As Testing Ramps Up, Glitch Launches A New Site And A Trippy New Trailer

Since we first reported on a company called Tiny Speck back in July of 2009, there has been a lot of interest in what they are working on. You see, it's a company founded by a bunch of people who helped start Flickr, and their project, Glitch, is actually a return of sorts to Flickr's gaming roots. Last February, we did an early preview of the game. And in August, we noted that testing was well underway. An update to Glitch today brings a brand new website and a new video to explain the game. This new exposure comes after a weekend in which Glitch underwent its most extensive user testing yet. The game was open for some 74 hours over the weekend, and thousands of users (of the tens of thousands in the waiting line) were let into the game to try it out. The test looks like it was a successful one, and the new website says that the game is now on track for beta testing early next year, with a tentative launch also slated for early next year. The company promises that going forward, they'll move all updates from their private alpha blog, to the company blog.

As Testing Ramps Up, Glitch Launches A New Site And A Trippy New Trailer

Backlink: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Kc-YX82vwtY/

Android This Week: TV; Ads Add Up; 1M in 40 Days

The big news about Android covered a lot of ground this week, from streaming video to impressive sales volume. Dish Network embraced Android for streaming TV to the phone, and LG sold 1 million Optimus T smartphones in just 40 days.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/wzhtEKoGy8A/

MyCityWay Dives into Data, Comes Up With Gold

MyCityWay reached 1 million in downloads by combining familiar information like local dining, nightlife, deals and movie showtimes with government data that creates a very sticky resource with users. It's a great example of how companies can mine overlooked data sets and turn them into businesses.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/ZBr1Xs5LI5Q/

#YYJ Opens Up to Citizens via Victoria Votes iPhone App #Gov20 #OpenGov

The city of Victoria, BC Canada has released a new, official mobile app (iphone) to connect with constituents during the 2010 by-election. The application can be found under the free iTunes apps in the “Social Networking” category, or by searching the term “Victoria Votes”. The application enables the user to connect their app to Twitter [...]

Post originale: http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=8112

Edward Tufte's Library Up For Auction

px2 writes "I was poking around Christie's auction house after taking a look at the Apple 1 when I came across this: Beautiful Evidence: The Library of Edward Tufte. He's unloading everything from Galileo and Da Vinci firsts to a rotating Japanese astronomical text from 1801. I guess he didn't conjure his ideas on information design from thin air." Based on Christie's estimates, the collection of 29 artifacts could fetch in excess of two and a quarter million dollars.

Ping Opens Up to Twitter to Make Music Buying Social

Apple has opened up its Ping social network to Twitter's 175 million users, allowing those users to connect their accounts to the iTunes-based network and share links and previews. The deal gives Apple more reach, and could help drive traffic to Twitter's newly relaunched website.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/NycoeZqhCVw/

Novatel Wireless To Acquire Enfora For Up To $70 Million

Wireless broadband solutions provider Novatel Wireless has agreed to acquire Enfora, a privately-held provider of wireless asset-management solutions and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, for approximately $64.5 million in cash. The purchase price includes the pay down of all debt. Additional consideration of up to $6 million, depending on certain performance targets being met, is also part of the deal.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6Z6INbAhlc0/

Comment on HP, Microsoft Buddy Up for Cloud Computing by Microsoft Pushes Private Cloud Agenda with Hyper-V Cloud Services: Cloud «

[...] and System Center on HP’s BladeMatrix converged-infrastructure system. Microsoft already has cloud computing partnerships with HP and Dell, so their involvement shouldn’t be at all [...]

Post originale: http://gigaom.com/2010/01/13/hp-and-microsoft-buddy-up-for-cloud-computing/#comment-504177

Neustar beefs up its location data by acquiring Quova

Quova, a company that claims to power 95 percent of location searches on the Web, has been acquired by Neustar.We heard about the news from a tipster, and a Quova spokesperson confirmed the deal. The financial details were not disclosed, but Quova wi

Tags: deals venturebeat location data geotargeted ads

Post originale: http://www.blogcatalog.com/search/frame?term=location&id;=b9d6679e73164b5485dfee40ed97ae93

DiceTV: Spice Up Your Resume with Power Words

Powerful words in your resume - verbs that describe your tasks, accomplishments and responsibilities, or adjectives and phrases that describe your characteristics and actions - are as important as what you say.

The Script

This resume is really bland, maybe I can spice it up by adding some action verbs like "achieved," "persuaded" and "delegated."


That's better, but it still needs something. How about a few adjectives like: "precise," "conscientious" and "enterprising." Magnifique! Adding those powerful words really did the trick.



Does your resume tantalize the reviewer? Will they keep reading or stop after the first section?



I'm Cat Miller and we're using power words to spice up your resume on this edition of DiceTV.

 

Powerful words can be colorful past tense verbs that describe your tasks, accomplishments and responsibilities or adjectives and phrases that describe your personality traits, characteristics or even your actions. How you say something is as important as what you say, so use descriptive language to paint a picture for the reviewer.



It's best to start with a broad list, then select power words that characterize your personality, work habits or work experience. If you don't have a robust vocabulary, download lists from the Internet or use a thesaurus to expand your repertoire. Remember to include descriptive phrases from the job posting like self-starter or cost conscious because mimicking its language and tone will entice the reviewer.



First, create a personal brand or opening statement using one or two adjectives from your list. For example maybe you're known as a tenacious problem-solver or a relentless pursuer of stealth security threats.



Next, support your brand by starting each experience bullet with a complementary past-tense action verb. Remember, don't use power words haphazardly. Your selections should work in concert to convey a cohesive message. For example a relentless security expert may have "abolished" or "thwarted" hundreds of incursions or "abated" network downtime through "persistent" and "deliberate" firewall testing.



Finally, sprinkle in a few adjectives and voila - a spicy resume. In fact this resume is so spicy; I can't wait to see what happens next. I'm Cat Miller and this has been Dice TV. We now return you to your regular desktop.

 

Post originale: http://career-resources.dice.com/articles/content/entry/dicetv_spice_up_your_resume

Facebook Users Line Up For Free Jeans At The Gap

Facebook's big "Deals" product launches with Gap stores today, and Facebook users are lined up at Gap stores around the country, hoping to get one of those 10,000 free pairs of jeans. (If you don't get free jeans, you can get 40% off a regular-price item, just by "checking in" to a Gap store on Facebook Places.)

A quick Twitter search suggests there are lines at several stores, though we doubt they're as long as the annual iPhone lines.

Here's one photo that was just posted on TwitPic. Atlanta-based Sarah DeThomasis tweets, "At @Gap with the Vitrue girls getting our free jeans! I love social media!"

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Watch Facebook Explain And Demo How Deals Works
• Facebook Just Fired Another Missile At Foursquare
• Zuckerberg: Facebook Places Is Multiples Bigger Than Any Other Location Service

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/B1-QdT3WJwU/facebook-users-line-up-for-free-jeans-at-the-gap-2010-11

Boost Mobile Teams up with the New York Knicks and MSG Network for new Marketing Partnership

Partnership launched with debut of Boost Mobile Celebrity Row at Knicks home opener last Saturday

Set up your own routing web application using OpenStreetMap data and open source software

Did I mention that I love OpenStreetMap? It’s not just the map that looks more beautiful and complete every day, but also all the neat things it allows people to do with the raw data which is free for anyone to pick up and use. This is not usually something I engage in myself – suum quique – but it does feel good to get your hands dirty with some open data and open source software once in a while.

The Sexy Details of How the iPad and MacBook Will Hook Up

During the Back to the Mac event, Steve Jobs made a particularly witty remark that made the audience giddy with laughter:

“We asked ourselves, what would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up? Well, this is the result, we think it’s the future of notebooks.”

There is always a deep strategic intent with the things that Apple does, especially when it comes from Steve Jobs. The first phase in “hooking up” that took place between the MacBook Air and iPad foretells a deeply converged future on many levels.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JkHnUW5OvTM/

IT Budgets Are Bulking Up, But What About Salaries?

Kevin Fogarty of ITWorld asks an interesting question: As IT funds start to flow again, are you getting your cut? Probably not, and for a couple of reasons.

A lot of that money goes to "IT Debt:" maintenance, repairs, and replacements on older machines and software that haven't been fixed for a while because the money wasn't available.

So no one expects all that money to be going directly to the help deskers with frustration-patterned baldness from pulling their hair out after talking to users, or the IT project managers with finger-shaped tan lines on their faces from the amount of time they spend in facepalm during and after business-unit project meetings.


Some facts:

IT people at large companies scraped their way to 0.38 percent raises on average between 2009 and 2010, according to surveys from PSRInc.

SMBs were stuck with increases of just 0.11 percent.

Industry consortium TechAmerica Foundation's surveys showed IT organizations cut 143,000 jobs last year and have brought only 30,200 of them back.

Janco's survey of more than 300 end-user companies shows the average of all IT professionals got 0.67 percent more in compensation this year than last, and that staff (1.27 percent) and middle managers (1.07 percent) did best of any other category not specifically delimited by a particular technology skill.

So tough times out there, but perhaps you already knew that. Still, it's certainly worth looking at the department budget to see what percentage of funds is going to gear and what percentage is going to people. Is it the right mix?


-- Don Willmott

Post originale: http://career-resources.dice.com:80/articles/content/entry/it_budgets_are_bulking_up

Verizon's CEO Opens Up About Steve Jobs (VZ, AAPL, T)

Fortune is the latest to report the iPhone is coming to Verizon next year. It reports this nugget at the top of a big profile of Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg.

While Seidenberg doesn't confirm (on the record) the iPhone is coming to Verizon, he does open up about Verizon's negotiations with Apple through the years. Here's how it went down:

• In 2005, Apple approached Verizon about carrying the iPhone. Verizon balked at giving Apple so much control.

• In 2007, just before the iPhone launched, Seidenberg went to Apple's HQ and asked Steve Jobs, "Why are we in your doghouse here?" (The two companies hadn't spoken since Verizon balked at Apple's terms in 2005.)

• Fortune suggests Apple didn't want a phone that was CDMA, because it couldn't sell it around the world. This is why Verizon was in the "doghouse."

• In December 2007, after the iPhone was on the market, but customers were complaining about shoddy service, Lowell McAdam, CEO Verizon Wireless called up Jobs and said, "We really ought to talk about how we do business together. We weren't able to [reach an agreement] a couple of years before, but it's probably worth having another discussion to make sure we're not missing something." Job's reportedly said, "Yeah, you're probably right. We have missed something."

• Three years later the companies are finally working together. The iPad is in Verizon stores, and the iPhone will hit next year.

• Seidenberg also says Jobs respects Verizon, telling him in December 2009, "Decisions you made [at Verizon] are decisions we would make at Apple."

We wonder how AT&T feels about that last quote.

See Also: If AT&T Is So Bad, Why Is It Beating Verizon Every Quarter?

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Verizon To Start Selling iPads Starting October 28
• My iPhone 4 Has Totally Killed My Digital Camera
• CHART OF THE DAY: If AT&T Is So Bad, Why Is It Beating Verizon Every Quarter?

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/C3Yya46fSYM/verizons-ceo-opens-up-about-steve-jobs-2010-10

Cashie Rings Up PayPal API To Offer Checkout Platform For Publishers

There are plenty of checkout and shopping cart solutions on the web; including Payvment, BigCommerce and others. Cashie is launching today as a cloud-based e-commerce platform that can be easily installed on a website or blog. Cashie is designed for publishers using content management platforms such as Wordpress, and can be integrated into a site by copying and pasting a few lines of code. The technology leverages PayPal's X Developer Platform to allow users (who need to have a PayPal Website Payments Pro merchant account) to offer a PayPal and standard credit card checkout experience.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/O7kAkGRfadA/

The Galaxy Tab Hitting Verizon Wireless November 11th For $600 Straight Up

Verizon will soon be a one-stop shop for all your tablet needs. Come November 11th, the wireless carrier will be selling the Galaxy Tab alongside the iPad. The only thing is, the Galaxy Tab is a bit more expensive at $600 without any sort of subsidy and doesn't come with a MiFi. But hey, maybe you have and Android tattooed on the underside of wrist and would rather have a 7-inch tablet rather than a 10-inch. Fine by Verizon. They'll be happy to sell you whatever you want. Buyers will have the option of adding on a $20 monthly data plan that will give their Galaxy Tab 1GB of data. That's the same price as Verizon's iPad plan. This announcement actually answers a lot of questions about the Galaxy Tab's US release. Samsung made it known a few weeks back that the US's four major carriers would sell the tablet, but details were absent. Now we can properly speculate.

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/iMVEbzyjuvU/

OpenStudy Teams Up With MIT OpenCourseWare to Help OCW Users Study Together

As we wrote earlier this month, MIT OpenCourseWare is one of the most popular site for learners to freely access university course materials, with over 70 million visitors to the site from all over the world. Yet despite the increasing popularity (and push, by the likes of the Gates Foundation's new initiative) for opencourseware, one of the downsides has long been that the materials - syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, exams - are presented in a static and solitary fashion.

There has been no mechanism for instruction for and no interaction among MIT OCW students. Until now.

Sponsor

Studying OCW Shouldn't Mean Studying Alone

At the beginning of this academic year, MIT OpenCourseWare and OpenStudy joined forces in order to provide an interactive environment for those studying certain MIT courses. OpenStudy, a social study network that originated at Georgia Tech and Emory University, allows users to work collaboratively and to answer one another's questions.

Steve Carson, MIT OpenCourseWare's External Relations Director, told ReadWriteWeb that MIT tried to have a BBS several years ago to foster discussions about courses, but that there were never really enough traffic for any one course. And it's this experience, perhaps that made the pilot program for the OCW OpenStudy groups only tackle three MIT courses: Introduction to Computer Science, Single Variable Calculus, and Chinese I.

The response, says Carson, has been "extraordinary." There are now 3000 students participating in the CS study group, 2400 in the calculus study group, and 800 in the Chinese one.

More Students, More Courses

And seeing this response, MIT and OpenStudy have added more study groups - there are study groups for ten courses now - which in just a couple of week's time, have elicited enrollment from hundreds of students.

According to Phil Hill, OpenStudy's CEO, "Our goal is to bring a more social learning experience to students on MIT OpenCourseWare by ensuring they don't have to study alone. Seeing so many of them now working together from all corners of the globe is a great first step." And this global element is important, adds Carson, noting that participants will almost always find someone online in the study groups.

Carson says that the response points to new ways for the MIT OpenCourseWare program to expand as it's clear OCW learners are interested not just in the availability of the course materials but in a community in which to share and discuss the ideas they're learning.

Discuss

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/oSZtsZ97qV0/openstudy_teams_up_with_mit_opencourseware_to_help.php