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Chris
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Homepage: http://www.areatrade.co.uk
Posts by Chris
Create an Instant SMS Chatroom on Your Phone
Oct 16th
Name: GroupMe
Quick Pitch: GroupMe makes life easy for you and your groups with free group texting. It’s your real life network, in your pocket.
Genius Idea: There are plenty of mobile applications that support group texting — even the once location-focused Brightkite (Brightkite) has entered the space — but GroupMe’s approach is by far the simplest. The SMS-based and device-independent service also has the most potential to connect real life friends and family members through group texting.
You can use GroupMe to start a private chat with groups of up to 25 people. Enter your name and phone number on GroupMe’s website to get started. The service will follow up with a text message from a unique phone number — that phone number will serve as your group’s number for texts and conference calls. You, and all other group members, can then add group members via SMS using the syntax “#add name phone number.”
Other SMS hashtag commands include #list to see a list of all group members in the chat, #name to set or change your name and, most importantly, #mute to mute or unmute the texts.
iPhone (iPhone) users can optionally download the GroupMe iPhone app to manage their groups and add More >
More Smartphone Buyers Choose Android Over iPhone
Oct 16th
In the past six months, smartphone buyers in the U.S. were more likely to choose Android-powered devices over any others, including iPhones.
The Android platform has been strongly challenging Apple’s mobile offerings for quite some time now, and the release of the shiny new Froyo (a.k.a Android (Android) 2.2) OS leaves little to be desired.
Software aside, Android-powered hardware is as diverse as it is impressive.
Android phones range from affordable models suitable for families with kids (e.g., Motorola’s Charm, a surefire winner for the teen girl set) to high-powered, 4-inch, 8-megapixel superphones fit to satiate the geekiest of gadget fiends (Droid X and Galaxy S, anyone?).
All of those reasons, coupled with network diversity and relative affordability, have catapulted Android phones to a leading position for new gadget-buyers this year — no mean feat, considering that the iPhone 4 produced the “most successful iPhone launch ever” — which was accompanied by as much media hype as fan frenzy.
Data from Nielsen shows that despite a successful launch for the iPhone 4, Android devices still rose to capture 32% of the market of new smartphone buyers between January and August 2010.
Now, that’s not to say that Android is the number-one mobile OS just yet. While More >
On This Day…
Oct 15th
Happy Clients
Oct 15th
Client Spec: WordPress Website Design
“I have been sending out the link you sent me to all our friends and acquaintances and work colleagues, and the response has been very positive. They all like the look of the site, so well done. We’re happy, too, with the way it’s turned out. I’m keen to learn how to ‘operate’ it so we can add things. Thanks again.”
Anne & Paul Pulati
Yahoo Down
Oct 15th
Yahoo -– one of the most highly trafficked websites in the world –- was down at 5:40 p.m. ET and returned back online at 6:10 p.m. ET.
The homepage of Yahoo was simply showing a plain text “Server Hangup” message in the browser. However, Yahoo verticals like Sports (sports), News (news) and Finance appeared to be working just fine.
While almost certainly unrelated (but an amusing coincidence), the downtime comes hours after Google posted massive earnings and less than a day since new rumors surfaced that AOL and a number of private equity firms may be putting together a plan to swoop in and acquire the languishing Yahoo.
Let us know what you think? Did you notice it was down?
Accept Credit Card Payments on Mobile Devices
Oct 15th
In recent months, a few new mobile payment solutions have been introduced to allow mobiel payments from Ecommerce Web Designs.
In fact, when using one of the available services, retailers of any size — even a farmer’s market vendor, babysitter or upstart vegan donut maker operating out of a kiosk — can start selling their products to anyone with a credit card.
The three services profiled here — Square, Intuit GoPayment and PAYware Mobile — hail from experienced entrepreneurs and seasoned payment veterans, and each offers a slight variation on the same idea that you can accept payments from anyone, everywhere.
These variations, however, are significant depending on the type of business you run and the amount of transactions you plan to process. You can use the information below to help in the decision-making and merchant setup processes. Make sure to pay special attention to transaction fees, hardware costs and merchant restrictions or requirements.
Choosing the Right ServiceSquare: Square is a startup from Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame, which means you can expect the product to be attractive, and the service to be slick, consumer-friendly and receive regular improvements on an iterative basis. As a startup, Square lacks the powerhouse financial names attached to the More >
Klout Now Measures Your Influence on Facebook
Oct 14th
Social media analytics service Klout, well-known for its Twitter influence measurement scores, has finally launched a version of its platform that determines your influence on Facebook.
Klout currently uses various data points from Twitter (Twitter) to figure out your “Klout Score,” a representation of your influence and ability to compel action by others online. Its Twitter analytics platform takes into account metrics such as retweets, follower counts, list memberships and unique mentioners to calculate everything from who influences you to your “true reach” on Twitter.
Klout’s now trying to do the same thing on Facebook (Facebook). Once connected to a Facebook account, Klout will pull in data such as likes, comments and your friendship network in order to determine your influence on Facebook. It can take up to 72 hours for the data to be processed and your Klout score to be updated.
Instead of representing Facebook and Twitter with different scores, Klout has decided to integrate them into a single Klout Score. If you’re worried that connecting your Facebook account to Klout will drop your score, the company says that “there is no risk that your Klout will go down.” The company claims that most Klout scores will rise due to the More >
AOL Attempting to Buy Yahoo
Oct 14th
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AOL and several venture capital firms are in talks to buy Yahoo.
Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group are rumored to be in on the deal. Currently, AOL’s market value is around one tenth of Yahoo’s.
Rumors that the two companies were in talks to merge have been swirling around for at least a few days, and still others say it’s Yahoo who is looking to buy AOL; but neither company is willing to make an official statement at this time.
Yahoo personnel haven’t yet been involved in these discussions, according to WSJ’s sources. Because of the intricacies involved in such acquisitions, Yahoo may never be formally approached with an offer.
Yahoo itself instituted “poison pill” mechanisms back during its apex in 2001 to prevent the threat of a hostile takeover — which became a very real possibility two years ago when Microsoft issued an unsolicited bid to buy the company.
Nevertheless, these new rumors are interesting ones. What do you think of AOL’s ambitions, especially in light of that company’s recent acquisition spree involving tech blog TechCrunch, app maker Thing Labs and video network 5min?
More importantly, do you think an alliance between these two fading powerhouses from More >
On This Day…
Oct 14th
1884: The Merican inventor, George Eastman recieves a U.S. Government petent on his new paper-strip photographic film.
1894: E.E. Cummings, American poet was born.
1926: The children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne is first published.
1927: Roger Moore, English actor was born.
1939: Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer was born.
1940: Cliff Richard, English Singer was born.
1965: Steve Coogan, English actor was born.
1982: Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.
Two million US PCs recruited to botnets
Oct 14th
The US leads the world in numbers of Windows PCs that are part of botnets, reveals a report.
More than 2.2 million US PCs were found to be part of botnets, networks of hijacked home computers, in the first six months of 2010, it said.
Compiled by Microsoft, the research revealed that Brazil had the second highest level of infections at 550,000.
Infections were highest in South Korea where 14.6 out of every 1000 machines were found to be enrolled in botnets.
The 240-page Microsoft report took an in-depth look at botnets which, said Cliff Evans, head of security and identity at Microsoft UK, now sat at the centre of many cybercrime operations.
The research was undertaken, he said, to alert people to the growing danger from the malicious networks.