.html

Course Home: This course has been designed for independent study. It provides everything you will need to understand the concepts covered in the course. The materials include: – http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/

Beware of cheap imitations? Copycat startups deserve media coverage if they’re good enough: You can’t beat the real thing. That’s what they say, isn’t it? So much focus is placed on ‘original’, ‘authenticate’ and ‘genuine’, as companies strive to differentiate themselves from their competitors. – by Paul Sawers – http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/06/09/beware-of-cheap-imitations-copycat-startups-deserve-media-coverage-if-theyre-good-enough/

Eric Ries: 10 Classic Strategies For A Fast, User-Focused Company Reboot: The following is the second excerpt from The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries. To read the first installment, go here. The decision to pivot is so difficult that many companies fail to make it. – by Eric Ries – http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669814/eric-ries-10-classic-strategies-for-a-fast-user-focused-company-reboot

The 8 Cheapest Computers in the World: Computers are more affordable these days than they ever have been. But what if affordable ain’t affordable enough—what if you need absolute, rock-bottomest, dirt cheap? Our friends at Laptop Mag rounded up the 8 cheapest computers in the world, just for you. – by Davey Alba – http://gizmodo.com/5914561/the-8-cheapest-computers-in-the-world

Proposals That Win Business: 5 Rules: A new report suggests that structure, size and timing all matter. Here’s how to get the details right. In most small firms, sales proposals are the heart and soul of selling. They’re also time consuming, though–so when you get the opportunity to write one, you want it to be a winner. – by Geoffrey James – http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/proposals-that-win-business-5-rules.html

What Specs Actually Matter in a Digital Camera?: Dear Lifehacker, I’m looking to buy a new digital camera, but I don’t know what specifications matter. I’ve been told megapixel ratings don’t really matter when it comes to image quality, so what do I look for? What specs will tell me if a camera shoots great images or not? – by Adam Dachis – http://lifehacker.com/5912356/what-specs-actually-matter-in-a-digital-camera

Infogr.am launches so you can create your own beautiful and interactive infographics: If you read things on the Internet, like The Next Web, you’ve probably seen an infographic. The art of the infographic depends on how what data is being presented, how cleanly, and how attractively. A well-done infographic is more interesting than a text-only post of data. – by Drew Olanoff – http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/05/22/infogr-am-launches-so-you-can-create-your-own-beautiful-and-interactive-infographics/

The Future of Social Media & Your Photo Business: We’re in the middle of a paradigm shift in social networks. We’re moving away from text-heavy content to that which is more visually appealing – photos, graphics, videos, GIF animations, etc. – by Deborah Block – http://blog.photoshelter.com/2012/05/the-future-of-social-media-your-photo-business/

10 New Tips How to Master Shooting Street Photography With the iPhone: Misho: It’s been over a year since I last posted my ten tips for shooting street photography with an iPhone.  Over this time we have seen massive improvements in the quality of the camera and big changes in how images are shared, particularly through the growth of Instagram. – by Eric Kim – http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2012/05/10-new-tips-how-to-master-shooting-street-photography-with-the-iphone/

To Get To The Root Of A Hard Problem, Just Ask “Why” Five Times: In his book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries puts forth a entrepreneur’s playbook inspired by the Japanese lean manufacturing model: Start small with a ‘minimum viable product,’ gauge customers’ reactions regularly and often, make improvements efficiently, and eventually scale up to a profitable bu – by Eric Ries – http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669738/eric-ries-to-get-to-the-root-of-a-hard-problem-just-ask-why-five-times

Make mainframes, not war: how Mad Men sold computers in the 1960s and 1970s: Madison Avenue’s strategy for popularizing computers shifted from the 1950s through the 1980s. At first pitches focused on reliability and speed, but by the 1960s, advertising brochures put big systems in gardens next to fashion models. When PCs came on the market, the sales pitch changed again. – by Matthew Lasar – http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/make-mainframes-not-war-how-mad-men-sold-computers-in-the-1960s-and-1970s/

A New Way Of Looking at Your To-Do List: How do you decide which tasks you tackle first on your to-do list? If you’re choosing based solely on priority, your system is probably breaking down on a regular basis, according to father of GTD David Allen. – by Alan Henry – http://lifehacker.com/5911055/a-new-way-of-looking-at-your-to+do-list

A new way to make six figures on the Web: teaching: Miguel Hernandez, the founder of a company specializing in explanatory videos for startups, said he spent about three hours a day for three weeks making an online video course explaining his craft. – by Ki Mae Heussner – http://gigaom.com/2012/05/17/a-new-way-to-make-six-figures-on-the-web-teaching/

Dieter Rams On Good Design As A Key Business Advantage: Dieter Rams is best-known for his work at Braun–where he revolutionized the design of electronics–and his indelible influence on Apple’s Jony Ive. – http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669725/dieter-rams-on-good-design-as-a-key-business-advantage

Using Lens Filters to Improve Your Photography: Whenever we can find ways to shorten the amount of time we spend editing in post-production, it equates to extra time we can spend in the field taking more photographs. As photographers, we should always be striving to take photographs that are as near to the finished product as possible. – by Tiffany Mueller – http://www.lightstalking.com/using-lens-filters-to-improve-your-photography

It doesn’t matter what e-books cost to make — Tech News and Analysis: Book publishers are trying hard to defend the pricing of e-books — perhaps in part because they’ve been accused by the Justice Department of rigging prices to keep them artificially high — by arguing that it costs a lot more than most people think to produce the electronic version of a book. – by Mathew Ingram – http://gigaom.com/2012/05/03/it-doesnt-matter-what-e-books-cost-to-make/

How Companies Like Amazon Use Big Data To Make You Love Them: Last month, I talked to Amazon customer service about my malfunctioning Kindle, and it was great. – by Sean Madden – http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669551/how-companies-like-amazon-use-big-data-to-make-you-love-them

Crocodoc Debuts HTML5 Document Embedding Technology; Partners With Dropbox, Yammer, SAP: Y Combinator alum Crocodoc is debuting a new technology today that aims to bring an enterprise-grade HTML5 document embedding service for Microsoft Office and PDF files to web-based products. Crocodoc launched in 2010 to kill off Acrobat. – by Leena Rao – http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/01/crocodoc-debuts-html5-document-embedding-technology-partners-with-dropbox-yammer-sap/

Is phoneography the future of photography?: We are at a time where it kind of feels like there’s a new update in technology every week. It might remind you of that Best Buy commercial where the customers purchase something brand new one week, and the next week the newer version is released is and is all the rave. – http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/is-phoneography-the-future-of-photography/

Top 5 News: A simple news app which aggregates the Web’s top stories: There’s no shortage of news curation and aggregation apps out there – from 100% human-powered Web apps, to automated social media mining tools that promise to bring you the news you really want to read. – by Paul Sawers – http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/04/30/top-5-news-a-simple-news-app-which-aggregates-the-webs-top-stories/

Apple squared, (four)squared — Tech News and Analysis: I was down in Soho last week, visiting (of course) the new Manhattan REI store. After the shopping spree, I pulled out my iPhone and found a dinner recommendation on Explore: five of my friends had eaten at La Esquina, several of them more than once. Bingo. – by Mor Naaman – http://gigaom.com/2012/04/29/apple-squared-foursquared/

Get started with Messages for Mac Beta: By now you’ve no doubt heard about OS X Mountain Lion, Apple’s upcoming update to OS X Lion. Among the many new features that provide a far more iOS-like feel is Messages. – by Ben Harvell – http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/get-started-with-messages-for-mac-beta-1077815

Apple’s iBooks Author: the iTunes of self-publishing apps?: Apple’s much-hyped iBooks Author came out a while back, and Cupertino hopes the free app can become the iTunes for the self-publishing textbook world. – by Dave Girard – http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2012/04/apples-ibooks-author-the-itunes-of-self-publishing-apps.ars

4 Ways to Grow a Twitter Following That Matters: Is Twitter working for your business? Are you looking to grow a larger and more relevant Twitter following? – by Rich Brooks – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-grow-a-twitter-following/

Nighttime – HDR – Flashlight – Flash: …I try to travel as light as possible. However, I never know what I might find to photograph so I need to be prepared for possible lighting requirements. I am usually drawn to a subject because of the lighting that is available. – by John Neel – http://www.pixiq.com/article/nighttime-hdr-flashlight-flash

How to Be Creative: The Science of Genius: Bob Dylan. Ludwig van Beethoven. William Shakespeare. Steve Jobs. These are historical figures of such staggering creative genius that we often think of as freaks of nature. That their creative talent is a God-given gift, or some biological mutation that only affects a handful of special people. – by Josh Catone – https://mashable.com/2012/04/02/creativity-jonah-lehrer-imagine/

Picture Better Web Apps With Mozilla’s Camera API : Webmonkey: Mozilla is hard at work on a Camera API that will give web developers a way to access your phone’s camera. The Camera API will make it possible to build websites that can take pictures with your device’s camera and then upload them to that webpage. – by Scott Gilbertson – http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/04/picture-better-web-apps-with-mozillas-camera-api/

How to Fake Motion Tracking in Time-lapse Photography on a Mac: Most of us have seen those fantastic time-lapse sequences doing the rounds of the internet at the moment. The really high end ones introduce motion tracking to the scene, making the video’s even more compelling. – by Jason Row – http://www.lightstalking.com/how-to-fake-motion-tracking-in-time-lapse-photography-on-a-mac

Adding 1K+ Members/Day, Behance Drops Major Redesign To Make “The Creative Graph” A Reality: While the Web today is chock full of creative expression of every stripe, and digital media has given voice to a whole new class of amateur creatives, be they musicians, artists, or photographers, creative professionals on the other hand have long been underrepresented in the digital world. – by View Staff Page – http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/20/behance-relaunch/

The Ultimate SXSW Infographic: In our recent “Best of: Austin SXSW” breakdown, we asked a few folks why they came to the annual tech conference, which draws Internet lovers from across the globe. For many, SXSW Interactive is a convenient time for business meetings, company bonding and relationship building. – by Courtney Boyd Myers – http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/03/19/the-ultimate-sxsw-infographic-the-most-popular-influencers-parties-brand-campaigns-and-more/

Best Practices For Writing For Online Readers: I have less than 30 seconds to capture your attention with this post, so here goes: if you read some, most or all of the next 750 words or so, you will know how to write Web copy that is more useful to readers of your blog or Web site. – by Dave Copeland – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_practices_for_writing_for_online_readers.php

How to Track Your Website’s Content on Pinterest: Ann Smarty is a search marketer and full-time web entrepreneur. Ann blogs on search and social media tools. Her newest project, My Blog Guest, is a free platform for guest bloggers and blog owners. Follow Ann on Twitter @seosmarty. – by Ann Smarty – http://mashable.com/2012/03/14/pinterest-track-content/

Lytro: The Most Social Camera Ever Made [REVIEW]: Photography, here is your wake-up call. Lytro just released its light-field camera to the world, a device that looks and acts like no other camera ever made. – by Peter Pachal – http://mashable.com/2012/02/29/lytro-camera-review/

What is the Trend for Web Design in 2012?: Just a month and a half has passed in 2012 and there are some patterns which are quite easy to notice in how people design. Sure, most of them are similar to the ones of 2011 – it seems 2011 and 2012 will not be too different, however there might be some small changes which I will talk about soon. – by Christian Vasile – http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/web-design-trend-2012/

Tips for Wireframing a Usable Mobile App Interface: A lot of time and energy is required to build mobile iOS/Android apps. Aside from the coding and UI design you need to plan functionality ahead of time. This way you can start programming immediately and implement key features without a hassle. – by Jake Rocheleau – http://speckyboy.com/2012/02/22/tips-for-wireframing-a-usable-mobile-app-interface/

The 8 Questions That Create Perfect Landing Page Copy: Since you’re reading this post, I think it’s safe to assume that you’ve taken a crack or two at writing landing page copy. It’s probably also safe to assume that you’ve come to the realization that writing highly effective landing page copy can be quite a daunting task. – http://blog.kissmetrics.com/high-impact-landing-copy/

Why FastCompany Gets : Eric T. Wagner – by Dharmesh Shah – http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/78334/Why-FastCompany-Gets-The-Lean-Startup-Almost-Completely-Wrong.aspx

How To Pitch A Startup In Three Minutes: Each year, Startup Riot gives entrepreneurs three minutes and four slides to pitch their business–the top three win coveted investor meetings. As hopefuls gather in Atlanta on February 22, founder Sanjay Parekh shares the winning formula. – by Philip Butta – http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/how-to-pitch-a-startup

Pinterest Might Be Enabling Massive Copyright Theft: Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing web sites in history. Launched about six months ago, the site already has more than 10 million monthly visitors and, among social networks, is ranked below only Facebook and Tumblr in terms of average time-spent-per-user per month. – by Kevin Lincoln – http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-illegal-faq-2012-2?p=1

Why Nobody Should Hate iPhone Photography: “Haters gonna hate” is an Internet meme that I’m sure everyone has seen at some point.  When there are a group of people large enough to actually hate something that usually means they are scared, jealous, envious or don’t understand what it is they are hating. – by Mike Panic – http://www.lightstalking.com/why-nobody-should-hate-iphone-photography

Four Mistakes Publishers Make When Bringing Content to Tablets: Editor’s note: Mitch Lazar is the CEO of news reader startup Taptu. He was the co-founder CNN.com and the founder of CNN Mobile and Cartoon Network Mobile. Many revolutions have been televised, but the publishing revolution has already become digitized, and now, mobilized. – http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/11/four-mistakes-publishers-make-when-bringing-content-to-tablets/

5 Genius Examples of QR Codes in Marketing: QR (Quick Response) codes are starting to pick up steam among the growing smartphone-browsing crowd – a statistic that has marketers brimming with creative ideas and promotions.  Still, no one wants to open their device to a glut of text messages and alerts from codes they’ve scanned. – http://blog.kissmetrics.com/genius-qr-codes/

– Tags: – http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/images/the-history-of-marketing-HUBSPOT-resized-600.jpg

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book: I’ve published eight books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), one comic book,  and the last two I’ve self-published. In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers. – by View Contributor Page – http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/why-every-entrepreneur-should-self-publish-a-book/

Google Is Facebook Is AOL: What Happens When a Good Google Goes Bad: Two weeks ago, Google announced that they were integrating Google+, their brand new social network, with Google search results, calling the new feature “Search, Plus Your World”. – by Adam Pash – http://lifehacker.com/5878900/google-is-facebook-is-aol-what-happens-when-a-good-google-goes-bad

Steelie looks like a simple way to hold your iPad up off the ground: The portability of the iPad and iPhone makes it easy to use these devices in your kitchen, at your desk and everywhere in between. One challenge to using your iPad in these locations is finding a case, holder or stand that protects your device from inadvertent spills or drops. – by Kelly Hodgkins – http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/09/steelie-looks-like-a-simple-way-to-hold-your-ipad-up-off-the-gro/

Phraseology on the iPad is simple writing made super: We have a few options now to use our iPads for writing articles with few distractions. Several have been reviewed by the many folks around the office. A newer addition to the group is Phraseology. An iPad app that lets the writer in your get to what you need to do, write. – by admin – http://www.igoipad.com/2012/01/phraseology-on-the-ipad-is-simple-writing-made-super/

Master the New Gmail with These Tips, Shortcuts, and Add-Ons: Gmail is the best email client around, and chances are you use it all day, every day. It’s also filled with tricks, shortcuts, and time-saving tools you can use to kick the crap out of your email. Today, we’re going into exhaustive overdrive, covering all our favorite Gmail tricks, both old and new. – by Whitson Gordon – http://lifehacker.com/5861810/master-the-new-gmail-with-these-tips-shortcuts-and-add+ons

Everything You Need to Know About Digital Camera Lenses: A lens is probably the most important element in a camera, because the image quality is greatly affected by the quality of the lens. Compact cameras have fixed lenses, however SLR cameras use interchangeable lenses. Different types of lenses are available for various applications. – by NARENDRA – http://www.instantshift.com/2011/11/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-digital-camera-lenses/

30 Years of the PC: A Timeline: The PC didn’t magically appear in its current wide-screen, multi-core, HD/3D viewing form overnight. It took many years (30, to be exact) to evolve from the venerable IBM PC of 1981 to the high-powered tech gadgets of today. – by Joel Santo Domingo – http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=286186,00.asp

Google versus Facebook: On June 28, Google’s senior vice-president of engineering Vic Gundotra introduced his company’s latest social networking platform project Google Plus, which within four weeks became the fastest social site to reach 25 million users. That same day, News Corp. – by Jeff Beer – http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/39199–google-versus-facebook–page1

2Fundamentals of PL/SQL: There are six essentials in painting. The first is called spirit; the second, rhythm; the third, thought; the fourth, scenery; the fifth, the brush; and the last is the ink. –Ching Hao The previous chapter provided an overview of PL/SQL. – http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/A97630_01/appdev.920/a96624/02_funds.htm

Sometimes the questions are as enlightening as the answers: Now that I’m well into this book-writing project — Breaking the Page — one thing’s clear: the questions I’m jotting down as I write are sometimes as interesting as any answers I, or anyone else for that matter, have come up with. – by Peter Meyers – http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/08/digital-content-big-questions.html

The Best PowerPoint Tip You’ll Ever Get: The best PowerPoint tip you’ll ever hear is this: When you create a PowerPoint presentation, do not start by opening the software. Start sketching instead. – http://blogs.forbes.com/carminegallo/2011/07/21/the-best-powerpoint-tip-youll-ever-get/

What Is Life? A New Theory: Biology is often called the study of life, yet in the history of the field, experts have never agreed on just what, exactly, life is. – by Clara Moskowitz – http://www.space.com/7898-life-theory.html

Pocket-Sized Design: Taking Your Website to the Small Screen: Among the many websites that are out there, few are standards-compliant. Among those few, only a handful sport style sheets adjusted to the needs of handheld devices. – by Elika Etemad – http://m.alistapart.com/articles/pocket/

Picking A Mobile Support Strategy For Your Website: The number of people browsing the Web from a mobile device has more than tripled since 2009, and it is sure to continue growing, with browser platforms such as iOS and Android offering mobile browser support that is almost identical to what we have come to expect from a desktop experience. – by Matt Lawson – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/07/11/picking-a-mobile-support-strategy-for-your-website/

What Does a Hollywood Producer Do, Exactly?: You probably won’t recognize the men or women who pick up the award for best picture at this Sunday’s 81st annual Academy Awards. The trophy doesn’t go to the winning film’s director or to its on-screen stars. Rather, it’s handed to the “producers.” What does a producer do, exactly? – by Ian Crouch – http://www.slate.com/id/2211696/

What Does a Film Producer Do?: February 25 marks the 79th anniversary of the Academy Awards, a film-industry ritual that enhances bankrolls, makes a few actors, directors, executives, and investors very happy, and gives producers their moment to shine—since the producer, that mysterious presence, after all, is the one to acce – by Gregory McNamee – http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/02/what-does-a-film-producer-do/

Spooks Get New Workout Routine … for Their Minds: The Caveman Ughlympics, the Cat-olympics, the E’lympics — seems like everyone has caught five-ring fever. Even the U.S. intelligence community. To prepare, it’s gotten a new workout routine from a very unlikely source — social science. – by Lena Groeger – http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/IrAwShdoePw/

Cory Maguire – Real Estate for Your Vision in Sonoma County: Sonoma County locals know why we live here: the diverse and pristine landscape, vibrant arts and culture, tantalizing local wines, delicious local produce, and moderate climate. – http://www.corymaguire.com/

Welcome! Here You Can Find Great Information on Sebastopol, Graton and Occidental, California Real Estate: Looking for homes? Search everything the web has to offer, right here! Don’t miss our Feature Homes. Need local real estate information? We’ve summarized much of what is important about the Sebastopol, Graton and Occidental real estate market in this site. – http://www.dougschaeffer.com/

What I learned by interviewing 23 startups in past few weeks: I’ve been slowing down my blogging lately. This has happened for a few reasons: 1. I was speaking at the Next Web a week ago in Amsterdam and wifi there was crappy. 2. Right before that I took a few days off to be in Yosemite with my family. 3. – by Robert Scoble – http://scobleizer.com/2011/05/09/what-i-learned-by-interviewing-23-startups-in-past-few-weeks/

Benadryl for Dogs: Benadryl (a.k.a. Diphenhydramine) is an Over the Counter (OTC) antihistamine, used for treating allergic reactions in people, as well as certain animals. Diphenhydramine was first invented in 1943; it received approval by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) in 1946. – http://www.benadrylfordogs.org/

5 Tips for Making the Most of a Conference: I must admit that I’ve always been skeptical of conferences. Taking days out of the office (for a reason other than vacation) is expensive. If you’re going to spend money and sacrifice a valuable chunk of time that could be spent taking action, then it had better be worthwhile. – by Scott Belsky – http://the99percent.com/tips/7020/5-Tips-for-Making-the-Most-of-a-Conference

Impact Of URL Shorteners On SEO: With the emergence of social media and its impact on the SEO, a fresh look and understanding of SEO in regards to social data is required. Social search has gained much important with search engine such as Google giving increased weight to data that comes from social media. – by Navneet Kaushal – http://www.devwebpro.com/impact-of-url-shorteners-on-seo/

Group messaging: the next big thing?: As our mobile communications have evolved over the past few years, so have the messaging services that we’ve turned to, connecting us to our friends, families and colleagues. Instant communication has never been easier. – by Samuel Gibbs – http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/21/group-messaging-the-next-big-thing/

– Tags: – http://bitcast-a.v1.dfw1.bitgravity.com/branddanger/stormydaniels/members/media/video/00SD_V44_hc00/sdw_theone_sc9.m4v

Why Webcasts Are Perfect for Tapping Into Emerging Markets: Lara Fawzy is co-author of Emerging Business Online: Global Markets and the Power of B2B Internet Marketing, and currently a marketing manager for Cisco’s African region. Lara is also Director and founder of her own firm, ebocube Consultancy, and conducts online marketing training. – by Lara Fawzy – http://mashable.com/2011/01/17/webcasts-emerging-markets/

The Story Behind Apple’s Newton: When the first whispers of an Apple tablet started going around, we’d found it amusing that Apple hired back an old Newton PDA developer. Now that the mythical device is closer, we’ve been reminiscing more about Apple’s original tablet. – by Tom Hormby – http://gizmodo.com/5452193/the-story-behind-apples-newton

HowStuffWorks : Lots More Information Related Articles More Great Links Sources Alexander, Sharon. Home Office Weekly. “How to beat nerves before a presentation.” (Sept. 17, 2010)http://www.homeofficeweekly.com/yourself/presentations.html Hinton, Anna; Casey, Marion. Oxford Brookes University. – by Josh Briggs – http://money.howstuffworks.com/look-confident-during-presentation.htm/printable

Murder Castle: The Maze-Like Lair of the World’s First Serial Killer: The first documented serial killer, H.H. Holmes, holds a dubious and gruesome record that few serial killers in history have broken. This devil incarnate committed over 27 murders. Before forensics and CSI were invented, this man made an infamous mark on the 19th century. – by Asher Kade – http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/bizarre/news-hh-holmes-inside-castle-first-true-serial-killer

Where Have All The Comments Gone?: Years ago, the online design community was a thriving conversationalist — of sorts — through the comment sections across the community. – by Robert Bowen – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/19/critical-thinking-vs-critical-acclaim-where-have-all-the-comments-gone/

Designing for iPhone 4 Retina Display: Techniques and Workflow: The iPhone 4 features a vastly superior display resolution (614400 pixels) over previous iPhone models, containing quadruple the 153600-pixel display of the iPhone 3GS. – by Marc Edwards – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/17/designing-for-iphone-4-retina-display-techniques-and-workflow/

Mac 101: What’s happening when your Mac is starting up?: Recently, in the interest of sleeping soundly through the night, I’ve been turning off my 27″ iMac every night. No, I’m not doing this for energy conservation, but the darned thing used to light up at random intervals in the middle of the night. – by Steven Sande – http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/22/mac-101-whats-happening-when-your-mac-is-starting-up/

free-pressrelease-distribution.com: The Leading Free Press Release Distribution Site on the Net: free-pressrelease-distribution.com has been connecting our visitors with providers of Assembly, CD ROM Manufacturing, Contract Manufacturing and many other related services for nearly 10 years. – http://free-pressrelease-distribution.com/pdf-vs-epub-comparison-explanation-2-2727042.html

How To: Speed Read – The Complete Guide: Usually when we humans gather information, we do it by reading it. Sounds and pictures are of course another way to gather information, and they are ultimately the fastest ways since the way our brain processes that information is more automatic. – http://www.bitrebels.com/geek/how-to-speed-read-the-complete-guide/

How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin and Death of Traditional Publishing 264 Comments: What do the economics of publishing look like… really? (Photo: thinkpanama) Print is dead! – by Tim Ferriss – http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/08/23/seth-godin-and-print-publishing/

– Tags: – http://zosh.com/blog/evernote-as-part-of-my-mac-paperless-office/

A Complete Guide To Tumblr: Think of Tumblr as micro-blogging on steroids (technically, it’s called “tumblelogging”). Whereas Twitter and similar services limit posts to 140 characters or less, Tumblr lets you post updates of any length, although it’s best suited to short-format posts. – by Cameron Chapman – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/22/a-complete-guide-to-tumblr/

What Do We Really Mean By Art?: Mark Rothko, an American artist who described himself as an “abstract painter”, once said that he was not the kind of person interested in the relationship of form, color or similars. – by Marilina Maraviglia – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/23/what-do-we-really-mean-by-art/

13 Quick Tips To Write A Successful Post: Writing content is not easy, no doubt about it. Then we usually go and start worrying about how to make that content easy to share, how to provide valuable information, how to engage readers and so on to make it even harder. – http://socialmouths.com/blog/2010/07/08/13-quick-tips-to-write-a-successful-post/

– Tags: – http://www.inc.com/2010/07/beyond-the-idea-why-execution-intelligence-is-what-matters.html

The Creative vs. The Marketing Team: Yin And Yang, Oil And Water: Smashing Editorial: Please notice that the language in some parts of this article may be very informal. If you think you might be offended, please stop reading this article now. I hate the division represented in this title. It’s the major stumbling block in modern business. – by Speider Schneider – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/20/yin-and-yang-oil-and-water-creative-and-marketing/

Former employees shed light on Apple’s internal corporate culture: Former workers of Apple have offered a peek inside the company’s secretive corporate culture, with a glimpse at employee mentality, security, and the difference between a project in which Steve Jobs is involved, and one without the chief executive’s interest. – by Neil Hughes – http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/07/former_employees_shed_light_on_apples_internal_corporate_culture.html

Life and death of Microsoft Kin: the inside story: Since our piece on Wednesday, we’ve had more trusted sources step forward to fill in some blanks and clarify the story behind the amazingly swift fall from grace that Microsoft’s Kin phones have experienced since their launch just a few weeks ago. – http://m.engadget.com/metrics/redirect/

Why Design-By-Committee Should Die: No matter where you go in the known universe, there is design-by-committee. It has become a pecking order of disaster for the society that used to pride itself on being a mover and shaker and that allowed its mavericks and dreamers to innovate their way to success. – by Speider Schneider – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/29/why-design-by-commitee-should-die/

Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere: Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs and his powerhouse company. It’s not as easy as it looks. On Wednesday, May 26, 2010, just after 2:30 p.m., the unthinkable happened: Apple became the largest company in the tech universe, and, after ExxonMobil, the second largest in the nation. – by Farhad Manjoo – http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1659056/print

Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere: Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs and his powerhouse company. It’s not as easy as it looks. On Wednesday, May 26, 2010, just after 2:30 p.m., the unthinkable happened: Apple became the largest company in the tech universe, and, after ExxonMobil, the second largest in the nation. – by Farhad Manjoo – http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/apple-nation.html

The internet: Everything you ever need to know: A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future. The internet went from being something exotic to being boring utility, like mains electricity or running water – and we never really noticed. So we wound up being totally dependent on a system about which we are terminally incurious. – http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know

Sizing up the iPhone 4 for shutterbugs: The original iPhone launched with a fixed-focus lens and a paltry (even for 2007) 2 megapixel sensor. – by Chris Foresman – http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/sizing-up-the-iphone-4-for-shutterbugs.ars

The Complete Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats: In the fall of 2005, Apple took their first steps into the portable video market with the fifth-generation iPod with video capabilities. This original “video iPod” sported a 320×240 screen and supported playback of videos encoded only at that maximum resolution using very specific formats. – by Jesse Hollington – http://ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-video-formats-and-display-resolutions/

AT&T vs. Verizon: Let’s get this straight: AT&T and Verizon are not having an argument. It’s more like a knife fight for dominance of the burgeoning wireless market. They’re fighting for new customers and to hang on to old ones. They’re fighting for a new generation of smartphones. – by John Cox – http://www.pcworld.com/article/198150/atandt_vs_verizon.html

9 Brain Habits You Didn’t Realize You Had…: Brain is certainly the most amazing part of human body. It becomes more interesting when it does not work the way you expect it should. Psychology frequently establishes our intuitions about how human mind works, but it reveals a number of surprises as well… – http://www.mindcafe.org/9-brain-habits-you-did-not-realize-you-had

Video: Evernote CEO Phil Libin Shares Revenue Stats (And How To Make Freemium Work): Last week at the Founder Showcase, a quarterly event put on by Adeo Ressi’s TheFunded, Evernote CEO Phil Libin gave a presentation discussing some of the startup’s key revenue numbers and strategy. – by Jason Kincaid – http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/video-evernote-ceo-phil-libin-shares-revenue-stats-and-how-to-make-freemium-work/

How to Sync Multiple Calendars to the iPad With Google Sync — Mobile Technology News: Yes, we’ve covered Apple’s iPad quite a bit this week. While there are other happenings in the mobile tech world, this was a big one — besides, I haven’t blogged much about it just yet. – by Kevin C. Tofel – http://gigaom.com/mobile/ipad-calendar-sync-fix-google/

Sensory Evaluation of Coffee: To define and understand the benefit of sensory evaluation, the scientific discipline which looks at how we evoke, measure and interpret the characteristics of food and materials as they are perceived by our senses. – http://www.sweetmarias.com/article.sensory-evaluation.html

Guy Kawasaki: Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. – http://www.guykawasaki.com/about/index.shtml

5 mistakes smart people make: 1. Success and happiness are not the same thing When I ask people to summarize what they are wanting out of life they throw out a lot of words. Stuff like ‘Love’, ‘Achievement’, ‘Family’, ‘Fame’, ‘Peace’, ‘Money’. – by Alan – http://toughguide.blogspot.com/2010/01/5-mistakes-smart-people-make.html

The 7 Psychological Principles of Scams: Protect Yourself by Learning the Techniques: Good hustlers are excellent intuitive psychologists. Just like magicians they understand enough about how the mind works to exploit its vulnerabilities. – by Stanley Milgram – http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/01/the-7-psychological-principles-of-scams-protect-yourself-by-learning-the-techniques.php

How I Leaped from Pagerank 0 to 4 in 21 Days Without any Connections: Today, Henri Junttila shares his 21 day experience of blog marketing that resulted in the Pagerank increase from zero to four in only 21 days. Want to write for us too? It’s amazing at what you can accomplish when you work hard. – by Henri – http://www.blogussion.com/marketing/improve-google-pagerank/

Will the Mobile Web Kill Off the App Store?: The debate over the longevity of native software continues. Mozilla, creator of Firefox, claims that its new browser for smartphones will contribute to the death of smartphone app stores. – by Brian X. Chen – http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/firefox-mobile-vs-app-stores/

30 years in Apple products: the good, the bad, and the ugly: Has it really been 30 years since two buddies named Steve sold off their prized possessions (Woz’s HP calculator and Jobs’ VW van) to raise money and launch a company? Has it really been 30 years since the two Steves, tired of selling blue boxes, built the Apple I and began selling it for $666. – by Ryan Block – http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/01/30-years-in-apple-products-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Turn your Mac into a WiFi hotspot using OS X’s internet sharing: Have you ever been in a situation where you had multiple devices that needed to connect to the internet, but only one available source (like an ethernet cable or cellular air card)? Sharing your internet connection is only a few clicks away. – http://www.macyourself.com/2009/02/23/turn-your-mac-into-a-wifi-hotspot-using-os-xs-internet-sharing/

7 Keys to Reading Faster: Want to read faster? In this article, I’m going to share the lessons I learned that doubled my reading rate, allowed me to consume over 70 books in a year and made me a smarter reader. I’m also going to destroy some speed-reading myths, to show you it isn’t magic but a skill anyone can learn. – by Scott Young – http://thinksimplenow.com/productivity/7-keys-to-reading-faster/

How to Become More Intelligent: Although knowledge is not the summation of intelligence, it is the foundation of intelligence, so it’s crucial that we cultivate the joy of reading. It’s an amazing thing, people who become successful write down how they did it, and then sell that information for a few dollars. – by Mr. Self Development – http://www.dumblittleman.com/2009/11/how-to-become-more-intelligent.html

A Visual Guide to Computer Cables and Connectors: Computer cables can be confusing so here’s a quick visual guide that will help you quickly identify almost every cable that came bundled with your computer and other electronic gadgets. – http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/visual-guide-to-computer-cables-connectors/10694/

3 Nifty iPhone Apps For News Consumption On The Go: My name is Robin Wauters, and I’m a news junkie. – by Robin Wauters – http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/3-nifty-iphone-apps-for-news-consumption-on-the-go/

Showcase of Designs Optimized for iPhone: Over the last couple of years, mobile devices have managed to gain mainstream popularity. With iPhone, making mobile Web applications finally usable by broad masses, web design can now be applied to mobile applications as well. – by Adeel Raza – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/27/showcase-of-designs-optimized-for-iphone/

How to Start Your Own Company Using Your iPhone: Atlanta creative director Elizabeth Baskin has started several companies herself–one of them being her ad agency Tribe, Inc., with clients like Porsche, Home Depot, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Chick-fil-A. – by Alissa Walker – http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1361766

How To Create Your First iPhone App (2012 Edition): : The original version of this article by Jen Gordon was published in August 2009. It was thoroughly revised and updated by the author in September 2012. — Editorial Team – by Jen Gordon – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/11/how-to-create-your-first-iphone-application/

Are Netbooks Enough for Your Business?: Portable and affordable, the trendy “netbook” is all the rage among computer makers and the consumers snatching them up in droves — so much, in fact, this young category is estimated to make up more than 20 percent of the entire laptop category by next year. – by Marc Saltzman – http://technology.inc.com/hardware/articles/200908/netbooks.html

Paying Taxes While Living Abroad: Q: I am an American citizen, and I have landed a job in China. But I am unsure what this means for my U.S. tax situation. If I am living in China, paying taxes there and being paid in China’s currency, will I still have to pay U.S. taxes on my China earnings, even if they aren’t very much? – by TOM HERMAN – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124855578321381439.html

Get Creative With Your Domain Name: Choosing a domain name for a new client is a difficult task. Domain names are the crux of a website’s existence. A bad name can create a negative impact on branding and the ability to strengthen the domain value. – by Preeti Pradhan – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/26/get-creative-with-your-domain-names/

The TUAW how-to guide to iPhone 3GS video recording and editing: It seems like everyone who’s purchased an iPhone 3GS at this point has had a different reason for buying one. For some people, it was all about getting a faster CPU; for others, it was their first 3G-and-beyond smartphone. – by Steven Sande – http://www.tuaw.com/2009/06/27/the-tuaw-how-to-guide-to-iphone-3gs-video-recording-and-editing/

30 Must-Have Tweaks For Your Mac: In one of the recent posts, we looked at some reasons why some developers switch to the Mac. If you’ve decided to make the switch yourself, you can do a lot to make the transition smoother. – by Mark Nutter – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/04/30-must-have-tweaks-for-your-mac/

The Slick New Ads in iPhone OS 3.0: In five days, Apple will likely loose a new iPhone operating system on the world, and with it, new expectations of what a phone can do. – by Chris Dannen – http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1290166

Why We Tweet: You know you’re doing something strange and new—or at least new—when every time you’re at a social gathering, the activity comes up and the barbs come out. “Why do you waste your time with such nonsense?” people ask. – by Jack and Suzy – http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_24/b4135000618911.htm

The Future of Twitter: Microblogging platform Twitter has 32 million users, an increase from about 2 million a year ago, according to research mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month over month. – http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1901188_1901207,00.html

A SMB Owners Intro To Search Engine Marketing: You’ve heard it a million times: The Web has leveled the playing field for small businesses. Great. But what does that mean. The Web is intimidating. How does someone take advantage of that new playing field? Where do you start and how do you get the most bang for your buck? – by Lisa Barone – http://smallbiztrends.com/2009/05/guide-to-search-engine-marketing.html

Beyond Mobile Advertising: At some point all media becomes part of an equation. They devolve into commodities traded individually or as parts of portfolios, or they’re thrown in to complete a reach calculation or rating points total. Mobile advertising is naturally part of media’s calculus. – by Eric Bader – http://www.clickz.com/3633879

The Language of Behavioral Marketing, Part 1: Since working to learn about the behavioral marketing industry, I find myself floating on a sea of ambiguity, still looking for islands of meaning. Over the past five months, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing a number of industry luminaries. – by Brian Massey – http://www.clickz.com/3633853

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave. – Tags: – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/went-walkabout-brought-back-google-wave.html

101 Movie One-Liners Everyone Should Know: We all know some of the famous on-liners from the movies, but some of them are so commonplace that you may not even know that it’s a quote from a movie or from which movie it originated. But there are some quotes from movies that everyone should know. – by John Fitzgerald – http://amog.com/entertainment/movie-one-liners/

How to Create a Minimalist Computer Experience: Post written by . Follow me on Twitter. A minimalist computer setup, as paradoxical as that may sound to some, lends itself to a more serene, focused creative environment in my experience. – by Leo Babauta – http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/how-to-create-a-minimalist-computer-experience/

LG X120 netbook review: On paper, LG’s X120 netbook is just another entrant in the Atom-filled sea of sameness — and, in many respects, it is. – by Donald Melanson – http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/19/lg-x120-netbook-review/

Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards: A few days ago, I had lunch with an individual who is considering hiring me to give a multi-hour seminar to a business convention on personal finance. – by Trent – http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/11/29/everything-you-ever-really-needed-to-know-about-personal-finance-on-the-back-of-five-business-cards/

– Tags: – http://www.wrc.com/jsp/index.jsp

Advertising Age: What’s the difference between registering and subscribing? Registering allows you to sign up for any of our free emails, participate in polls or comment on stories. With your registration, you may read up to 10 articles free each calendar month. – http://adage.com/digital/article

Lake Como: Lake Como is situated in Como (Province) in Lombardy, Northern Italy. It is part of the Italian Lake District. Popular with visitors for well over 100 years for its combination of fresh air, water, mountains and good weather, it’s still worth a visit. – by Cernobbio – http://wikitravel.org/en/Lake_como

Clean Up and Revive Your Bloated, Sluggish Mac: A few years back you dropped significant cash to switch over from the virus-laden world of Windows to a shiny new Mac, but over time it’s gotten slow and crufty. Let’s clean it up. – by Gina Trapani – http://lifehacker.com/5252183/clean-up-and-revive-your-bloated-sluggish-mac

Five Things About Mobile You Should Consider: Some marketers view mobile too narrowly. They see it as a digital channel limited to cell phones, best used as a 160-character text-messaging machine. Unfortunately, that mindset limits mobile marketing’s full potential. – by Eric Bader – http://www.clickz.com/3633131

How to Make Gmail Your Ultimate Productivity Center: These days there are a proliferation of digital tools we use for productivity, for time management, for communication, for social networking, for keeping track of our lives, online and off. – by Leo Babauta – http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/how-to-make-gmail-your-ultimate-productivity-center/

How to Block Facebook Photos of Yourself: Correction: As several readers pointed out, I misunderstood Facebook’s response to my question. There is no way to prevent someone from tagging a photo with either your username, or your name as a tag. What’s possible is you can prevent other users from searching for photos of you. – by PAUL BOUTIN – http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/how-to-block-facebook-photos-of-yourself/

Top 10 Tips To Get Your Startup Noticed.: Getting your startup noticed is one of the most essential steps in building a successful online brand. You can have the coolest app/site in the world, but if no one knows about it, well, you’re out of luck. – by Nathan W. Burke – http://marketingstartups.com/2008/12/05/top-10-tips-to-get-your-startup-noticed/

The 7 Must-Haves In Your Social Media Strategy: It’s fantastic that interest in social media is so high, but I’m alarmed at the number of brands and agencies that are ready to jump into social media to take “advantage” of audience concentration in Facebook, Twitter, and other fast-growth outposts. – http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2008/12/its_fantastic_that_interest_in.html

Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post: One of the best things about the web and social media is how much great information is written and produced every single day. If you’re a regular reader of blogs, you probably come across great articles that you just want everyone to know about. But what’s the best way to share these posts? – by Ben Parr – http://mashable.com/2009/03/29/sharing-great-posts/

5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter: Back in 2006 when Brian wrote the Viral Copy report, Twitter didn’t even exist. Now Twitter is a force that any serious web publisher needs to reckon with in order to gain maximum exposure for content. Twitter is changing the way information spreads online. – by Dan Zarrella – http://www.copyblogger.com/go-viral-on-twitter/

Top 5 Steps after Joining Twitter: Posted on 22. Mar, 2009 by in Web This is probably one of the most important posts I have written so far because I am hoping it will help a lot of people join and use Twitter more efficiently. – by hilzfuld – http://technmarketing.com/web/first-5-steps-after-joining-twitter/

Ten Things you Must Know before Using Twitter: Posted on 14. Apr, 2009 by in Web As I thought about the next topic for a blog post, I could not help but get drawn back to Twitter (you can follow me here). It is what interests most of my readers, and the truth be told, it is what interests me. – by hilzfuld – http://technmarketing.com/web/ten-things-you-must-know-before-using-twitter/

Top 5 Reasons to Tweet: Posted on 27. Mar, 2009 by in Web Being a heavy Twitter user has presented a very serious challenge for me. I am asked multiple times every day, “What is Twitter?” I always try to answer that question in the most relevant way taking my audience into consideration. – by hilzfuld – http://technmarketing.com/web/top-5-reasons-to-tweet/

11 Things to Avoid When Using Twitter: Posted on 27. Apr, 2009 by in Web Twitter has taken off since my last post. It is all over the place. You can turn on the TV at any given time in any given country and be sure to hear it mentioned. – by hilzfuld – http://technmarketing.com/web/11-things-to-avoid-when-using-twitter/