Posts tagged twitter
Top April pranks of 2013
Apr 1st
We’ve brought you the latest in the web pranks last year in our post about not being an April fool. So, we’ve decided to bring you version 2.0 this year. Google never fail to impress and some other giants have vamped up the game. Check out our selection and let us know what you liked best.
A) Google’s collections of fibs:
1. Google nose: (Link)
2. Google Maps into a pirate treasure map : (Link)
3. YouTube has been an eight-year competition to choose the best video of all time, and the site is now ready to shut down and announce the winner : (Link)
4. Gmail blue : (Link)
5. Extreme Makeover: Google SCHMICK Edition : (Link)
6. Google’s Add Emotion Button : (Link)
7. Google Fiber to the Pole: (Link)
B) Tech/ Geeky fibs:
1. Twitter has announced, in an almost plausible spoof, that it will now be charging tweeters to use vowels. Consonants are free, and in addition, the social network explains, it will always offer Y for nothing, even when it is used as a vowel. That’s led some users to believe they can outwit Twitter : (Link)
2. Virgin has announced that it has created another world-first with the introduction of the technology required to produce the world’s first glass-bottomed plane. This technological innovation coincides with the start of Virgin Atlantic Airways’ first ever domestic service to Scotland : (Link)
C) Miscellaneous Fibs
1. Freedom bay: (Link)
2. The world’s first social toaster? (Link)
3. Sony Launches Headphones for Cats: (Link)
4. Guardian Goggles ; Move over Google Glass, The Guardian has its own version heading out the door for April 1, 2013. (Link)
For the last post of 2012, we bring you…
Dec 31st
For the last post of 2012, we decided to bring you this year’s top tech failures. No, we are not negative, but we found these 11 to be incredibly hilarious and had to be shared with our beloved readers. So take 10 minutes to reflect on how the tech world changed this year and let us know what your thoughts are and what you expect will happen in 2013.
11. Nexus Q
In a bid to enter the media connection world, Google introduced the Nexus Q. The thing is: it didn’t quiet function; it rather looked like a cannon ball, beside the fact that there are plenty of cheaper substitutes out there with more trustworthiness. They removed it from the shelves almost instantly, my oh my…
10. Airtime
On the release day, this video chat site was the hype. Everyone from Jim Carrey, Jimmy Fallon, Alicia Keys and even Mark Zuckerburg showed up. 30 days later, no one cared anymore. We pity Napster creators; they just cannot seem to get a break!
9, 8 and 7 Facebook, Facebook and yes Facebook.
We do not know where to start naming all the failures of Facebook for this year, so we decided to include at least three. Number 9 goes to Facebook Camera; an Instagram copycat that was rolled out just a month after Facebook purchased Instagram itself. Humm, very intelligent move.
The embarrassing stock plunge lands at number 8. The Facebook IPO did not go quite as planned; in a prophetic moment, the Nasdaq’s software broke down causing a 30 minute delay. This alone ought to have indicated that the stock would turn out to be more of an embarrassment than profit.
If the Facebook Camera and Stock scene were not enough, then the nonsensical chair commercial must win the bet. Being its very first commercial, Facebook certainly made a very bad choice.
Ok enough with Facebook, moving on.
6 & 5 Apple and Apple
It seems even the high roller Apple suffered some tech miscarriages this year. Who can forget the brilliant commercials? Apple seemed to follow in Facebook’s footsteps with the production of a commercial that totally missed the spot and was even offensive to many. However, Apple has a long streak of great marketing so there was no excuse for this one.
Apple’s second failure of 2012 was the unforgettable Apple Maps.
This is a classic scenario of wanting to make a good thing better but ending up making it worse. Everyone was furious with stories of getting lost or bad direction spreading faster than fire through a forest led to an apology in late September and eventually a new Google Map app in early December. We hope Apple learned the lesson, the hard way.
4. Microsoft So.cl
Don’t be misled; that’s supposed to be pronounced “social”. Nothing exciting here, according to its success thus far, it’s just another social media site similar to G+, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and all the others.
3. New MySpace
All we can say to MySpace is this: every other social network out there has won so just give it up and move on, sorry.
2. Instagram’s Terms of Service
Who would’ve thought that when you put in your TOS that you have the right to use people’s photos however you please it would horribly backfire? Totally unpredictable we know! Well, Instagram has reverted to its original TOS, but they’ve lost the trust and accounts of many ever since.
1. SOPA
No one can forget the awful Stop Online Piracy Act that caused an unprecedented online furry. Many websites, including Reddit, Wikipedia and Google took a harsh stand on January 18, with either posting advocacy messages on their homepage protesting SOPA, or going dark for a few hours. Without the President’s support, or anyone in the entire globe with an Internet connection, SOPA Was indefinitely put off. So the Congress holds the number one slot for this year’s tech flops.
Of course 2012 wasn’t bad, with the introduction of many anticipated gadgets, tablets and much more. But the flops were simply hilarious.
Twitter and Vine; a good combo?
Oct 10th
In a venture that is parallel with the microblogging social network’s present business vision, Twitter is allegedly building its very own video service, as reported by AllthingD.
The social network is always searching for ways to maximize profit via official portals, and according to sources, a video solution is rumored to follow the photo-hosting service that arrived back in June 2011. Similarly to the latter, the in-house video service shall allow its users to upload video clips directly to Twitter instead of using third-party services such as yFrog, TwitVid, Mobypicture, or Vodpod.
Twitter, of course, does not expect people to be jumping at their feet and start virally using its native solution for all the videos they’ve got to share; it comprehends that the majority will still post links using the likes of YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo.
This move, of buying the New York-based video sharing company Vine is certainly consistent with Twitter’s bid to be more of “a steady experience”.
Surprisingly, Vine has not fully launched yet. It proclaims on its landing page:
“Vine is the best way to capture and share video on your iPhone. No editing. No rendering. No post-production. Video has never been this fun.”
Quora users who’ve tested the iPhone app discovered it allows people to create a 6-second video clip. This clip loops, as expected from an animated gif, yet with sound. To better state it, Jack Dorsey’s wishes have been answered:
Even though it’s still hazy as to when Vine’s product will be fully launched, Twitter seems to be just as interested in the startup’s originating team, Dominik Hofmann and Colin Kroll, both of whom used to work at JetSetter.
The app itself, interestingly enough, has the admiration of early adopters, from the likes of Kevin Rose to MG Siegler, who have already shared Vine videos on Twitter. Investors include David Tisch, RRE and High Line Venture Partners.
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Top 10 Apps of the week!
Sep 13th
Second week of September is almost behind us, and we still cannot wrap our brains around how quickly this year is passing by. Here is another round of our top 10 apps for this week; from random facts, sleek weather, all the way to beautiful customizable third party apps, be sure to check this week’s edition and let us know what your thoughts are.
1. µTorrent (Get it for your android) Free
Are you a TV fanatic and cannot wait for that episode of Game of thrones to come out? Well, now you can do that straight from your phone. This app comes from the same developers who created BitTorrent more than 10 years ago, and no size or speed limitations.
2. United Airlines (Get it for your android) Free
This app is pretty comprehensible straight from its name; if you’re flying United, then this app helps you with your check ins and checkups on your flight. Some convenience to lessen the oppression from this airline never hurts.
3. Mint Financial (Get it for your android) Free
Since the weekend is just around the corner, we bet you want to chillax from the long week. This game takes you into the skies to battle with other cartoon planes. And no, no cartoon planes were damaged in the production of this game.
4. Split Decision (Get it for your android) Free
Are you one of those people who knows a lot of pretty obscure, random facts? Well, behold, this is the app for you! It’s based on the trivia card game Mental Floss. You and your friends will have fun with this brainy app.
5. MiniSquadron (Get it for your android) $2.99
Since the weekend is just around the corner, we bet you want to chillax from the long week. This game takes you into the skies to battle with other cartoon planes. And no, no cartoon planes were damaged in the production of this game.
6. G Cloud Backup (Get it for your android) Free
With over 70 million smartphones getting lost every single year and only 7% being actually recovered, we ought to immediately think of a way to protect ourselves and our digital life. For everyone who has coveted the simplicity of the iCloud, the backup software for iOS, here is an app for Android that is not only an equivalent, but as stated by one of the users: it puts the “Smart” in Smartphones.
7. Claudio
Claudio is probably one of the most beautiful weather apps we’ve experienced, and you can enjoy it on both iOS and Android. Of course there are tons of apps that tell you the weather, but this one does it in style. The colors are striking and add a new dimension, and it’ll be available for you to enjoy very soon.
8. Auto Trader (Get it for your android) Free
We all know how fun and easy life becomes once you have your own car, yet we also know how difficult it is to find the right one. This app assists you in your quest by displaying new and used vehicles in your area, as well as providing you with information about dealerships, and contact information for independent sellers.
9. Foneclay (Get it for your android) Free
Through its widgets and third-party apps, Android is definitely one of the most customizable Smartphone OS. This app is a more fun take on this feature, offering “immersive, art-interfaces as dynamic as you are.”
10. Textgram (Get it for your android) Free
This app allows you to create cute picture messages alone with text with extreme ease and then you can either simply save them to your gallery or share on a number of social mediums such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitpic, Pinterest, Whatsapp, Streamzoo, Picstitch, Instacollage, Instaframe, etc.
The 2012 London Olympics; who are you cheering for?
Jul 29th
The 2012 London Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, as unveiled by Twitter, has instigated more than 9.66 million tweets, breaking the record set the entire 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
If you were logged in to Twitter when the amazing 007 escorted the Queen, then you have probably noticed how your timeline was over flooded by tweets strictly show related.
The US microblogging Mekkah has grown tremendously since the Beijin Olympics, so being at the forefront of such a major discussion came as no surprise. If we look back to 2008, when Twitter was a mere growing startup (that wasn’t yet blocked in China), yet in this day and age, Twitter sees quite a behemothic 340 million tweets each day, a compelling ration, one that shall be Olympic-related over the next month or so.
While Twitter has not revealed the actual size of the highest spike of tweets this past Friday, yet a tweet sent by Tim Berners-Lee while on stage received an incredible 10,000 retweet alone.
Twitter was also responsible for some early Olympic controversy; British politician Aidan Burley tweeted “leftie multi-cultural crap” describing the opening ceremony easily landing him on all major headlines.
Burley tweeted later , explaining that he had been misunderstood and that his references were to the organization rather than the show itself. Nevertheless, the contents of his two tweets received wide media spread and attention.
The MP is not, however, the first prominent figure to find himself in a predicament because of a 140 character message; just days before the opening ceremony, Greek athlete Voula Papachristou was not allowed to attend with her country’s representatives after tweeting a highly racist joke, which is translated to:
“With so many Africans in Greece…at least the mosquitoes from the west Nile are eating local food.”
Well, whatever your team is, we hope you cheer with integrity! Write to us with your favorite sport!
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Euro 2012; Who did you cheer for?
Jul 2nd
We bet all Spaniards and Spanish fans are still celebrating yesterday’s magnificent 4-0 win over Italy in the European Championship football finale. From the data unveiled by Twitter, it seems soccer fans beat sports-related tweets after an estimated number of 15,358 tweets per second at peak.
The incredible record was achieved after the fourth goal scored by Juan Mata awarding Spain the Cup yet again.
Moreover, the behemoth blogging service declared that the finale that came after 3 long tournament weeks prompted an astounding number of tweets; 16.5 million to be exact from all over the world. Fans congregated to discuss and share their thoughts, commentary and of course loud rants.
The Euro 2012 related mentions were at their peak –accoring to a Twitter graph- after the two goals were scored, even though there was an extraordinary high number of tweets around the opening game, as well as the two semi-finals.
The graphic that provided this information is taken from Twitter’s very own interactive Euro 2012 site which explicitly shows how the tournament “played out” on the 140-character service.
Increased tration among all manner of fans from across the world has been realized throughout the help of many mainstream media such as BBC’s football team.
To exemplify BBC’s support; its website aptly contained acknowledgements and thoughts from their readers in live commentary feeds as well as a special feed dedicated to BBC’s football correspondents.
Yet, what intrigues us more is how footballers implemented the service and used it to make official comments and connect with their followers, or in Spanish star Andrés Iniesta’s case, celebrate victories:
It seems twitter has put some serious thought and work into covering this sports event, with the launch of the #Euro2012microsite and the continuous world breaking records. The next major tournament shall be in 2014, Brazil, when the FIFA World Cup will surely out beat all standing records. Yet, with the London Olympics set to start this summer, we are eager to view how tweeps from across the world shall react and interact.
Yet Twitter shall not stand alone in the Social realm with Facebook still wanting a bite of the sports apple, with the launch of their very own special Olympic hub as means of promoting the games, teams and athletes.
Who did you cheer for this Euro cup and who will you cheer for during these Olympics? Do let us know and keep posted for more interesting news.
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Hurray! It is Social Media Day!
Jul 1st
If you are one of the 56% of social media users that have admitted to using channels to spy on their partners, then you can rejoice; you have a special day to celebrate today since it is Social Media Day!
Mashable launched Social Media Day 3 years ago, in 2010 and both the event and social media use have grown tremendously in that time. The event has been declared official by 17 cities worldwide and three U.S. states.
Social media has bombarded our lives; from tweeting about the latest in politics, to rekindling old friendships on Facebook all the way to documenting our lunch on Instagram.
Yet Social media has served a far more influential purpose throughout the course of the past few years; from the behemothic effect Twitter and Facebook have had on the upheaval of the Arab Spring, to more local news when social media has proven to be vital in notifying the public of important information when the catastrophic wildfire hit Colorado just a few days ago. On Twitter, the hashtag #WaldoCanyonFire was a trending topic for several days. Using this hashtag, citizens along with Colorado Springs authorities and the media have been relaying pivotal, life-saving information. Colorado Springs was also a trending topic.
Yet, social media does not stop at Facebook and Twitter; Pinterest is currently the 3rd most visited website in the U.S with 60% of the users being females that is, and it seems everyone wants a bit from the social media apple; with So.cl, G+and Quora of course.
According to a website called The Social Skinny; half of the people that are active online, check into their preferred site first thing in the morning; ahh those annoying Foursquare check-ins, you know what we’re talking about!
Well, moving on to the world of Fashion, as Heidi Klum always says: “one day you’re in and the next you are out.” How have fashion designers and fashionistas reinvented the social media realm you might ask? Well, Oscar de la Renta was up to date sharing his runway show live on Tumblr as it was happening as well as pinning his bridal show, as well as many other brands that have aptly used crowdsourcing for the purposes of generating hype on social media in addition to sparking an emotional connection with their customers and curation to leverage influencers’ networks and create shopping experiences that merge editorial content with retail.
Remember, if all those social accounts get too over-whelming, you always have HootSuite and TweetDeck to come to your rescue and help you sort it out.
On a final note, we’d like to leave you with one fun fact on each of our favorite Social website:
1. Facebook: More than 350 million users suffer from Facebook Addiction Syndrome.
2. Twitter: Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined (24 billion versus 4.1 billion and 9.4 billion respectively).
3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn has 161 million members in more than 200 countries and communities.
4. YouTube: YouTube was founded to share dinner clips of a party due to the files being too large for email.
5. Pinterest: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.
6. Instagram: President Obama is on Instagram, having joined in January 2012.
7. Google +: “Student” is the number one occupation of Google+ users.
8. The mobile Web: China is the No. 1 country in the world for Smartphone use, with approximately 1 billion users.
9. Blogging: 3 million new blogs come online every month.
10. Klout: Justin Bieber is the only person with a perfect Klout score of 100 (says it all, then).
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Twitter; all new, all #NASCAR
Jun 11th
Twitter has certainly been through one of its most exciting weeks; with the launch of the new Twitter bird logo on June 6th, 2012 as well as the launch of the new #hashtag pages that have been released starting Thursday June 7th, 2012.
Don’t get too excited just yet; the new logo comes with a bit of a catch, as it was announced on the official blog :
“There’s no longer a need for text, bubbled typefaces, or a lowercase “t” to represent Twitter. “
The page is organized in such a manner that any tweet sent from the NASCAR hashtag page shall automatically include the” #NASCAR” tag. The page also displays to the left the top interactive people, as well as the photos top curated that can be visible immediately after the #NASCAR hashtag.
Yet this new move has not won the praise and applauds of all, for as The Verge – among many – described this as part of the censorship surfacing Twitter lately, missing the whole point of unfiltered communication.
Many are viewing this new stream as not being authentic at all; it is merely a selection of tweets from racers, teams and others involved with the race, oblivious to whether or not they are actually using the hashtag. According to Twitter, the most interesting tweets are solely “a combination of algorithms and curation”.
However, since we believe in the strategy of trying before deeming our judgment, the page does not seem to be censored at all. For there seemed to be a lot of tweets speaking out about the lack of conversation this new direction could actually bring to the table. If the pages really were censored, we wouldn’t stumbled upon such tweets would we?
It seems that this new move is quite important for Twitter for they have just launched their very first TV ads (7 to be exact) to promote it. These 16 second spots created for the new launch showcase interesting behind the scenes footage of NASCAR and what you might be missing if you are not following the hashtag. According to AllTHingsD, the TV ad was on Time Warner’s TNT channel during the race on Sunday june 10th, 2012.
All in all, the new hashtag page is quite pleasant and compiles a multitude of media that would be hard to find elsewhere. They just ought to keep it minimal with the curation as not to kill the joy of twitter; just as long as it filters out the spam and leaves the good tweets.
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While Facebook says “I do”, Microsoft says : ” I object” !
May 21st
“Oh my God, not another social network site!” Those were our exact thoughts when we first read about Microsofts’s So.cl ( pronounced “social” ) being launched yesterday. With Facebook, Twitter and G+, it is getting rather hectic trying to manage all of one’s accounts. It seems that everyone wants a bite of the social apple, yet their success is bound by either having the backing of a large Internet player, or an idea that introduces something exceptional to the scene. We have previously discussed the two platforms; Pinterest Vs Reddit.
Yesterday, it seems there was a malfunction, and the site that was in beta went live for a brief period of time; not brief enough though since the keen eyes caught up. Apparently, it has been live when first seen, then it has gone to invites for a couple of days and now it is what we have today. Our guess is that the invites had generated enough interest to go live. Is this a successful silent/ accident launch? Hmm, that is quite arguable, but it seems that the So.cl project was being used at Microsoft for months already for internal purposes, so maybe their somewhat of a secretive launch is to test the waters.
Signing up is either with your Windows Live ID or your Facebook account. If you’ve chosen the latter to sign up, you can follow your fellow Facebook buddies that are already using So.cl and then move on to start exploring some suggested topics and popular users.
So.cl combines web browsing, search and social networking with each other, according to Microsoft.
Well, here is So.cl 101:
1. As in any social network, you can follow other users to view their posts in your newsfeed. You also have the option of browsing through the global feed; though we’re not too keen as to how this might work when/if millions of users start posting.
2. Once you find a post that intrigues you, you have 5 options: you can like it, comment on it, tag it, share it or riff it. Since the last one there sounds a bit puzzling, we shall further explain it; riffing a post basically signifies posting a response to that post. For instance, if you see a post full of photos of Amsterdam, you might want to riff it to add your own photos or notes that relate to the original post. A link to the riffed post is added to the original post and vice versa. This works similarly as YouTube’s video response feature.
3. New posts are created by entering a topic of interest into the form at the top of the page. Bing is obviously the search engine behind So.cl; hence you will find images, videos and texts as well as results from feeds in the results’ listing. Content, links and tags can be manually added to your posts as well.
4. One cool feature is the ability to join and create video parties. By doing so, you will be able to create a chat room and add videos to it from various video hosting web sites. Other users can then join this room and chat about the videos that they watch, and add their own videos.
5. A bookmarklet is available that allows you to share content that you stumble upon on the internet directly to So.cl.
The video party idea is quite appealing, but is it enough to captivate let alone drive away the many Facebook fans? Humm, we think not. One disappointment already spotted is the inability to sign out; you can only do so by deleting cookies.
It is recommended of course, that new users check the settings to make sure the notification and privacy settings are to their liking. By default, emails will be sent out on a weekly basis, and notifications will be sent out when someone comments on a post/ search, tags the user, invites/sends a private message.
Well, in order not to be judgmental and prejudice, we’ve created an account to see how it actually goes, have you?
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Got a question? Quora has the answer, or so they say
Apr 23rd
Ever wondered what would happen if Twitter, Facebook and Google Wave were combined?! Well, we’re sorry to tell you, CTO Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever beat you to it in June 2009, when they founded Quora. It was launched in private beta in December 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010.
So what is Quora?
To quote their own words: “Quora connects you to everything you want to know about. Quora aims to be the easiest place to write new content and share content from the web. We organize people and their interests so you can find, collect and share the information most valuable to you. “
Robert Scoble, seems skeptic about the website though ; “Quora succeeded in combining attributes of various websites that employ a system of users voting content up however it is a horrid service for blogging, and while it was a decent question and answer website, it was not substantially better than competing sites.”
In other words:
-50 credits if the upvote is from the person who asked the question.
-10 credits if the upvote is from anyone else.
-500 credits once you start off using Quora.
-20 credits when people follow questions you ask.
-10 credits when people upvote your contributions.
Video :
Quora added two substantial feature to their website; the first one is the elimination of the original “Pay to show to Topics” feature of Credits, where users would have to pay credits to have their questions show up to people following specific topics. Instead, users will have to pay 50 credits to ask a question, any question and all topic additions are “free.”
Users can earn credits by having their questions and answers upvoted, answering ” Ask to Answer” questions or having users gift them credits.
The second added feature is the “Promote” ; yet another way to use credits to give desired content more visibility throughout Quora.
With Quora Promote, a user pays one credit for every two people he or she would like to have the chosen content promoted to (i.e. 100 credits for 200 people). The people who are being promoted here are exactly the same ones who would have seen it anyways, a.k.a. followers of the topic and/or of the person who posted it. Hence, our thoughts that this “Promote” is a little nonsensical, however D’Angelo seems to think otherwise.
If you are already an avid Quora user, you probably have the Iphone app that alerts you right away when someone votes up one of your answers or replies to one of your comments. You can simulate that on your computer; install Charm of Quora if you are using Chrome, Firefox or Safari. It shows recommended content and boards. You can post, search, view notifications directly from the extension.
As Sandra Liu Huang, Quora product manager, answered a question on Quora stating that the android app must be available this April for a limited beta testing.
From what’s being said around, the startup wants to raise between $30 to $50 million in its Series B, at a $400 million valuation – while potential investors are most certainly interested , co founder D’Angelo will be contributing from his own money ; adding up to $20 million according to one source.
Whether it is just another Silicon Valley popular start-up, or actually a valid asset to our daily life, it sure is worth looking into.
Looking for a simple, elegant backup solution?
Genie Timeline 2012 is a new version of the number one continuous data protection program Timeline 2.1. It offers the first metro style user interface; enhanced performance, and added features. Like us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter for the latest news.
>Follow @Genie9backup