10/31/2010

Facebook holding mobile event next week

The much-rumored and quickly denied Facebook phone could finally be unveiled next week--or at least something new relating to using the social network on mobile devices.

Earlier today the company began sending out invites to members of the press for a mobile-focused event next Wednesday at its headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.

Back in September, rumors began swirling that the company was working with device manufacturers on a Facebook-branded handset. A Facebook spokesperson quickly responded by saying that it was flat-out false, and that "building phones is just not what we do."

Recent numbers made public by the company had said more than 150 million of its 500 million active members use the site from their phones. Facebook maintains both a mobile-friendly version of the site, and native software applications--both of which could end up being the focus of Wednesday's event, among possible hardware developments and partner tie-ins. CNET will be on the scene to bring you the news.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20021267-248.html?tag=mncol;title#ixzz13xzCJmCE

10/25/2010

Apple goes shopping Adobe?

You may have seen many rumors about super acquisitions in the technology world that have not passed it, rumors, but if the buzz that went through the internet today is confirmed, we will see in the coming months the explosion of one of the biggest bombs in history.

With 51 billion dollars in cash, it took Steve Jobs declares during a conference last week that Apple is keeping the money in order to use it in a “strategic opportunity” for some market analysts began to speculate about what are the targets of the company.

Among the names cited there are Adobe, Netflix, and even Facebook, which co-founder Mark Zuckerberg recently dined with Jobs, but the list does not stop there. Besides the giant Disney and Electronic Arts also included in the list, the most shocking possibility certainly talks about a possible purchase Sony. Although this deal seems very unlikely, it is important to mention that last year the creators of the Playstation family had a loss of $ 400 million and its market value today revolves around U.S. $ 40 billion, which would allow Apple still stay with a few bucks in the coffers to organize a party.

Does this mean that one day we will see an iPlaystation? Was very unlikely, but maybe people are just thinking with the head of a mere mortal, who can hardly imagine a transaction of this size and who are not prepared to experience a big change in the gaming industry. But who knows?

Facebook's 500MM + Users + Under-Monetized "like" Connections offer Significant New AD Opportunities

10/23/2010

5 Ways to Get a Job Through YouTube

Not only is it possible to use YouTube to get a job, but it’s becoming a more popular option, especially for the current crop of would-be-employees that grew up with web video. Some argue that video is a more personal tool for job searching, acting as a digital interview, while others see it as cold and alienating, as it lacks the face-to-face element. But YouTube isn’t just about video resumes — there are a variety of creative ways to hop online and get hired.

Even better, YouTube isn’t just for Millennials. Web video can be useful for professionals of any age looking to expand their audience or pick up new clients. With a little creativity, honesty and hard work, you can utilize YouTube to create a more effective (and more interesting) professional and digital image, rather than just falling back on the ol’ resume (digital or not). Read on for five ways to use YouTube to get a job. If you’ve landed a position through YouTube, add your story and tips in the comments below.

1. Promote Yourself
While this may seem a little obvious, amazing opportunities can come out of promoting yourself on YouTube. Tom Ferry is a real estate training coach with a best-selling book, Life! By Design. He hopped on YouTube two and a half years ago in order to grow his audience and to own the SEO in his field. Ferry has received speaking engagements and consulting jobs across the world by showcasing his talents in one or two videos each week.

“I believe in the theory of free, perfect, and now,” Ferry said. “Perfect, means short [and] easy. It’s a free twist to marketing. It’s never a concern of, ‘Gosh, if I put all my best content up for free, will people stop hiring me?’ … If I do put it up, people will see I’m a force.” For his book, he made a weekly video explaining each chapter and offering crib notes. Rather than give his book away, it became a New York Times Best Seller.

Ferry said that his audience has been steadily building, thanks to properly tagging his videos to maximize SEO and by constantly offering useful videos to his followers.


2. Post and Hope
This strategy may be the “Hail Mary” of getting jobs through YouTube, but it has proven successful in many cases. Perhaps the most famous YouTube discovery is Justin Bieber (yes, that Justin Bieber).

Bieber posted homemade videos of himself singing. He quickly jumped from hundreds of views to thousands. After he built up enough buzz, he was discovered by his now manager, Scooter Braun, and introduced to Usher.

While it helps to have boyish good looks and singing talent (like fellow discoveree Greyson Chance), this strategy isn’t just limited to teen idols. Create a channel and post videos that highlight your expertise. If you’re great at building fences, film that and offer some added value. Cultivating your fan base and reaching out to your fans can help build enough credibility or buzz to launch your career.


3. Build It
YouTube can help get you a job even if you don’t like putting your face on camera. That’s what happened for Stanford student Feross Aboukhadijeh when he created YouTube Instant on a bet to his roommate. Aboukhadijeh built YouTube Instant shortly after the launch of Google Instant to bring the same insta-search features to the video platform.

The CEO of YouTube, Chad Hurley, was so impressed that he offered him a job over Twitter. Aboukhadijeh, now an employee at YouTube, continues to add features to his design while finishing his degree at Stanford.

Not all of us can build a site that will get noticed by major execs, but Aboukhadijeh proves that creativity and hirability aren’t limited by your on-screen personality. Try programming, coding, sketching or designing something in your desired field. For example, create a new bird design for Twitter or better user interface for Facebook and post it online — you never know who’s watching.


4. Be Creative
When 23-year-old Brian Freedman saw an ad to write financial articles for iGrad, a financial advice site for college students, he focused on a small side note offering to submit video instead. Freedman created a sample video on how to budget by using envelopes and was offered the job on the spot.

Freedman felt more comfortable speaking in front of a camera than writing a cover letter or traditional resume. YouTube allowed him to show his financial sense and on-screen personality to help him land the job ahead of other potential contributors. “Doing a video with YouTube is much more effective than a resume,” Freedman said. “It basically shows what you can do, what you are capable of.”

After nine videos, Freedman parted with iGrad to start his own channel taking a bluer (read: NSFW) approach to relationship advice. He was able to build his brand and draw in far more followers than with iGrad.


5. Enter Online Contests
These days, it’s not uncommon for a company or employer to host a video contest on YouTube to draw in potential candidates. For example, Dr. Pepper teamed up with Step Up Director Jon M. Chu to hold a YouTube Dance Contest to find a dancer to feature in an Ultra Records music video — check out the winner’s video above.

Video contests are so popular on YouTube that it has an entire page dedicated to contests ranging from short film contests to social good efforts. Keep an eye out for contests in your area of expertise and enter when the right opportunity comes along.


Final Tips
YouTube is a simple, snappy way to get yourself seen. Aside from the social media pop and pizazz, it’s quickly becoming an effective way to own SEO terms, build a brand, and find jobs. While some video proficiency helps, fancy film work and high tech cameras aren’t key to success. Approach YouTube with creativity, authenticity and consistency, and the results might just come your way.

6 of the Most Memorable Google Doodles



On Friday, 21 May 2010, on the 30th anniversary of the arcade game Pac-Man, Google unveiled worldwide their first interactive logo. Anyone who visited Google could play Pac-Man on the logo, which featured the letters of the word 'Google' on the Pac-Man maze. The logo also mimicked the sounds the original arcade game made. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button was replaced with an "Insert Coin" button. Pressing this once enabled you to play the Pac-Man logo. Pressing it once more added a second player, Ms. Pac-Man, enabling 2 players to play at once, controlled using the W,A,S,D keys, instead of the arrows as used by Player 1. Pressing it for a third time performed an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. It was then removed on Sunday, May 23, 2010, initially replacing Pac-Man with the normal logo. Later on that day, Google released a permanent Google Pac-Man site, due to the popular user demand for the playable logo.




Google's August 29th logo celebrated Michael Jackson's birthday a couple of months after his death. The two Os in Google were replaced with two feet, en pointe, wearing patent leather shoes and shiny white socks below slightly-too-short trousers.




In 2009, Google marked the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street with a new 'doodle' featuring the programme's Cookie Monster. Users of Google in the UK, France and Canada were greeted with the hungry blue character's familiar 'googly eyes' in honour of the programme's four decades on air.




This doodle that appeared online in Sept 2010 was meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Flintstones.




On Friday, October 8, 2010, to mark what would have been the day before the 70th birthday of John Lennon, a 32-second "Video doodle" appeared on the google homepage. The "E" of google was shaped like a play button. The video was a simple animation that was accompanied by Lennon's song "Imagine."




On March 2010, the Pi Day, 3.14 was celebrated by math nerds and Google, worldwide. Having been conspicuously missing from Google's ever-growing repertoire of special-event doodles for years, Google finally relented and unleashed its inner nerd, not that it tried to hide it too hard in the past. And, perhaps to make up for all the years it skipped, Google went all out this time and showed off six common uses of the famous number. The Pi Day Google logo starts off with the formula everyone knows (?) for the area of a circle A = πr2, but goes on with some more advanced stuff. The two 'os' in Google are used to represent the sin(x) function over a 2π period.

Coolest Computer Mice


Sexy Body Mouse
How could work with a computer ever be a sensual experience? Well, with the Pat-Says-Now Body Optical Mouse ($29.90) you'll be touching and moving around a voluptuous body dressed in fancy lingerie... the whole day.



World of Warcraft Mouse
What's a World of Warcraft session without a dedicated WOC mouse? That was gaming peripheral makers SteelSeries' sentiments when they created the SteelSeries World of Warcraft Mouse ($99.99) for its 11 million devoted users. It would take three hands with all digits intact to match the number of buttons on SteelSeries' new World of Warcraft MMO mouse. That's right - 15 programmable buttons grace the rodent's funky cyborgish exterior, and each one of them was designed in conjunction with Blizzard specifically with WoW addicts in mind. The new mouse level's up its macros skillset by affording macros up to 160 characters long, with over 130 predefined commands for drag-and-drop macro creation in place. But you might find yourself spending the majority of your time grinding away at the light scheme. And get this: the world's first WoW mouse boasts no less than 16 million illumination choices with 3 intensity and pulsation levels. Not bad!



Hamburger Mouse
This is one burger at the deskop that won't drop any crumbs into your keyboard - the Hamburger Mouse ($19.95). Its deliciously ergonomic design has a guarantee of approximately three million clicks, probably one million more than you'll ever need in your lifetime, unless you're a sucker for point-and-click RPGs such as old school Diablo.

10/13/2010

77% de los empleados de PYMEs usan redes sociales en horario de trabajo

Panda Security, the Cloud Security Company, anuncia los resultados de su primer informe anual sobre el Índice de Riesgo de las redes sociales para PYMEs en Estados Unidos. El estudio, que ha sido llevado a cabo en 315 empresas de USA de hasta 1.000 empleados durante el mes de julio, revela que el uso de redes sociales durante horario de trabajo es una práctica habitual (el 77% de los empleados lo hacen), y consecuentemente, el 33% dice que se ha infectado la red corporativa por malware que se ha distribuido a través de estas comunidades.

Según el estudio, las mayores preocupaciones de las PYMEs respecto a las redes sociales incluyen la privacidad y las pérdidas económicas (74%), infecciones de malware (69%), pérdida de productividad de los empleados (60%) y las relacionadas con la reputación de la empresa (50%), seguida de los problemas del rendimiento y uso de la red (29%).

Sin embargo, esta preocupación no impide a las PYMEs la utilización de los beneficios de las redes sociales, ya que un 78% de los encuestados reportan que utilizan estas herramientas para apoyar la investigación y la inteligencia competitiva, mejorar su servicio de soporte al cliente, implementar las relaciones públicas y las iniciativas de marketing y generar beneficios directos. Facebook es la herramienta social más popular utilizada por las PYMEs: 69% de las empresas tienen cuentas activas en este sitio, seguido por Twitter (44%), YouTube (32%) y LinkedIn (23%).

Facebook se convierte en la fuente principal de infecciones de malware

Facebook es mencionado como el principal culpable para las compañías que han experimentado infecciones de malware (71,6%) y violaciones de privacidad (73,2%). YouTube ocupa el segundo lugar en cuanto a infecciones (41,2%), mientras que Twitter contribuyó a una cantidad significativa de violaciones de privacidad (51%). Para las compañías que han reportado pérdidas económicas debido a violaciones de privacidad por parte de los empleados, Facebook, fue una vez más el sitio más mencionado como el sitio social en el que se originaron las pérdidas (62%), seguido de Twitter (38%), YouTube (24%) y LinkedIn (11%).

Políticas y educación prevalecen entre las PYMEs

Para minimizar los riesgos asociadas con las redes sociales, 57% de las compañías tienen en la actualidad políticas de regulación, con un 81% de estas empresas que tienen personal para poner en marcha estas políticas. Además, el 64% de las compañías encuestadas reportan haber tenidos programas de formación para educar a los empleados en los riesgos y beneficios de las redes sociales en el trabajo. La mayoría de los encuestados (62%) no permiten el uso personal de las redes sociales en el trabajo.

Las restricciones más comunes incluyen: juegos (32%); publicar contenido no apropiado en las redes sociales (31%), e instalar aplicaciones no autorizadas (25%). Además el 25% de las compañías dicen bloquear activamente los sitios populares para los empleados, mayoritariamente a través de appliances y/o servicios de seguridad basados en servicios web (45%).

Además, el 35% de las empresas infectadas han sufrido pérdidas económicas, y más de un tercio de éstas, estiman las pérdidas en más de $5.000.

“Las redes sociales están ampliamente extendidas en las PYMEs por sus obvios beneficios, aunque estas herramientas suponen un serio riesgo“, según Luis Corrons, Director Técnico de PandaLabs. “La concienciación y la educación en el correcto uso de estas redes sociales es fundamental para sacar el máximo provecho de la comunidad. Junto a la mejor protección de la red corporativa, la utilización del sentido común –muchas veces el menos común de los sentidos- es lo que nos va a evitar dolores de cabeza derivados de problemas tanto de seguridad como de privacidad."

Apple to get back to basics, possibly Mac with FaceTime



Amid all of the hoopla around the Apple’s iPhone, iPad and the once a year debut of new iPods, it’s easy to forget that the Mac is a key cog in the company’s performance.

On Oct. 20, two days after Apple’s earnings, the company will hold a “Back to the Mac” powwow. Given the title it’s safe to assume there are some revamped Macs on the horizon.

It’s about time. Perhaps I’m too old school, but it’s a bit galling that the trusty Mac has been so forgotten. In Wall Street reports you have to scroll through iPhone and iPad talk—with the mentions of Apple TV and iPods—to maybe get to a footnote about the Mac.

Is that anyway to treat Macs, which are expected to ship 13.5 million units for the year ending Sept. 30? And these Macs have an average selling price of $1,323, according to Jefferies & Co. Apple made no mention of the Mac OS at its developer’s powwow a few months ago, but appears to be hinting at OS X Lion. And aside from a revamped Mini, Mac users haven’t had much to fawn over. Instead, the Mac has taken a back seat to the iPad, which is now being dubbed the Mac for the masses.

Well enough of that. Give us some Mac love dammit!

So what will we see? Analysts seem to be betting that a FaceTime enabled iMac is around the corner.

Indeed, Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes has been beating the Apple FaceTime drum. To Reitzes, FaceTime is Apple’s killer app that can propel the company’s entire line-up.

Reitzes said in a research note:

We project Apple will sell almost 63mm FaceTime capable devices by the end of FY11. In FY12, we see that figure jumping to an installed base of over 150mm, which could prove conservative if FaceTime is put in all iPads & Macs. It seems Apple has the complete package to make FaceTime grow into a multiplier for its device sales through vertical integration.


Sounds interesting. Perhaps it’s time to meet the Mac as video conferencing unit.

10/12/2010

Life after Google: Brad Neuberg's HTML5 start-up

For someone interested in capitalizing on the new era of advanced Web standards, you'd think Google would be a pretty good employer. After all, it's got an up-and coming browser, some of the world's most influential Web applications, and plenty of money to invest in both.

But in the culture of Silicon Valley, sometimes there's a time to strike off on one's own, and that's what Brad Neuberg, a very visible Web programmer at Google, decided to do. He announced his departure on the eve of a speech last week at the Future of Web Apps conference here.

In an interview with CNET afterward, Neuberg said he plans to launch a San Francisco start-up in November focusing on the same suite of Web technology he's been steeped in at Google. He's cagey on details, but he said he plans to focus on Web applications for consumers.

"I drank the HTML5 Kool-Aid," he said, saying it and other Web standards are fueling a new wave of entrepreneurial activity. " I really believe we're starting to see those start-ups. We'll see that accelerate in the next six months to a year and a half."
Plus, he didn't like spending three hours a day commuting from San Francisco to Google's Mountain View, Calif., offices and back for two years and nine months of his life.

"What am I sacrificing? It didn't all fit," he said. "I should be doing what I would do if I won the lottery," so now he's begun trying to gather a group of like-minded folk for the start-up.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/webware/?tag=hdr;snav#ixzz129I5ob00

Importante herramienta para descargar tu data publicada en Facebook



Among the three new features introduced by Facebook last week, one of the last ones to make it to the hands of users was the personal data downloader. It's also one of the most interesting of the bunch, since it effectively gives users an escape hatch to grab everything they've ever uploaded to Facebook and take it elsewhere.

The feature finally went live over the weekend, and I've had a chance to put it through its paces. The good news is that it's one of the simplest options I've ever seen for such a large amount of data. The bad news is that because it's just your information, you may find it's missing a lot of things that include you, but that were uploaded by others.

So what does the service do? It grabs every photo, video, wall post, private message, event, and scrap of profile information from your Facebook account, and puts into a tidy little zip file. In essence, it's your entire Facebook identity in just a folder.


To get this wealth of information, you have to jump through a handful of security hoops. Even if you're signed into Facebook, you need to re-enter your password to request it. Also, if you're on a computer that Facebook is unfamiliar with, it will ask you to solve a captcha. Facebook will then beginning pulling together all those files, which it does in the background, before sending you an e-mail to let you know it's done.

For me, the turnaround time from filling out my information to getting the download link was less than 10 minutes. And the size of the download? 270MB.

Once you have that file in hand, your profile is broken into folders. This includes photos and videos, though unfortunately, this works out a little better for videos than it does for photos.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20019200-248.html