Internet Trends Archive

Newsle Tracks Your News-Worthy Friends

– February 22, 2012Posted in: Apps, Internet Trends, Tech

While there are a host of social media sites that let you follow news your friends post about themselves, Newsle lets you read news about your friends. Calling itself “news about your people,” the site claims to track real news, which includes newspapers, news websites, and blogs that mention or quote the people you choose to track.

Newsle was created by Axel Hansen and Jonah Varon to keep up with friends and others, originally focusing on older news. Beta testing revealed users really wanted a way to track real-time real news about friends, family members, and contacts – which is what Newsle then set out to accomplish.

The free service processes over 100,000 news sources on a daily basis, pulling in your contacts from Facebook and LinkedIn to give you a newstream based on those individuals. It also provides a way to set specific alerts and to follow celebrities, business people, and actors.

Other versions of the real-news idea haven’t been successful, but Newsle shows quite a bit of promise. Today it announced that it raised $600,000 in seed financing from Lerer Ventures and SV Angel. It hopes to use that funding on building its engineering team to improve algorithms and create mobile versions of Newsle.

(Story and Image via TechCrunch)

Tags: FaceBook, friends, LinkedIn, news reader, Newsle

Your Life by the Numbers

khoward

– February 22, 2012Posted in: Apps, Internet Trends, Tech

The start of a new year is a time for reflection, introspection, and planning for many – for Dan Meyer, it marks the release of his personal annual report. Comparing the practice to journaling and blogging, Meyer tracks small occurrences of his daily life – number of cups of coffee, number of text messages, hours of television – collecting them in a spreadsheet to be turned into an illustrated annual report each January.

The trend, which is now followed by many other data enthusiasts, began in 2005 with Nicholas Felton’s first personal annual report. By 2011, Felton had caught the attention of Facebook, who hired him to assist in the Timeline design.

To make it easier for others to create their own annual reports, he and co-creator Ryan Case launched Daytum, an online tool that helps users collect daily data which is then turned into an infographic. Felton believes “the Annual Reports have encouraged a desire among readers to discover similar things about themselves.”

Among the information tracked using Daytum is the life of a dog, baseball stadium attendance, and the life of a couch. Others, like Bit.ly software engineer Jehiah Czebotar, take a more complex approach, using Google, Mint, Foursquare, and other applications in their data collection.

To start your own data collection – and perhaps launch your own Annual Report, you can start using Daytum here for free. To keep your privacy while tracking coffee cups and key strokes, however, you’ll have to spring for the Daytum Plus version. If you’ve ever wanted to see your life as an infographic, this may just be your chance.

(Story and Image via Mashable)

Tags: analysis, annual report, daily, data, Infographic, personal

Stop YouTube from Tracking Your Watched Videos

khoward

– February 21, 2012Posted in: Google, Internet Trends, News

Whether you realize it or not, if you’re signed into Google or YouTube, there’s a record of all videos you search for and watch. This log could be cleared manually in the past, but now you can get more control over your video history – by turning off this tracking function completely.

The Video Manager on YouTube now offers new video privacy options, pointed out by the Ghacks blog. Clicking on “Pause search history” will disable video search logging, while going to “History” and clicking “Pause viewing history” disables video view logging.

When you decide you again want to let everyone see the latest cat capers and future stars you’ve viewed, it’s as simple as switching back to “Resume Search History.”

(Image and Story via LifeHacker)

Tags: Google, logging, record, tracking, video, YouTube

For Sites that Aren’t Pinterested…

khoward

– February 20, 2012Posted in: Internet Trends, News

Recently much concern has been raised about the legality of content posted on Pinterest, one of the latest Internet hits. The site’s Terms of Service requires that users own items they pin or have permission to “pin” and republish content owned by others – but most content on the site is in violation of this policy.

Even so, Pinterest may not be shut down due to copyright violations – thanks to its popularity and its attempts to correct current copyright issues. Sites that are not satisfied with a link back to their original content can now use a code, released by Pinterest, that blocks content on their websites from being placed on personal pinboards. Visitor who try to pin content on sites using the code will be met with the message in the image.

This may not completely correct the copyright issues of Pinterest – especially since users can likely find the same content on sources other than the original (like a Google search), but it does show that the social site is trying to keep content-generators happy – and deal with some of its current copyright concerns.

(Via Mashable, Image via MarketingLand)

Tags: blocked, copyright, pinboards, pins, Pinterest, social

Apple’s 25-Billion Download Countdown

khoward

– February 17, 2012Posted in: Apple, Apps, Internet Trends, News, Tech

If you’re the lucky downloader of the 25 billionth App Store download, you could win $10,000 toward Apple’s next milestone. The company is once again celebrating the approach of a download achievement with a prize – in this case a $10,000 App Store Gift Card for the person who downloads the 25 billionth app.

Along with purchasing an app from the App Store, you can also enter the contest manually via the entry form. Currently at more than 24,299,000,000 downloads and rapidly counting, the contest won’t last too long. If you plan to enter, just remember you can only enter 25 times in one day – so space those downloads out a bit.

(Image and Story via The Next Web)

Tags: App store, Apple, Apps, Prize

Lady Gaga announces her social networking site LittleMonsters.com

kduffy

– February 8, 2012Posted in: Industry News, Internet Trends, News, Tech

Just when you thought you hadn’t heard from Gaga in awhile, she decided to launch a social networking site on us: LittleMonsters.com.

The site, created by Backplane, is currently invite-only, but you can request that your name be added to the community and hope to receive an invite code shortly thereafter.

Backplane’s CEO told Mashable the startup is all about “bringing together communities and Gaga’s community just so happens to be the community we’re using… We think we can really change the world, but we’re fearful that we’re going to be pigeon-holed.” Based in Palo Alto, Backplane thrives on being a “canvas for self-expression.”

From what we can tell of the site, it’s looking a little bit like Pinterest as far as layout goes, but as far as networking specs go, we’re sure the site will be filled with everything Gaga—letting the “Little Monsters” publicize their die-hard Gaga devotion.

More Gaga-like sites are in the works, and Backplane hopes to bring them altogether in a “dashboard on its site this summer that would combine the communities.”

While the social networking site devoted solely to Lady Gaga sounds a bit ridiculous, take into consideration the fact she was the first artist to reach 1 billion views on YouTube, and also beat out the Prez to 10 million Facebook fans.

(via TAXI & Mashable; photo via last.fm)

Tags: Backplane, Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga launches social networking site Littlemonsters.com, Lady Gaga Little Monsters, Little Monsters, Littlemonsters.com, Social Networking

Verizon teaming up with Redbox?

kduffy

– February 7, 2012Posted in: Internet Trends, News, Tech

What’s your favorite way to watch/rent movies—Red Box? Netflix? Hulu? Through Amazon Prime? Blockbuster?

For us, we prefer to stream right from our computer, but ever since Netflix lost a lot of their content, we’ve been kind of stuck in a movie watching rut—do we try Hulu? Do we drive to the local grocery store and grab a Redbox? Do we settle watching a DVD of our own (god forbid)?

Well Verizon and Redbox have teamed up to create a “compelling” entertainment on demand service, according to Fast Company. The CEO of Redbox, Scott Di Valerio, who’s also the CFO of Coinstar (we are just now realizing Coinstar is the parent company to Redbox), said “Streaming is great—it’s really exciting, [but] we think there is a bright future in the physical[;] The core will involve both things, because Verizon could do streaming today on their own—they don’t need physical[.] [...] [T]hey see our unique set of assets and the physical discs that consumers want[,] [s]o I think it’s safe to assume that the core product will be made into both.”

The Redbox Verizon Project website so far is just a teaser, hinting at “something fun is coming. Be a part of it,” but the partnership is a win-win for already-established Verizon and Redbox customers—they’ll only have one fee per month to enjoy both streamed and hard disc movies.

This also gives us hope that the tangible aspect of the DVD and Blu-ray discs isn’t quite dead… yet.

(via DViCE via Fast Company)

Tags: Hulu, movie streaming, movies, Netflix, redbox, The Redbox Verizon Project, TV, Verizon, Verizon and Redbox team up for a compelling on demand service

You get ‘em Europe: EU converges to raise speculation on Google’s privacy regulations

kduffy

– February 3, 2012Posted in: Google, Internet Trends, News

Something is happening here—as Google “took over” in a sense, other tech industry giants are stepping in and saying: wait, no… You can’t just take over the entire Internet for your profit’s sake; since when does obtaining information make us subject to some sort of privacy waiver that says Google can use our information? Consider Microsoft’s “Putting people first” campaign.

This morning Reuters reported that a group of European Union regulators wrote Google, stating: “Given the wide range of services you offer, and the popularity of these services, changes in your privacy policy may affect citizens in most of or all of the EU member states [.] [...] We wish to check the possible consequences for the protection of personal data of these citizens in a coordinated way [.] [...] In light of the above, we can for a pause in the interests of insuring there can be no misunderstanding about Google’s commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis.”

The letter from the EU demonstrates the slight monopolization that Google is trying to slyly pull with their “wide range of privacy settings.”And if 27 countries are coming together to point out issues, well, that says something.

Meanwhile, Google is acting “surprised” in light of the situation. Pablo Chavez wrote on his blog that, “[Google] is explaining [their] privacy commitments to users of those products in 85% fewer words,” and “[they] want to make users’ experience seamless and easy by allowing more sharing of information among products when users are signed into their Google Accounts.”

Will America step up as well, or is Google and the US synonymously attached at the hip? Or is there even much to be concerned about regarding Google’s new privacy changes?

(via The Verge & The Next Web; photo via Smart Grids)

Tags: eu, European Union, European Union writes Google in spite of privacy regulations, Google, Google privacy policy, Google privacy settings

Obama will have his first Google+ hangout today

kduffy

– January 30, 2012Posted in: Internet Trends, News

Say what you will about the Prez, but there’s no fooling around when it comes to Obama and his social media outlets. This time, he will be making a Google+ hangouts appearance.

The White House announced this morning that the President will be answering questions submitted by the people right on the White House Google+ page today at 5:30 PM.

It is apparent the 44^th President wants to not only keep his title for the next four years, but he wants to keep people in the know; by joining various social medias like Instagram, Foursquare, and even so far as holding a town hall meeting on LinkedIn—Obama is dedicated to keeping communication flow open to the people who want to stay informed on his campaign.

“I’ll walk into the Roosevelt Room across the hall from the Oval Office, take a seat, and kick-off the first-ever completely virtual town hall from the White House,” Obama wrote a letter to Whitehouse.gov subscribers.

Unfortunately this is not a live Q&A event; people have submitted questions through YouTube and e-mails the past two weeks, and the most popular of those submitted will be chosen to answer by the President.

This is an exciting new step towards utilizing the Internet’s open-faced medium of communication, and shows the President does not want to endorse his campaign with overwhelming paid-for campaigns, but rather a free method that engages the community and encourages public discourse.

(via the Verge; photo via The Next Web)