brusque

=New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless?

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Picture Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET

April 29, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Technology | Business, Events, Gadgets, Leadership, Palm, Palm Pre, Technology, Toys, Women | Leave a Comment

Apple Prepping Two Wireless Devices With Verizon?

From David Carnoy at CNET News

What a lovely day!!! First, we hear about a launch date for the Palm Pre and then we find out that Verizon and IPhone may be teaming up!!! Be still my heart!!

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Apple Prepping Two Wireless Devices With Verizon?

Concept Art for an Apple Touch-Screen Netbook (Credit: Gizmodo). Click on pic to Read CNET News Article.

David Carnoy, CNET News

Over the last few months rumors have continued to swirl around a possible Verizon-Apple deal to bring the iPhone to Verizon once Apple’s exclusive pact with AT&T expires in 2010. But Tuesday BusinessWeek added a new twist to the rumor, reporting that Verizon and Apple are in talks to develop two new wireless devices that may hit the market this year.

Allegedly, one device would be a thinner, lighter, and lower-priced version of the iPhone–an iPhone Lite, if you will. While the other device would be something akin to the jumbo iPod Touch that we wrote about previously. BusinessWeek’s anonymous source describes it as a “media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos.”

The source, who claims to have seen the new media pad, says it’s “smaller than an Amazon Kindle electronic reader, but its touch-screen is bigger than the Kindle’s.” It would be able to place calls over Wi-Fi and a high-speed wireless data connection from Verizon. More . . .

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Click below to read the Business Week article mentioned in the above post:

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Picture Credit: Gizmodo (Concept Art for an Apple touch-screen Netbook)

April 29, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Shopping, Technology | Apple, Business, Gadgets, IPhone, Leadership, Technology, Women | Leave a Comment

Ghostwriters on Twitter? Yep! Just Ask Britney, Kanye, 50 Cent, Ron Paul, . . .

It looks like some people hire ghostwriters to handle their Twittering . . . Interesting . . .Now let’s think about this . . . It is only 140 characters . . . and the nature of Twitter is that individuals are telling you about their personal activities . . . but maybe for business reasons and because of time constraints they need people to . . . Hmmm. Am not sure how we feel about this . . . For some reason, the word “inauthentic” comes to mind. >:) What do you think?

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When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking

Noam Cohen, The New York Times

The rapper 50 Cent is among the legion of stars who have recently embraced Twitter to reach fans who crave near-continuous access to their lives and thoughts. On March 1, he shared this insight with the more than 200,000 people who follow him: “My ambition leads me through a tunnel that never ends.”

Those were 50 Cent’s words, but it was not exactly him tweeting. Rather, it was Chris Romero, known as Broadway, the director of the rapper’s Web empire, who typed in those words after reading them in an interview.

“He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Mr. Romero said of 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, “but the energy of it is all him.”

In its short history, Twitter — a microblogging tool that uses 140 characters in bursts of text — has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online, as well as giving the public the ability to speak directly to people and institutions once comfortably on a pedestal.

But someone has to do all that writing, even if each entry is barely a sentence long. In many cases, celebrities and their handlers have turned to outside writers — ghost Twitterers, if you will — who keep fans updated on the latest twists and turns, often in the star’s own voice.

Because Twitter is seen as an intimate link between celebrities and their fans, many performers are not willing to divulge the help they use to put their thoughts into cyberspace.

Britney Spears recently advertised for someone to help, among other things, create content for Twitter and Facebook. Kanye West recently told New York magazine that he has hired two people to update his blog. “It’s just like how a designer would work,” he said.

It is not only celebrities who are forced to look to a team to produce real-time commentary on daily activities; politicians like Ron Paul have assigned staff members to create Twitter posts and Facebook personas. Candidate Barack Obama, as well as President Obama, has a social-networking team to keep his Twitter feed tweeting.

The famous, of course, have turned to ghostwriters for autobiographies and other acts of self-aggrandizement. But the idea of having someone else write continual updates of one’s daily life seems slightly absurd.

The basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, for example, is a prolific Twitterer on his account — The Real Shaq — where he shares personal news, jokes and occasional trash talking about opponents with nearly 430,000 followers.

“If I am going to speak, it will come from me,” he said, adding that the technology allows him to bypass the media to speak directly to the fans.

As for the temptation to rely on a team to supply his words, he said: “It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.” More . . .

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Picture Credit: Webdesignerdepot.com

March 27, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Technology | Business, Entertainment, Facebook, Gadgets, Obama, Technology, Twitter, Women | Leave a Comment

The Ultimate User’s Guide to Everything Twitter

Okay people!! We have found it!! We have found the BEST user’s guide to Twitter, and we have to say that it is the people on Twitter that let us know about it. It covers everything from how to sign-up, to how to customize your background, to how to get more followers , to how to use it to market your business, etc!! Thanks Twitterites!!

And most importantly, thanks to the team at The Webdesigner Depot for putting it together!

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The Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter

Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in instant touch with friends on mobile phones anymore. It has ramped up quickly to be the search engine of choice for some with its human driven results.

Applications galore allow you to find friends all over the world with similar interests and keep up with them in real time.

Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly, and according to the models Twitter is trying out, they will soon be able to advertise to the Twitter community as well. It has grown into a behemoth that is hard to get your hands around, which is why we’ve put this article together for you.

We’ve compiled an alphabetized glossary here for you so that you can just scan down the list and find the term that you are looking for, as well as a list of popular Twitter applications and instructions for incorporating Twitter into your website and blogs.

Twitter Basics

If you had no idea what Twitter was walking into this article, we’re going to start you off at the very beginning. To sign up for Twitter, go to twitter.com and click on “Get Started – Join!”. Fill out the information and voila – you have your own Twitter account. I set up two accounts; one on my personal name, and one for my business. It’s important to grab your names before someone else does, even if you don’t plan on using the account for a while. More . . .

How to Twitter? In Other Words, I’ve Signed Up for Twitter, Now What? >:)
A User’s Guide to Twitter
Jon Stewart Reports on “Twitter Frenzy”
SuperNews: The Twouble with Twitter (Video) >:)

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March 26, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Technology | Business, Education, Gadgets, Leadership, Marketing, Parenting, Technology, Toys, Twitter, Women | Leave a Comment

Facebook 101 (And a Twitter Recap): A Crab Explains Facebook to Patrick Duffy (Video)

And while we’re helping you understand Twitter (Click here, here, here and here - We know it’s a lot of posts, but we aim to please!), we thought we’d throw in a cute video on Facebook.

In the video below, a crab explains Facebook and ringtones to “Step-by-Step” and “Dallas” star Patrick Duffy. We’re still trying to figure out why they used a crab . . . maybe it’s just a dream . . . >:)

Also, to help you out as you attempt to learn about Twitter and Facebook, below you will find a compilation of the links to our previous posts on both Twitter and Facebook. Have fun!

Oprah Talks Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg
Seniors Love Facebook. And Skype. And iPods. And Flip Cameras. And . . .

Seen over at the Huffington Post:

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March 23, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Technology | Business, Facebook, Gadgets, Technology, Toys, Twitter, Women | Leave a Comment

SuperNews: The Twouble with Twitter (Video) >:)

Cartoon Destroys the Twittersphere; Summons the Fail Whale

Alex Leo, Huffington Post

The Web Series “SuperNews!” had its season premiere on Friday on Current and for the first episode animator Josh Faure-Brac took on the Twitterverse and the Tweeting Tweeters who Twat on it.

In this sneak peek, Craig introduces his coworker to the newest trend in microblogging by actually flying him into the Twittersphere. There all of the site’s users float around talking about their mundane lives, communicating with “bit-sized yippidy yap,” trying to become Twitterlebrities.

When the newbie tells the people of the Twitterverse that they actually have no friends, the whole place collapses and the fail whale appears to eat everyone. It’s pretty meta, or ridiculous, or both, whatever, it’s funny.

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March 23, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Technology | Gadgets, Technology, Twitter, Women | 1 Comment

A User’s Guide to Twitter

Seems like we’re not the only ones trying to figure out Twitter! So we thought we’d post this article that we found very, very useful. Think of it as a User’s Guide to Twitter. In it, the author explains not only the basics of Twitter, but also how to customize your Twitter page.

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Birds of a Feather Twitter Together

Social Networking Service Connects Followers, Not Friends on PCs and Mobile Phones

Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal

If you’ve heard of Twitter but don’t exactly know what it is or how it works, you’re in good company. In the past two months a bunch of my friends, ranging in age from early 20s to late 30s, have asked me about Twitter — or Tweeter, as one person accidentally called it.

To clear things up, I’ve put together a basic Twitter guide that explains how to use it, Twitter lingo, privacy options, mobile applications that can be used with the service and problems that it has. Let’s get started.

Twitter limits social-networking updates to 140 characters or less. The service is surprisingly useful, but leaves room for improvement.

What is it? In short, Twitter is a free social-networking tool that keeps people connected with one another and with sources of information. Twitter users submit updates about whatever they’re currently doing, and these updates cannot exceed 140 text-based characters.

Lingo: Twitter is the name of the service. The term twittering describes the activity of updating a Twitter account. A tweet is an individual Twitter update. Twitterers are people who use the service.

Followers, not Friends: Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace use the term “friend” to refer to people who are connected with one another, but Twitterers can simply follow one another’s messages by finding a person’s username and selecting a “Follow” option. This alerts the person that you’re following them, and they can reciprocally choose to follow you, or not.

Why use it? While some people primarily use Twitter to post updates about their activities or comments on the news, I use the service more as a follower, allowing me to see quick snippets of news as it occurs. Most tweets are written by real people, while others, such as updates from news organizations that you’ve selected, are automatically generated. Many tweets include the addresses of Web sites with relevant articles that tell readers more on a topic.

Where is it? Twitter works on your Web browser at Twitter.com, where user updates appear in a simple list form as they are submitted. After you’ve signed up and started following other people, those people’s updates, or tweets, will appear when you log onto Twitter.com using a username and password.

Twitter also works on mobile phones, where the 140-character limit allows messages to be sent and received via SMS text messaging. Tweets can also be sent and received via email. Users with smartphones like BlackBerrys or iPhones can use one of the many popular mobile applications for accessing Twitter, which offer much richer options than simple SMS does; I’ll get into these later.

Privacy: Unlike other social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter isn’t focused on holding and sharing personal information about its members. Indeed, the service operates with a majority (80%, according to the company) of users opting to keep their updates public, that is, follow-able by anyone, without permission. This openness encourages people to follow one another or to see who others are already following, and then follow the same people.

However, users can opt to protect their updates, meaning they must grant permission for others to follow them. If you’d like to sign up for Twitter, but aren’t comfortable putting your first and/or last name on the site, you don’t have to; instead, just tell others your username.

Twitter Page Personalization: Each user has a Twitter page showing all of his or her updates, or tweets. (Mine is twitter.com/kabster728, and you can follow me.) This page also shows the number of people a user follows, how many people follow her and how many total updates she has posted.

Twitterers can customize their Twitter page by uploading a photo to be used as the background. The icon representing each user can also be personalized, and this is important because it appears beside that person’s tweets on Twitter.com, where followers recognize and appreciate its familiarity. Some people, including me, use pictures of themselves as their icons, while others use random shots. More . . .

My New Twitter Flock (Julia Angwin, The Wall Street Journal)

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Picture Credit: The Wall Street Journal, Twitter

March 21, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, Technology | Education, Gadgets, Newspapers, Technology, Twitter | 1 Comment

How To Twitter? In Other Words, I’ve Signed Up for Twitter Now What? >:|

Signed up for Twitter yesterday. Have no idea what to “tweet” >:). Found this article insightful. In it, she also mentions some great Twitter applications.

Also, click on the link at the bottom of this post, “My New Twitter Flock”, to check out her results!

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How to Twitter

Julia Angwin, The Wall Street Journal

The social rules and tips for gaining ‘followers’; why opinionated people win.

When I first joined Twitter, I felt like I was in a noisy bar where everyone was shouting and nobody was listening.

Soon, I began to decode its many mysteries: how to find a flock of followers, how to talk to them in a medium that blasts to lots of people at once and how to be witty in very tiny doses.

Twitter is a mass text-messaging service that allows you to send short 140-character updates — or “tweets” — to a bunch of people at once. They are your “followers.” It was designed to be read on a cellphone, though many people read it online, too.

Suddenly a lot of non-tweeters are starting to feel left out. On “The Daily Show” this week, host Jon Stewart reported on Twitter with a wink (or was it a twink?) at the narcissism of the personal broadcasting system. It has a world-wide audience of six million unique visitors a month, up from 1.2 million a year ago, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

But I have to admit I didn’t understand the appeal of Twitter when I joined, at the prodding of friends, in November. One answer that explains its popularity: It’s not about chatting with your friends — it’s about promoting yourself.

My name was available, so I set up a profile at twitter.com/JuliaAngwin. On Twitter, however, you do not exist without followers, who subscribe to receive your messages. So I set out to follow some people in the hope that they would follow me.

I had to learn the crucial distinction between a “follower” and a “friend.” On Facebook, if I’m your friend, you’re my friend, and we can read all about each other. Relationships on Twitter are not reciprocal: People you follow do not have to follow you or give you permission to follow them. You just sign up and start following them. It’s a bit like stalking. Heather Gold, a comedian and Twitter devotee, points out that for all its flaws, the term follower “is more honest than friend.”

At first, I was the loneliest of social creatures — a leader without followers. I tried searching for my actual real-world friends using Twitter’s “Find People” function, but it was down the day I joined. (Twitter is growing so fast that short outages are not unusual.)

So I asked a few colleagues for their Twitter addresses and began following them. I also searched their public lists of followers and who they followed.

Eventually, I cobbled together a mix of people I could follow: media colleagues, friends, bloggers and various people who are known as great “tweeters,” such as the chief executive of online retailer Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh, who has written quite movingly on his blog about how Twitter has changed his life. He says that being forced to bear witness to his life in 140-character bursts of prose has made him more grateful for the good moments and more amused by the bad moments. More . . .

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Click on the link below to see her results. According to Julia, “Suddenly, the tweets pour in, and they are demanding.”

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Twitter Frenzy (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart)

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Picture Credit: Twitter

March 20, 2009 Posted by ej | Gadgets, People, Technology | Business, Gadgets, Technology, Twitter, Women | 1 Comment

Jon Stewart Reports on “Twitter Frenzy”

While trying to figure out how and what to “tweet”, we came across this hilarious segment from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”.

Click on the link below to see the Daily Show’s segment on “Twitter Frenzy.” In it, Correspondent Samantha Bee examines why Twitter has become such a big deal among legislators and the media elite . . . >:)

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March 20, 2009 Posted by ej | Entertainment, Gadgets, People, Politics, Technology | Business, Gadgets, Leadership, Politics, Technology, Twitter, Women | 1 Comment

Sony and Google Team Up to Challenge Amazon’s Kindle

Sony and Google are launching a partnership that will provide users of the Sony Readers access to over 500,000 books and challenge the dominance of Amazon’s Kindle.

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Sony, Google Challenge Amazon

Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jessica E. Vascellaro, The Wall Street Journal

Sony and Google are to launch a partnership that will give users of Sony Readers access to more than 500,000 books in the public domain.

Sony Electronics Inc. is pairing with Google Inc. to battle Amazon.com Inc. in the growing digital books market.

In a strike against Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader, Sony and Google plan to launch a partnership Thursday that will give users of the Sony Reader device access to more than half-a-million public domain books from Google’s ambitious book digitization project. The books will be offered to Sony Reader users free via the online Sony eBook store. The companies wouldn’t reveal financial terms of the deal.

“We aren’t set on just having books purchased from our store,” said Steve Haber, Sony Electronics’ president of the Digital Reading Business Division. “We believe the more content that is allowed access to the device, the better value it is to our customers.”

The partnership is a new salvo in the increasingly competitive digital-books industry. Sony and Amazon are jockeying to lead a new generation of reading devices that could do for publishing what Apple Inc.’s iPod did for music, enabling the companies to make money as gadget makers and distributors of digital media. Last month, Amazon launched a new version of its $359 Kindle device, which has access to more than 245,000 electronic books.

To date, Sony has sold more than 400,000 of its $300 to $350 Readers. While Amazon hasn’t said how many Kindles it has sold, Citigroup estimates 500,000 of the devices sold last year and Barclays Capital projects the Kindle could bring $3.7 billion in annual revenue by 2012. More . . .

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Picture Credit: Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal

March 19, 2009 Posted by ej | Books, Gadgets, Technology | Books, Business, Gadgets, Technology | Leave a Comment

Seniors Love Facebook. And Skype. And iPods. And Flip Cameras. And . . .

Today's Seniors have a new look, a new attitude and they are not afraid of technology

New survey and statistics show older women embracing technology.

Stephanie N. Mehta, Assistant Managing Editor, and Beth Kowitt, Reporter, Fortune

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Patti McConnell is pretty much a typical Facebook user. The Calgary, Alberta, resident has been a member of the social-networking site for more than a year. She says she uses Facebook to stay in touch with friends, check out family members’ pictures, and play word games such as Scramble and Twist.

Did we mention that McConnell is 61 years old? “I think it is wonderful,” the computer-savvy grandmother says, though she admits she is still getting used to having the ability to peer into other people¹s personal lives. Says McConnell: “Sometimes you wonder if you’re not being nosy.”

Forget the stereotypes about senior women fearing technology. McConnell and peers are eagerly embracing Facebook and other high-tech solutions in a big way: According to Inside Facebook, a website devoted to tracking the social network, the fastest growing group of new U.S. users on Facebook are women 55-to-65 years old. That group, the site says, has grown 175% from September 30 to February 1, while American women overall increased about 43%.

Separately VibrantNation.com , an online site for mature women, recently asked women over the age of 50 to share their technology preferences. Of the 20,000 women who responded to the survey, 63% say they own an iPod or other MP3 player, and 30% of respondents say they use Skype, the voice-over-IP application. Some 28% of the women who responded to the opt-in survey say they use a Flip or other mini camcorder to shoot videos and upload them to the web. More . . .

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March 15, 2009 Posted by ej | Entertainment, Gadgets, Technology | Business, Gadgets, Technology, Women | 1 Comment

Apple Introduces New Ipod Shuffle

Apple IPod Shrinks by Half

By Yukari Iwatani Kane, The Wall Street Journal

Apple Inc. introduced a new iPod Shuffle that is about half the size of its previous model but with the capacity to play twice as many songs, as the company tries to re-energize its iPod business.

Apple’s new iPod Shuffle has the capacity for twice as many songs.

The new $79 four-gigabyte device will play as many as 1,000 songs, the same as the first iPod, which sold for $399 in 2001. The new model will allow users to switch between multiple playlists, which wasn’t possible with previous models.

It also includes a new voice feature that announces songs and playlists in 14 languages. One of the key differences from the previous Shuffle is that all of the controls are now on the earphone cord rather than on the device.” More . . .