The RT has definitely gripped Twitter and it really is set to make itself much easy to use with time. Perhaps taking heed of the suggestions or maybe hates being compared to any other in the same category. I mean the RT is so much over its head that it has got the note right there above the message box. SO now we have RT, RT with SMS and most probably RT with French support. Way to go Twitter, but I bet many people don’t like it much. Any say our readers?
After taking its time building itself up in private beta, Brizzly, the Twitter and Facebook client is finally available for the public. The client makes it easier for users to easily view videos and photos right within the streams on Twitter as well as letting you make direct uploads. The client is still in beta which means there will be tests still and one of those experiments is tweet translation. Sounded interesting given that if someone tweets you in a foreign language, those tweets are automatically translated into your own language.
To be honest Brizzly will have a tough time, given that the stage is already crowded. But then the team behind this is nothing less than competitive and includes the names like, Evan Williams, Chris Wetherell, Jason Shellen and Ben Darnell.
Okay, I wouldn’t buy Steve Ballmer yelling out that a Microsoft OS is doing great, why? Well mostly because most of the systems in the market come loaded with it. But to be honest, Windows 7 has so far got quite a positive feedback and Ballmer is boasting about that. The OS has done twice as better as any of its previous OSs in the same duration of time. Good enough, I guess people really needed something good coming out after Vista and I am glad Microsoft lived up to their expectations.
I just wonder what is the future of these desktop OS once Google has a full fledged version of its Chrome OS. Any idea? Please leave your answers in comments.
Facebook was blocked in our office. Thanks Zynga for giving us Farmville and infesting every browser with virtual farms and keep all my colleagues occupied. Result, I have been deprived of keeping my social activity alive at work and it was pretty useful social networking I was involved in. It just happened today and when I go through some news I figure out Zynga now has another one; Petville. Why? I mean is this some new sort of addiction we will have to fight? Zynga has filed the trademark and will definitely be coming out with a whole virtual world for pets. Isn’t there anything better to do? and exactly how profitable is this? I guess it means a lot, but that doesn’t change anything for the admin at my workplace would be more concrete at not lifting the ban up.
I just needed to ask you all, how many of you play these games? And how much time on average do you spend time on these?
The search is simpler with Google and faster too but that doesn’t satisfy people at Google who are always looking for ways to make it even better. Why the need for improvement? It is quite unpredictable and to get rid of this issue, Google is planning to change its homepage to quite some extent with the inclusion of a permanent side bar. This will be rolled out to a few users for tests with a side bar on the left and as one can predict it would help you narrow your search from everything to just images, news, etc. Now that is quite similar in functionality compared to the options at the top left, but then those appear to be way out of sight and aren’t good at the interface. If this comes out, we might be on the verge of seeing Google breaking away from its tradition of KISS.
Let us know if anyone of you notices this change in the comments.
The worst thing to find out if you have slept the entire day is that you end up missing important news, which is exactly what I missed with Twitter. The micromessaging service yesterday rolled out support for French language. I guess that is the first step towards expanding itself by introducing support for other European languages which include Spanish, Italian and German. All in good time, given that Le Web is just around the corner, support for French would come in handy, rather much more than that.
While it has taken all the time it needed, eBay has finally sold Skype at a healthy $2.75 Billion valuation. Plus the confusion on stake holders getting a 65% share or not has moved away too as Silver Lake Partners gets a 70% stake. Apart from that the stakes are shard by Joltid along with others in the list. This all comes in good time as Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis plan to initiate a music startup, Rdio. Lets see how Skype fares all by itself.
Twitter might have the right offering with its Lists feature but the issue with them is that they are more like individual categories or selection and not some generalized groups. Twinester is a startup that has all that, groups that you can join for each category that is of your interest. Why do so? Well it saves you the time of searching or making one on your own. Simply login with your Twitter profile and there you have it, figure out your group and be a part of an active and more interest centric discussions.
It sounds great enough and its community of users has grown to over 6,000 users in just three months. But to be honest I have been trying to login with my Twitter account but to no avail. I hope this is just a temporary issue.
And if you thought that I was just bluffing in the last post, here is a video to stand as a proof to it. The video above explains the need of an operating system for the Web. And that OS is? Of course Chrome OS! Thanks Google!
Google has finally pushed out the source code of its much awaited Chrome OS just before the planned press event. The whole idea is Open Source and the development is quite similar to that of the Chrome browser. Well Open Source is not all there. since Google plans to take the entire computing to the Cloud, meaning Google plans to make sure that even if you get to lose your device, the data stays intact and is accessible the moment you can log on. While I doubt how many PC users would actually go ahead to use this, but with the growing trend of more powerful netbooks coming, the Cloud based OS would definitely become the first choice for all users and with Google behind this one, I bet it’s going to make it big. Not that I am a Google fan-boy or something, but it is just the amount of rigorous development it does.
With the ReTweet option now live for all on Twitter, little did I know that it could be done so via SMS. This can be done by simply sending RT Username to 40404, thus retweeting the message from the username mentioned. But I suppose that is only available in the US. Other than that users have the privilege to turn off receiving the Retweets from any user by ensuring that the arrow on their profile is anything but green. I just came across a few people who simply didn’t like the idea, just wondering how many of you hate it as well, please leave your remarks.
It began as Twitter for businesses but Yammer is definitely doing a better job when it comes to introducing new features. Recently the service made it easier for its users to add notifications about unread messages with numerous ways the service is accessed. Sounds great, something which is rightly missed in Twitter, I mean Twitter’s desktop clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck do have those notifications but there is no way this can be done from Twitter itself. I hope Twitter makes a note on this and integrates something similar too.
Vringo, a video sharing community that lets users search and create video ringtones for mobile devices has stepped in for the Android devices. The ringtone maker is now available in the Android Marketplace, making it the first of its kind application for Google’s Android phones. The application will enable Android users to download video ringtones from its database of thousands of ringtones, which include both free and premium ringtones.
Alright it shouldn’t be Yahoo that should get everything when it comes to coverage on redesign. Apparently the much famed tech blog, Engadget is working on revamping the layout, something they were planning to keep a secret until it leaked out. Te design to be honest looks very pleasing and neat, not that the previous one was ugly or something, but it just appeared way to cluttered and very white and zombie like. This new one is far more pleasing!
XIHA Life the world’s first social network that facilitates interaction between people of various cultures and speaking different languages is expanding. The social network partnered with MySites, the storage service on the cloud, luckily we have covered both in quite detail. With this partnership, XIHA Life users will now be able to make unlimited video uploads to the social network’s community. And those video uploads have no time or duration limit, plus they can also upload HD videos. The partnership is a welcome move forward.
Now you need to have a keen eye to make such an observation and actually share it with the world. Jeff Sonderman, editor and Internet Content director at The Times Tribune made an interesting observation as he searched for Newspapers at Google. Surprisingly enough most of the suggestions state that Newspapers are in a bad shape. I don’t have to say much as the picture above is self explanatory.
Location based advertising platform, Placecast today announced raising a healthy $5 Million in its current round of funding. The funding came from Onset Ventures, Voyage Capital and Quatrex Capital. The service utilizes information based on location and numerous other data from consumers on the Web and based on their actions targets relevant ads at them. The service is also planning to step into the mobile web space and help bridge the retailer, shopper gap, letting shoppers receive alerts based on their location. The idea of integrating location based activity has definitely seen a great boom in the recent times and using it to target relevant ads is better than showing some ads set by default to appear for all.
We talked about the rumors of the firmware update coming to PS3 and with a possible Facebook integration. Well that 3.10 update and a Facebook integration is no rumor as Sony announced the release of that integration today. The new features coming along with the update include:
- Game Event: With a few quick clicks of the controller sharing select game events, progress and statistics is now easier than ever with the Facebook integration.
- Showcase Trophies: Instantly share trophies you earn in PS3 games in your Facebook stream. Simply sync your PS3 system and easily show off your accomplishments to friends and family.
- PlayStation Store Purchase Log Publishing: Let friends and family on Facebook instantly know which PlayStation 3 games you’ve purchased. The PlayStation Store, available to PS3 and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system owners through PlayStation Network, features over 200 downloadable games, many of which are exclusive to PS3 or PSP system owners, in addition to over 4,000 pieces of add-on game content.
Xing has got a new shareholder today as Burda, the German media giant bought 25.1% share. Xing as we have extensively talked about is LinkedIn for Germany and the deal has definitely got XING a healthy shareholder as Burda already has stakes in major firms like Glam Media and Zooplus. Burda acquired the shares from Cinco Capital at 36.5 Euro a share, bringing the total cost of the acquisition to 48.3 Million Euro.
Alright it has a mobile operating system which is running on numerous devices but that isn’t stopping Google from bringing its own device out. While HTC has become a Android device by default, but Google isn’t satisfied with and is therefore bringing its own device. The device has been under development for quite some time and it appears the device will be coming out any time early next year. This doesn’t mean that Google will have its own manufacturing plant, rather the device will come branded as Google and the manufacturing done by a major mobile firm. This firm will most probably be Samsung or LG, why not HTC? Well perhaps because HTC has already got a number of mobiles that run the Android platform. And that means there will be quite a heavy duty advertising that follows the phone’s release.
These are just rumors of now and only time will tell who exactly will have the privilege to manufacture the device for Google.
