Voicemail usage plunging

In data prepared for USA Today, Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8 percent in July from a year ago.

Checking voice mail seems to be an even a bigger chore than leaving a voice message. Retrieved voicemail fell 14 percent among Vonage users in the same period.

via Voicemail usage plunging – Chicago Sun-Times.

It’ll be ‘a different role’ for The Patriot-News as digital demand grows

Under the new company, The Patriot-News will change its print schedule to three days a week beginning in January 2013. The newspaper will continue to publish on Sundays. The other two days of publication will be determined after gathering input from readers and advertisers.

via It’ll be ‘a different role’ for The Patriot-News as digital demand grows | PennLive.com.

Application Development Now Worth More Than $9 Billion Globally

According to Gartner’s “Market Trends: Application Development (AD) Software, Worldwide, 2012-2016” report, cloud is changing the way applications are designed, tested, and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in development priorities.

“The trend is compelling enough to force traditional AD vendors to ‘cloud-enable’ their existing offerings and position them as a service to be delivered through the cloud,” said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner.

via Application Development Now Worth More Than $9 Billion Globally | Dr Dobb’s.

Groupon shares fall 27% on disappointing results

Meanwhile, stiff competition from rivals such as LivingSocial, Amazon.com and Google, may be compressing margins, by offering participating merchants higher shares of deal revenue. Gross margin in the second quarter fell 2.4 percent from the first quarter, to 76.2 percent.

via Groupon shares fall 27% on disappointing results – chicagotribune.com.

Revenue from Groupon’s international business fell 4 percent in the second quarter from the first. The international business accounted for about 54 percent of total revenue in the second quarter.

PC Sales Flatline as Ultrabooks fail to make an impact

The Gartner report reveals that in total 87.5 million units were shipped in the second quarter of 2012, a decline of 0.1 percent compared to the same period in 2011. “In the second quarter of 2012, the PC market suffered through its seventh consecutive quarter of flat to single-digit growth,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.

via PC Sales Flatline as Ultrabooks fail to make an impact – International Business Times.

Making calls has become fifth most frequent use for a Smartphone for newly-networked generation of users

How long we spend using our smartphones (by activity) each day

Activity Time/day
Browsing the internet 24.81
Checking social networks 17.49
Playing games 14.44
Listening to music 15.64
Making calls 12.13
Checking/writing emails 11.1
Text messaging 10.2
Watching TV/films 9.39
Reading books 9.3
Taking photographs 3.42
Total 128

via O2 News Centre.

Gmail Becomes World’s Largest Email Service; Google Continues To Unseat Microsoft

In January, Google mentioned in its earnings call that it had about 350 million monthly active users on Gmail; six months later, about 75 million more users had flocked to Gmail, growing the total number to 425 million monthly active users. By this measure, Gmail has dethroned Hotmail.

via Gmail Becomes World’s Largest Email Service; Google Continues To Unseat Microsoft – International Business Times.

Report: Over 24% Of The Web’s Top 10,000 Sites Now Use Facebook’s Official Widgets

According to a new study by website monitoring service Pingdom, 24.3% of the top 10,000 websites in the world as reported by Alexa now feature some form of official Facebook integration on their homepages

via Report: Over 24% Of The Web’s Top 10,000 Sites Now Use Facebook’s Official Widgets | TechCrunch.

Counting all kinds of links and official widgets, here is Pingdom’s final count:

  1. Facebook: 49.3%
  2. Twitter: 41.7%
  3. Google+: 21.5%
  4. LinkedIn: 3.9%

I would have suspected these numbers would be higher. My local DNS server hijacks all facebook requests so I see every time facebook.com tries to phone home from my browser.

Dell follows Q1 sag with weak outlook for Q2

Dell’s quarterly revenue fell more than analysts had expected, hurt by weak sales to consumers, large enterprises and government units. PC makers have struggled with slowing demand as mobile devices such as the iPad erode market share.

Brian Marshall, an analyst with ISI Group, said the “real poor results” shows that it will take Dell more time to transform itself from a PC company to a one-stop shop for all the information technology needs of corporations.

via Dell follows Q1 sag with weak outlook for Q2 – chicagotribune.com.