By moving SMS from the device to the cloud without the need for a phone client, the device becomes irrelevant, and consumers are given much more flexibility to communicate wherever and however they please.
via Innovation Generation – Sarah Reedy – Got the Message: Texting on Tablets Takes Off.
Back in the day this used to be called instant messaging.
Projections from the Yankee Group, a Boston-based analytics firm, highlight the potential: the number of smartphones in use is projected to double from 1.5 billion in 2013 to nearly 3 billion in 2017. Most of those 1.5 billion new adoptions will be in the developing world, and the vast majority will be lower-end Android phones. Facebook also wants to capture the attention of those who haven’t yet gotten access to the Internet—and will likely first do so on a mobile device.
via Facebook “Home” Is Next Step in Facebook’s Developing World Strategy | MIT Technology Review.
R66T, pronounced “Root 66” and intended as a play on the famous American highway Route 66, describes itself as “one of the nation’s leading publisher of targeted content, information and advertising to private Wi-Fi and High-Speed Internet Access (HSIA) networks, conducting tens of millions of individual user sessions—approaching one-billion user-minutes per month.” The company says that it supports Wi-Fi networks at places like airports, hotels, coffee shops, and malls, often providing free access in exchange for showing “hyperlocal” advertisements.
via How a banner ad for H&R Block appeared on apple.com—without Apple’s OK | Ars Technica.
This might be a good opportunity to mention that everyone should use AdBlock Plus, a plugin available for many web browsers, which will block these kind of advertisements. Blocking ads is also a good PC security measure since ads provide a vector for a lot of malware to inject themselves.
Both computers—the mind-blowing C-64 and the somewhat bland TRS-80—feature their own version of the language we mentioned earlier, BASIC. In fact, the two versions are virtually identical. Nevertheless, the company paying top dollar for that ad you see to the right, Commodore, has created a more spectacular version of the language. Therefore, the award for BASIC must go to the C-64. William Shatner is always right, after all.
via Radio Shack TRS-80 vs. Commodore 64: Battle of the Titans.
The new direction that the switch represents is programmability. As SDN develops, more and more protocols are coming into play. VXLAN from VMware Inc. and NVGRE from Microsoft Corp. would be two examples, both being protocols for moving virtual machines around the network.
via Light Reading – Juniper Targets SDN With Another Core Switch.
Bloomberg News reports that within the past two weeks security contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have signed an agreement under the Department of Homeland Security’s Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program providing new revenue streams and, more notably, unparalleled access to personal information classified as “U.S. government data.”
via Defense Companies Cash in on Gov’t Hyped ‘Cyber-Security’ Threat | Common Dreams.
Developing an astronaut corps and conducting operations aboard a space station can dramatically transform a nation’s image both internally and externally. The creation of jobs and lucrative economic opportunities via microgravity research, development, and manufacturing can inspire a new cadre of domestic scientists and engineers while attracting the best and brightest minds from around the world to a country’s universities and companies.
via Bigelow Aerospace.
Per the information above, utilizing a Falcon 9 and Dragon, for only $51.25 million, a client can travel to the Alpha Station for two months and enjoy dominion over 110 cubic meters of volume for 60 days.
Two-thirds of online American adults 67% are Facebook users, making Facebook the dominant social networking site in this country. And new findings from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project indicate there is considerable fluidity in the Facebook user population:
via Coming and Going on Facebook | Pew Internet & American Life Project.
- 3% of Facebook users say they plan to spend more time on the site in the coming year.
- 27% of Facebook users say they plan to spend less time on the site in the coming year.
- 69% of Facebook users say they plan to spend the same amount of time on the site this coming year.
The hours upon hours since launch that I haven’t been able to log in, whether it be sitting in queues, or server busy messages, or just plain old not working screens, I’ve managed to do a heap of things that I never do when I’m locked in my man cave playing video games.
I’ve washed the dishes, the laundry, changed the oil in the car, mopped the floors, dusted, did a spot of gardening, greeted my children who I hadn’t really seen since Christmas, walked the dog, asked how my wife’s day has been and listened to the entire response, restocked the groceries and many more things! My family has never been happier that they’ve got a father and husband again.
In fact, I feel like Simcity has given me a new lease on life. This wouldn’t have been possible without the seemingly crazy decision to have constant online connections and server side save points even for single player.
So I can only thank EA and Maxis. Your failures have been my rewards. 5 stars!
via Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: SimCity – Standard Edition [Download].
I don’t ever recall a product launch that went this badly. I’ve been playing Sim City since version 2 and was looking forward to this. This needs to be filed under what were they thinking?!
The first conference dedicated to defining and discussing the future of native advertising.
via The Native Advertising Summit – Presented by Sharethrough.
I had suspected for quite awhile that a lot of content on newspaper sites I frequent like Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times have been using native advertising for many years now. It’s nice to see this practice being discussed publicly. I find native advertising creepy because it treats users as idiots. It is fun now trying to spot native ads and try guessing the sponsor.
More on the concept of native advertising here.