Best of Tech News

Can Pinterest Help Your Job Search?

2012-02-13T05:06:00.000Z

Sean Weinberg is the COO and co-founder of RezScore, a free web application that reads, analyzes and grades resumes instantly. You can connect with Sean and the RezScore team on Facebook and Twitter.

Just when you thought you had mastered the job search on all social media platforms, along came Pinterest.

You’ve optimized your Facebook and LinkedIn pages and you’ve got the Twesume. Now it’s time to amp up your job search even more by putting your resume on Pinterest.

What’s the Big Deal?

For those of you not in-the-know, Pinterest is a social networking site where people can create and share content within the context of visually-oriented pinboards. Its recent explosion in popularity has helped this site expand beyond cute baby/dog/porcupine photos and wedding event planning tips, which are still plentiful. Now, with something in the neighborhood of 6 million users, you’re a fish in a pretty big pond.

Instead of butting heads with the “big three” social media sites, Pinterest complements social media usage by tying into Facebook and Twitter.

Much like Facebook or Twitter, job seekers are using their Pinterest account to share portfolio work, personal content and yes, their resumes.

Apart from the fact that it’s still the hip new thing — and it still requires an invite, though it’s not hard to secure one — Pinterest serves as a new and convenient avenue for job seekers looking to share content. It’s not like a blog that demands attention, and it doesn’t run the risk of having that one obnoxious friend who tags you in photos you don’t remember.

How Can I Put My Resume On Pinterest?

Kick Off: Fortunately for you, it doesn’t matter if you’ve never been on Pinterest or you’ve been on it obsessively for a year. All you need is an invite, and there’s no profile to fill out — that’s right, not even an “about me”. Currently, Pinterest requires either a Twitter or Facebook profile to get started. Once in, you’ll be able to connect with both and then share through both channels.

Create Board: A Pinterest profile is divided into pinboards. Create one for your job search. Give it a catchy name, like “John Smith — Space Cowboy,” or something else that’s simple and will catch a potential employer’s eye.

Pin It: Now that you have a newfangled “job search pinboard,” it’s time to start pinning. Of course, your resume is a valuable addition, as well as pages from your portfolio, press clippings and accomplishments you can claim. Think of your pinboard as a living resume that grows as you grow in the professional world.

If you’re at a loss on what else to pin, try breaking your field into bite-sized chunks. Let’s say you’re in public relations with a specialty in event planning. Your boards could include a public relations board filled with PR and marketing goodies, a media board filled with articles, news and infographics, and an event planning board chock full of wedding ideas, party favors and the like.

Brand It: Much like everything else in the world, Pinterest isn’t meant to just be about one thing. Open up to new pinboards to pin and repin different content. Think about how your other pinboards can frame your job search pinboard: showcase your interests, your well-rounded life, anything that can help give a prospective employer a better understanding of who you are.

Share: You know the drill — if you want to be noticed, you have to share. Publish links to your pinboards on your website, business cards and resume. As I said before, Pinterest integrates very nicely into Facebook and Twitter, so consider pushing to those networks to notify followers and friends when you’ve pinned something worth seeing.

Currently, Pinterest requires that you write a little snippet below any content you’re pinning. Instead of adding an oh-so-creative “.” or a “This is cool!” add your input to kick off a conversation in the social media world.

7 Tips for Communicating Effectively Online

2012-02-13T04:58:00.000Z

Facebook, Twitter, blogs, chat and so forth are part of our everyday online sources of interaction. And every day we try to communicate with our friends online but are they they are hearing a different message from the one you're putting across? It's easy to make mistakes of communication in the online environment where our connection is down wires rather than face-to-face.

It's important to maintain the kind regards you have towards your real-life friends online by making sure that you're actually saying what you mean to say, effectively.

Steps

Stay current with Facebook statuses and Twitter updates.

Stay current with Facebook statuses and Twitter updates.
- Did you know that everything we say to someone via updates on social media sites is a request for a response?
- When you want to share a status think what kind of response you'd like. Here are some of the responses you might be looking for:
  - A connection like "Me too!"
  - Understanding such as "I'm glad to know that about you."
  - A reaction like "Ha Ha :)"
  - "'Advice such as "Have you tried ____"
  - A response of what they think, such as "I think that's nice"
  - An action like "I will do that."
  - Sympathy such as "Poor You :("
  - Empathy with something like "I understand your pain".
- Think about what you think you are looking for. Write with the response you're seeking in mind. Make it clear what kind of action you want the readers to take if you're looking for something specific.
Write updates, posts and statuses.

Write updates, posts and statuses.
- Less is more most of the time. Unless you have a huge fanbase and you're trying to sell something or have something exciting happening in your like (namely, going into labor), limit your updates to one a day or even less.
- Someone who updates multiple times a day gives the image of being bored, lonely, depressed or selfish. Now, those things might be true about you but if you really need connection with others, don't make it a negative one. Show them that you care about them and they'll reciprocate.
- A well thought out status every once in a while gives the image of a wise, insightful person who has a fulfilling life offline.
Comment.

Comment.
- Be responsive. Just as everything you say is asking for a response, everything your friends say is looking for a response: verbal and non-verbal.
- When you read someone's status ask yourself: What is this person asking of me?
- Of course, it isn't always clear what the person wants. One way to figure it out is to put yourself in their shoes, what you know of their situation, and decide what you'd like in the same situation. Another way is to send a private message. "Are you looking for advice?" is a good message to find out what they might be asking. They'll likely say "No. I was just putting it out there (understanding/connection)" or "Yes. What do you suggest?"
- Once you think you know what they want, give it to them. Here are some examples of what you might write if they are looking for:
  - Connection: Really? I know. Same here. I remember...
  - Understanding: Tell me more. What happened? How's it going now?
  - A reaction: LOL! ROFL! I just threw up in my mouth. TMI! "Like"
  - Advice: What worked for me was... My mom tried... Whatever you do DON'T..
  - What you think: I love it! That does not appeal to me. That reminds me of...
  - Action: I just clicked on the link. I'll repost. [ignore if you're not going to do anything]
  - Sympathy: Poor guy! That must have been disgusting! Get well soon.
  - Empathy: I've had that before, no fun. I can tell this is really bothering you.
Post photos.

Post photos.
- Show your friends that you care about them when you post a photo album by:
  - Limiting the photos to the very best of the series.
    - 15 interesting photos is more pleasurable to look than 120 random ones.
  - Write captions on all of the photos to describe what is going on.
  - Take time to tag people - it shows you care.
- If you went on a fabulous vacation, your first instinct may be to share every glorious detail, which can be interesting to some people, but if you really want to make your friends less envious, tag them in specific photos and tell them you thought about them when you were there.
- If you did something 'adventurous', go crazy and show as many photos as you want - just add captions - people love living dangerously through you in the comfort of being behind their computer screen.
Deal carefully but assertively with obnoxious friends. If there is a particular person that your blood boils whenever you read their posts you have three choices:

Deal carefully but assertively with obnoxious friends.
- Block/unfriend them
- Ignore them
- Empathize with them: Ask yourself what might they be needing by writing this post? Although you might want to avoid commenting on their posts, your attitude may change.
Use emoticons to express what you mean.

Use emoticons to express what you mean.
- If you're not a descriptive enough writer to express your tone with choice of vocabulary alone, opt to use emoticons.
- Simple ones include - : + )= Happy, :+(=sad, ;+)=joking, <hug>= hug.
- Don't overdo it. For some people, too many emoticons is a sign of immaturity. Less is more.
If you don't have anything nice to type, don't type it at all!

If you don't have anything nice to type, don't type it at all!

.
Be aware that keeping in touch with people online can be really hard.

Be aware that keeping in touch with people online can be really hard.
- Life gets busy on both sides. One thing that really helps is don’t just look at it as emailing, facebooking, skyping or calling when you have some free time. Schedule the person in, no matter how you are going to communicate, as if you were going out with that person for dinner, catching up for coffee or going to their house. You have to treat them how you would if you were getting together in person. That time is their time and you can really give yourself to them.

Instagram Upgrade Introduces a Powerful New Feature

2012-02-12T15:21:00.000Z

Take a look at your App Store icon, iPhone users, and if you’re an avid Instagram user, there’s a big surprise for you inside. Instagram just received a big upgrade, and it’s going to make your pictures on the social networking service look a lot better.

The standout new feature is called Lux, and it can be a godsend for pics that look too dark in some areas. It can enhance photos that already look good, too. It acts like a magic fill light that you can shine on your picture, bringing up the brightness in the shadowy areas so you can see things you couldn’t see before. Lux is like HDR that you can apply after the picture’s been taken.

This brings an entirely new dimension to Instagram, the explosively popular app that’s for iPhone only. The app has attracted a network of users consisting of 15 million photo aficionados and people who just want to have fun with their iPhone cameras.

In addition to Lux, Instagram has added another filter, called “Sierra,” giving you yet another choice of filters to add to Instagram’s already extensive collection. And, notifications have been improved, where now you’re taken directly to the photo, profile or comment that’s been referenced.

You’ll also notice an interface upgrade, where the home screen’s navigation icons no longer have labels. New users probably won’t like this feature, because at first it’s hard to tell what will happen when you tap the buttons. But I noticed it’s quite easy to get used to these new icons, and the resulting interface looks much cleaner:

Want to jump into the low-fidelity iPhone-only Instagram club? The price of admission is free. You might be surprised how many of your friends are already using it.

Knicks’ Jeremy Lin Continues Domination of Social Media and NBA

2012-02-12T15:20:00.000Z

Welcome to the Linternet.

After a 38-point outing to lead the New York Knicks over Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night, point guard Jeremy Lin has tightened the stranglehold he’s had on the World Wide Web since his improbable surge to NBA stardom began just several days ago.

His name and the hashtag #Linsanity have trended on Twitter multiple days in the past week. He has added more than 130,000 followers on the network over that time span as well, according to the stat-tracking website TwitterCounter.com. He’s added about 40,000 of those followers just since outdueling Bryant on Friday, according to the site. He’s even inspired spinoff accounts, such as the @Linterest page, which provides fictional updates of famous people’s “linboards” in a parody of the white-hot social network Pinterest.

An underground rapper posted a tribute rap to YouTube on Tuesday. Two days later, the well-known rapper Jin posted a tribute of his own.

How much has the digital hysteria exploded since Mashable first wrote about Lin earlier this week? On Friday night, the tech news website All Things D, which typically gives sports a wide berth, published a service piece titled, “Who Put Sports in My Twitter Again? The Jeremy Lin Explainer.”

Lin has a number of things in common with Tim Tebow. Tebow, quarterback of the Denver Broncos, was the last professional athlete to take the Internet by storm, and inspired one especially viral meme last fall. Both he and Lin are devout Christians. Both are seen as model citizens who “play the right way” and offer a counterpoint to many of the boorish aspects of pro sports. Both are seen as heavy underdogs at the professional level.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Lin was an un-recruited high school player in Palo Alto, California. After none of his dream schools offered a scholarship, he played four years at Harvard University, leading the fabled academic institution to new heights on the hardwood. He went un-drafted out of Harvard but made the Golden State Warriors as a free agent, becoming the NBA’s first Asian-American player since 1947, then bounced around some more before the Knicks picked him up.

Indeed, Lin’s status as the rare Asian-American NBA player has contributed to his popularity on social media — but led to some ugly moments as well. Lin’s Chinese name, Lin Shuhao, was among Monday’s most-searched terms on Sina Weibo, a Chinese service similar to Twitter, according to The Wall Street Journal. Then, on Friday night, scores of people called for Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock to be fired after he posted this tweet.

Twitter: Now You Can Tweet By Satellite

2012-02-10T06:40:00.000Z

Twitter has announced a new partnership with major satellite providers to give their subscribers access to Twitter SMS, the original text-based Twitter service.

According to a statement released Thursday, the company has partnered with Iridium and Thuraya, the world’s two largest satellite providers, to increase the number of people that can use Twitter SMS worldwide. The company said the new partnership will help guarantee greater global access to the microblogging network.

“Now, even if phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible — for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster — people will be able to share news and stay informed via Twitter,” reads the statement.

Where cell towers are susceptible to being knocked offline by weather, earthquakes or military attack, satellite networks are often more stable.

The partnership keeps the company close to its original roots in SMS, which is the standardized text messaging feature found in cellphones and other mobile devices. When Twitter began in 2006, it was designed to utilize SMS to easily send a short message to a group of people. As the service grew, it launched its own platform aside from SMS.

However, tweets can still be sent via SMS, and it’s that feature which has made Twitter popular in parts of the world with scarce mobile broadband connectivity. Users who are on a mobile carrier that offers Twitter SMS support can make use of two-way “short codes.”

One roadblock: some cell carriers don’t support Twitter SMS. But Twitter has a solution for users on those carriers.

The company has set up a number of “long codes,” which people can use to send tweets. After setting up a Twitter account for long code use, a user can put such a code in the “recipient” field of a text, and Twitter will automatically pick up their text and tweet it from their account. That can be helpful in low or no-bandwidth situations such as political upheavals or regional emergencies.

So far, Twitter has set up long codes for users in the UK, Germany and Finland. Long codes are limited to outgoing tweets only.

How to Grayscale and Crop in Photoshop CS5

2012-02-04T08:05:00.000Z

The main reason you will probably need to use grayscale and cropping of a picture is for displaying pictures in print and photo media. This article explores the method used for using these features in Photoshop CS5.

Steps

Start by opening the picture you want to alter.

Start by opening the picture you want to alter.
Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool on the left menu bar.

Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool on the left menu bar.
Click and drag a rectangle around the area you want to keep.

Click and drag a rectangle around the area you want to keep.
Click on Image in the top menu bar, and then click Crop.

Click on Image in the top menu bar, and then click Crop.
To grayscale the picture, click on Image on the top menu bar.

To grayscale the picture, click on Image on the top menu bar.
Click on Adjustments.

Click on Adjustments.
Click on Black & White.

Click on Black & White.
Make sure the preview box is checked.
Use one of the presets or change the levels to your desired settings. The image is now available for use as needed.

Use one of the presets or change the levels to your desired settings.

Tips

The Rectangular Marquee tool hotkey is (M).
To choose the Crop tool use hotkey (C), select the area to crop and hit Enter.
The Grayscale hotkey is Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B.
You can also grayscale a picture by going to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. The desaturate tool however does not preserve luminance and the image will remain in "RGB" mode.
Ctrl + Z is the hotkey to "undo" in case of mistakes.

10 Hilarious Animated GIFs that Took the Web by Storm

2012-01-30T08:32:00.000Z

1. Darth Raver

Adding a Star Wars reference almost always results in a viral sensation.

Click here to view this gallery.

Along with all of the other weird quirks of the web, animated GIFs are extremely popular — especially on content-curating sites like Tumblr and Reddit.

In terms of GIFs, we’ve seen everything from mainstream celebrities photobombing major award shows to familiar web trends like cats and Star Wars characters. But when it comes to animated GIFs, one thing is for certain: Humor always wins.

Babes At Trade Fairs II

2012-01-26T16:53:00.000Z

Babes At Trade Fairs I

2012-01-26T16:48:00.002Z

SOPA Will Take Us Back to the Dark Ages

2012-01-18T15:43:00.000Z

I had an epiphany today. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, was not written by people who fundamentally misunderstand how the web works. They understand all too well, and want to change it forever.

Behind the almost unreadable (yet truly scary) text of SOPA (and its Senate doppelganger, PIPA, or the Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a desire, likely fueled by powerful media conglomerate backers, to take us all back to the thin-pipe, content-distribution days of 1994 — right before the World Wide Web launched. From the moment the Internet and websites arrived, a veritable Pandora’s box of opportunities have opened to every average Joe and Josephine in the world. Everyone became a content creator. Everyone had an audience.

The Internet also almost immediately became the transport mechanism for a steady flow of pirated content — first images, then music and, when the pipe got fat enough, movies. Major media companies, which once upon a time had sole control of the creation and distribution of popular entertainment, were appalled — and also powerless to stop it.

The music industry stuck its head firmly in the sand and ignored the digital age for years. Its CDs (an early digital embrace I’ll bet the music industry still regrets) made it easy for anyone with a computer to rip and share music. The practice nearly gutted the record industry. Steve Jobs and Apple saved it at the turn of the century, but that’s another story.

The movie industry has long suffered from yahoos bringing camcorders into screenings and delivering crappy copies of first-run films to DVD peddlers in Chinatown. The fat-pipe Internet and peer-to-peer file-sharing simply cut out the middleman and made it easy for anyone to share not only those same awful copies, but also DVD files grabbed, chunked up and delivered to countless pop-up movie download sites and even pristine films stolen from the Hollywood pipeline.

Meanwhile, star-making power was rapidly transferring from the hands of a few in Hollywood, the publishing houses of New York City and elsewhere to, well, everyone. YouTube is a perfect example. People create their own movies and music videos and, thanks to YouTube’s network, distribute it to, potentially, millions. They create their own following, even their own revenue stream (thank you, Google AdSense). People can now self-publish books and, sometimes, make oodles of money. Photographers post pictures on Flickr and Google+ and generate thousands of views. They no longer need a magazine or newspaper to reach an audience.

It’s not just books, music and movies. The Internet is empowering people to create all sorts of businesses and distribution systems. They leapfrog the old hurdles, ignore the gatekeepers and go straight to the public.

It is true that, sometimes, these creators rely in part on other people’s works to tell their tales, sing their songs, and post their movies. This is not a new impulse. The creative act has been, in part, derivative since the beginning of time (he Bible, he New Testament). There are always influences.

It’s also true that real content piracy remains a persistent and daunting problem for companies and creators who rely on revenues from the content they create to continue making more content and, sometimes, simply to survive.

Yet the language in SOPA is so irrational that I can only assume that the authors and backers wanted nothing more than to fundamentally change the rules of the web: To shut down the open post fields, kill reposting (goodbye, Tumblr), end shared videos (sorry, YouTube), expand the definition of what it means to infringe (sorry, Twitter, no sharing links that aren’t yours).

When you turn copyright infringement into a felony and say that anyone can accuse a website of providing ”infringing” tools (and apply severe penalties whether or not you do something about it), you are essentially making it impossible for anyone to do anything online without fear of retribution.

This is just as the authors and backers want it, though. Fear is a powerful motivator. It will grind the engine of the Internet to a halt and when everyone is wondering what do to next, trying to figure out where they get their daily fix of viral videos or post their latest Bieber cover song, there will be media companies. They’ll be standing there, smiling, with open arms. One hand will be ready to give you a warm embrace, while the other collects your money.

Nedroid

These sites have "blacked out" Wednesday, Jan. 18 in protest of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). It makes it just a little bit easier to imagine what the web could look like if some of the measures from the proposed bill were to become law.

Click here to view this gallery.

Verizon Wireless adds a fee for paying your bill

2012-01-18T14:17:00.000Z

Here's the full story from Peter Svensson of the Associated Press:

Verizon Wireless, the country's largest cellphone company, is introducing a $2 fee for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit cards.

The company says this "convenience fee" will be introduced Jan. 15.

The fee won't apply to electronic check payments or to automatic credit card payments set up through Verizon's AutoPay system. Paying by credit card in a Verizon store will also be free, as will mailing a check.

Other carriers have tried to get subscribers to move to automatic payments through other means. AT&T Inc. offers a $10 gift card for those who set up AutoPay. Sprint Nextel Corp. charges subscribers who have caps on the fees they can rack up each month. Those people are charged $5 monthly unless they set up autopay.

It's pretty obvious that this is an attempt to get more subscribers to use an autopay service, which ultimately benefits Verizon the most. But before you activate autopay, do a little research. The Get Rich Slowly blog points out some important facts about autopay, like how companies can slip in new fees without you knowing and the difficulty of catching billing mistakes and fixing them after the fact.

Wikipedia to go dark Wednesday to protest SOPA

2012-01-18T14:15:00.000Z

I hope you do all your Wikipedia browsing today, because they're shutting off access to the English-language version of the online encyclopedia for one day to protest SOPA.

If you're wondering exactly what SOPA is and why you should care, take a look at this entry from Wikipedia:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites. They cite examples such as Google's $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.

Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions.

Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the next Congressional hearing on the matter.

Click to read Wikipedia's statement.

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States -- the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate -- that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it's a decision that wasn't lightly made. Here's how it's been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community's discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That's a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia's articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world's knowledge. We're putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn't made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.

Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia's public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia's heart is in the right place. It's not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.

That's less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn't mean they don't have a desire to make the world a better place -- many do! -- but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.

My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we're doing it for our readers. We support everyone's right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can't pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States -- don't advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don't think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

Make your voice heard!

On January 18, we hope you'll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.

Sue Gardner,

Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

How about a credit card-sized Linux PC for $25?

2012-01-17T14:23:00.000Z

Now this project looks really interesting.

Rasberry Pi, a UK company is building tiny Linux computers that will sell for $25 and $35.

No joke.

They'll run Linux off of an SD card and feature 128mb of RAM on the $25 model and 256mb of RAM and and ethernet port on the $35 model.

Video out is via HDMI and there is a 3.5mm audio out jack.

Power will be provided via a microUSB cable.

There is no onboard hard drive or wifi. You'll bring your own via USB.

Rasberry Pi expects to be auctioning the beta boards soon and production begins in January.

They say the $35 model will stream 1080p video. So it sounds like a decent little home theater PC. But of course it'll work for browsing the web and email.

There is no case for the first batch, but an external case will be available later.

Continue to read their "About Us" statement

The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton was lecturing and working in admissions at Cambridge University. Eben had noticed a distinct drop in the skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science in each academic year when he came to interview them. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant now had experience only with web design, and sometimes not even with that. Fewer people were applying to the course every year. Something had changed the way kids were interacting with computers.

Eben and colleagues from the university like Rob Mullins and Alan Mycroft (both now trustees of the Raspberry Pi Foundation) batted around ideas about what had happened in schools to cause this change. A number of problems were identified: the colonisation of the ICT curriculum with lessons on using Word and Excel, or writing webpages; the end of the dot-com boom; and the rise of the home PC and games console to replace the Amigas, BBC Micros, Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 machines that people of an earlier generation learned to program on.

There isn't much any small group of people can do to address problems like an inadequate school curriculum or the end of a financial bubble. But we felt that we could try to do something about the situation where computers had become so expensive and arcane that programming experimentation on them had to be forbidden by parents; and to find a platform that, like those old home computers, could boot into a programming environment.

Over the next few years, Eben, having left the university for industry, worked on building prototypes of what has now become the Raspberry Pi in his spare time (you can see a very early version here).

By 2008, processors designed for mobile devices were becoming more affordable, and powerful enough to provide excellent multimedia (a Raspberry Pi can play Blu-Ray-quality video), a feature we felt makes the board desirable to kids who aren't initially interested in a raw programming device. The project started to look very realisable. Eben came together with a group of friends and old colleagues with a wide-ranging group of skills, some of whom were already wrestling with the problem of what to do about producing new young programmers. These people became the Raspberry Pi board of trustees: David Braben, a star game designer and Cambridgeshire entrepreneur with a book of contacts as long as your arm; Jack Lang, a local academic and business angel who worked on the original BBC Micro project; Pete Lomas, MD of a hardware design and manufacture company where our earliest boards have been designed and built; and Professor Alan Mycroft and Dr Rob Mullins from the Cambridge University Computer Lab, who have provided a lot of the educational direction of the project.

Three years later, we're nearly at the end of our first run of development - although it's just the beginning of the Raspberry Pi story. David has been tireless in raising press awareness and finding us sponsorship. Pete has designed and built our first batch of boards for test; Jack runs the business end of things and has a warehouse we've filled with hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of componentry ready to turn into our first boards.

We've had enormous interest, support and help from the educational community, and we've been delighted and a little humbled by the number of enquiries from agencies and people far away from our original targets for the device. Developing countries are interested in the Raspberry Pi as productivity devices in areas that simply can't afford the power and hardware needed to run a traditional desktop PC; hospitals and museums have contacted us to find out about using the Raspberry Pi to drive display devices. Parents of severely disabled kids have talked to us about monitoring and accessibility applications; and there seem to be a million and one people out there with hot soldering irons who want to make a robot.

We don't claim to have all the answers. We don't think that the Raspberry Pi is a fix to all of the world's computing issues; we do believe that we can be a catalyst. We want to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere; we actively encourage other companies to clone what we're doing. We want to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can't use the internet. We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children. We think that 2012 is going to be a very exciting year.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409)

Got a Kindle Fire, update your software now...you'll like the results

2012-01-17T14:22:00.000Z

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet has been a popular choice for Christmas gifts this season, but reviewers have panned the device because of a slow, clunky interface experience.

I don't have a Fire, but my colleague David Pogue at the New York Times tweeted this morning, "YESSS! Today's free software update makes the Kindle Fire smooth and reliable instead of balky and frustrating."

According to Amazon:

We have a new, free over-the-air software update available for Kindle Fire. This update enhances fluidity and performance, improves touch navigation responsiveness, gives you the option to choose which items display on the carousel, and adds the ability to add a password lock on Wi-Fi access. The update will be automatically delivered to your Kindle Fire.

If you are not sure what software version you're running, tap the Quick Settings icon, tap "More," then tap "Device." If your System Version is "Current version: 6.2.1," you are running the latest software. If your System Version is "Current version: 6.0, 6.1, or 6.2" follow the instructions below to take advantage of all of the features available for Kindle Fire.

To update your Kindle, ensure you are connected to a Wi-Fi network and that your battery is fully charged. Tap the Quick Settings icon in the upper right corner of your device, then tap "Sync." The software update will automatically download in the background and will be applied once download is complete and the device is asleep.

If you'd like to manually download and install the software update on your Kindle Fire, follow the instructions below. Please note that you'll need a USB cable (sold separately) to transfer the update to your Kindle Fire.

Navigation Solutions unveils new products at CES

2012-01-17T14:18:00.000Z

Plano-based Navigation Solutions Inc. is at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week with some new Hertz NeverLost navigation products and services for leisure and business travelers -- not just Hertz car renters.

It's demonstrating 16 My Explore mobile companion travel apps to help travelers navigate 16 major U.S. cities across a wide range of interests and categories. (My Explore Hawaii will be the first.) The apps will be available on iTunes early this year.

Navigation Solutions also is introducing a new Online Trip Planning site at www.neverlost.com with live, in-person travel desk support from 6:30 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. The site is expected to go live by the end of March.

The apps and the website will sync wirelessly with Hertz Neverlost Gen 5, a GPS device in Hertz rental cars.

Founded in 1997, Navigation Solutions is majority-owned by Hertz.

London Olympics Restrict Volunteers Twitter and Facebook Use

2012-01-12T08:05:00.000Z

London 2012 Olympic volunteers have been banned from posting updates and photos to Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. The London Organizing Committee announced Friday that Games Makers, the 70,000 person volunteer squad, cannot post their roles, locations, or details about the athletes and other VIPs online.

“We understand that many of our Games Makers will want to use social media to share their exciting experiences at London 2012 with their friends and family,” a spokesman told Reuters. “As is standard in most organizations, we have provided some practical guidelines to give basic advice on interacting in a social media environment with the aim of protecting the interests of our workforce and operation.”

Broadcasting our whereabouts on Foursquare or snapping an Instagram of a celebrity sighting have become second nature for many of us. While athletes are permitted to tweet or post Facebook updates, the London Organizing Committee has made a decision that will limit the citizen discussion of Olympic events.

Additional restrictions prevent Game Makers from making public statements relating to the London games, without prior permission from Olympics spokespeople, or speaking to schools about the events.

This won’t mean much of a change from Beijing 2008, considering that China bans Twitter and Facebook. However, one may argue Olympic volunteers could have provided excellent stories from behind the scenes at the games.

FCC to Explore Helping Low-Income Americans Afford Internet Access

2012-01-10T04:15:00.000Z

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced Monday that he will be ordering sweeping changes to the Lifeline low-income telecommunications connectivity program.

The Lifeline program was formed to help low-income Americans pay for telephone connectivity. Lifeline subscribers have been able to receive as much as $10 off their monthly telephone bills for either a landline or mobile phone. But high-speed Internet has been replacing the telephone as the main connectivity choice for Americans, and the FCC recognizes that shift.

“The [Lifeline] program is outdated,” said Genachowski in an announcement made at Third Way, a D.C.-based think tank. “It’s focused on phones when high-speed internet has become our vital communications plan.”

The order, to be sent Tuesday, will begin modernizing Lifeline in three ways:

By establishing a pilot program to determine how Lifeline can best be expanded to include broadband access.

By increasing digital literacy training at libraries and schools.

By building on the FCC’s efforts to expand broadband access and adoption rates.

According to Genachowski, this new focus will reflect the FCC’s priority on expanding broadband access as outlined in the National Broadband Plan released in 2010.

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, welcomed the steps being taken by the FCC to increase broadband access across the country. However, he warned in a statement that the program is “years away from having a notable impact on narrowing the digital divide.”

If implemented, broadband assistance via Lifeline could help low-income Americans stay connected to family, friends, news updates and employment opportunities through the method they’re most comfortable with.

The Lifeline program will also be overhauled to reduce wasteful spending to the tune of “up to $2 billion over the next few years.” Some of the savings on waste will be used to fund the Lifeline modernization efforts. Currently, Lifeline is largely funded through a charge applied to telecommunications users’ monthly bills.

The Computer Teacher

2012-01-09T03:57:00.001Z

A Lady jumped a signal.

Policeman: What u did?

Lady: Plz let me go. I'm a school teacher. I am getting late for my class.

Policeman: Aahaa, So you are a teacher. I have waited...for this moment all my life.

Now write "I WILL NEVER JUMP A SIGNAL", 1000 TIMES.

Teacher:

import java.io.*;

class PadhBhiLoBacho

{

public static void main(String[] args)

{

for(int i=0;i<1000;i++)

System.out.println("I WILL NEVER JUMP A SIGNAL");

}

Kisi bhi Java Compiler mein chala ke dekh lena........

Policeman Shocked ............Teacher Rocked!!

Danger with Laptops

2012-01-08T13:32:00.001Z

A couple lost their 25 year old son, Arun Gopal Ratnam, in a fire at home on June 4th.Arun was born on December 19, 1985 and passed away on Friday, June 4, 2010.

This is exactly what happened. Arun had graduated with MBA from University of Wisconsin-Madison just two weeks earlier and had came home from the campus for a day. He had lunch with his dad at home and decided to go back to clean up his room at the campus. However, his dad told him to wait and see his mother before returning to the campus as she was due back from work in a couple of hours. He decided to take a snooze while waiting for his mom while his dad went out.

Neighbors called 911 when they saw black smoke coming out of the house.. The 25 year old Arun died in the three year old house. It took several days of investigation to find out the cause of the fire. It was determined that the fire was caused by lap top in the bed..

When the lap top is on the bed, the area below it is blocked and the cooling fan does not get air to cool it and that is what caused the fire.

Arun did not even wake up to make any effort to get out of bed as he died of massive carbon monoxide inhalation.

The purpose of this "post" is to make aware that most of us use our lap top in bed and often go to sleep with it next to us. Please make it a practice not to do that. The risk is very real. Make it a rule not to use the lap top in bed.

Golden Dream Nokia Phone

2011-12-31T07:04:00.003Z

Pumpkin Turned Into a PC

2011-12-31T07:04:00.002Z

Girls Who Draw Crowds to Fairs 1

2011-12-31T07:04:00.001Z

Girls Who Draw Crowds to Fairs 2

2011-12-31T07:04:00.000Z

Twitter 2012: Bigger and More Ads

2011-12-28T14:18:00.001Z

People predicted rioting when Twitter decided to post ads within its feeds. However, those protests never materialized. Instead, Twitter was used to mobilize protests in the streets in Egypt, Yemen and Tunesia.

The two instances are related. As Twitter became a globally recognized entity, it also began efforts to monetize itself earnestly in 2011. As previously mentioned, Twitter’s successful introduction of advertising was one of the big social media marketing trends of the year. Despite warnings from some Twitter purists, users didn’t seem to mind more ads on Twitter, perhaps concluding that Twitter was, after all, a for-profit business.

Though many perceived Twitter’s 2011 ad rollout as an unalloyed success, eMarketer noted a few hiccups here and there. Twitter’s international expansion took longer than promised, and a self-serve ad product didn’t materialize until the end of the year — even then, for just a handful of advertisers.

Concerns aside, eMarketer is still bullish about Twitter’s prospects in the coming year. The researcher reckons that Twitter will post $259.9 million in revenues in 2012, an 86.3% jump from 2011. Debra Aho Williamson, the author of the report, wrote that although Twitter has a smaller audience than Facebook, marketers have posted “solid engagement rates” with Twitter’s ad products that outperform Facebook’s in some cases. (That’s fairly faint praise, however, since the click-through rates for Facebook are notoriously low. Facebook, however, has sought to reframe the argument by justly noting that CTRs are a poor measure of an ad’s success.)

Twitter doesn’t provide much transparency into its advertising performance, but some partners, notably EA, have touted an 11% engagement rate in the U.K. for a Promoted Trends campaign. Moreover, users don’t seem to mind ad products like Promoted Tweets, according to research from Lab42.

The onrush of advertising to Twitter isn’t just hype. It’s rare that a day goes by in which Twitter’s home page doesn’t sport a Promoted Tweet, Promoted Trend or Promoted Account by one advertiser or another. Twitter doesn’t divulge the pricing for such campaigns, but the Wall Street Journal pegged the price of a Promoted Tweet north of $100,000.

Now that the Twitter ad machine is up and running, the company is looking to expand its footprint. In September, Twitter opened a London office, its first international outpost for sales. That month, the company also began accepting political ads, broadening its variety of advertising.

With the company clearly on a growing path, the obvious question is whether an IPO is in the near future. Officially, at least, there are no such plans. “We can stay private and grow the business the way we want, as long as we want,” CEO Dick Costolo told The Mercury News in December. “We never think about or talk about when we want to go public.” (Twitter could not be reached for comment for this story.) Yet Twitter just bought a fancy new headquarters in San Francisco designed to accommodate far more than the company’s current 700 or so employees.

Possible Complications

Of course, there was once a time when MySpace was the next big thing, and Second Life appeared to be the marketing platform of the future. Twitter seems to be on a tear at the moment, but alas, things change. Though it seems unlikely, there’s a chance Twitter could jump the shark or experience a Netflix-like fall from grace.

How? For starters, Google+ could really take off and, realizing its SEO benefits, users and brands could begin focusing on the network more — at Twitter’s expense. Likewise, Facebook’s addition of subscriptions could usurp Twitter’s role as a celebrity platform. More celebs could follow Ashton Kutcher’s lead by leaving the tweeting to professionals, which would result in a duller experience all around. Brands, assessing the damage that Kenneth Cole and Chrysler suffered due to errant tweets, could decide it’s time to cut losses and shutter their sparsely followed accounts. Finally, Twitter might simple expire like any other fad, as users move on to something else.

Another possibility is that Twitter could get acquired and change in a fundamental way. Imagine, for instance, that Google decided to buy Twitter and absorb it into Google+. The post-IPO Facebook could also be a buyer.

Crazy, you say? Remember that YouTube was once a separate company as well.

While the scenario is plausible, the idea of a new competitor or a group of competitors stealing Twitter’s thunder seems far-fetched. Five years after its founding, Twitter is now a global brand name and a symbol of social media-enabled freedom. There simply will never be anything like Twitter again.

Dictate to Your Mac What to Do With Vocal

2011-12-28T14:18:00.000Z

Most people expect their Mac computers to do exactly what they want with just the click of a mouse, but a new iPhone app is taking a different approach.

Vocal, an app powered by a platform-agnostic commands engine, lets users control and dictate their Mac computers using their voice. You can use the app to dictate commands straight from your iPhone 4S.

The $1.99 app comes in two parts — commands and dictation. Similar to the iPhone 4S’s personal assistant Siri, commands lets you control your Mac by voicing commands such as play songs, open apps, search the web and compose new emails. Using Vocal to say commands such as “search Google” or “compose a new email” does exactly that, ensuring that Mac computers do exactly what you ask it to.

The second part, dictation, allows users to write text in an email or document using their voice. The text is automatically inserted into the user’s document as they speak the words. Users can even use Vocal to format text by saying “bold,” “italics” or “underline”.

To begin vocally controlling your Mac, download the Vocal app onto your iPhone 4S and download the companion app onto your Mac computer. Once the downloads are complete, you can begin dictating and commanding your Mac to do exactly what you want.

Vocal users can even add their own commands — just open the “custom bookmarks” menu in the Mac app, set the preferences for your favorite websites and add actions that you want Vocal to perform.

Advanced users can even write their own custom commands using URL schemes or dictate text with HTML tags by enabling HTML formatting in the “Advanced Menu.”

“Vocal uses the iPhone 4S to make using your Mac faster than ever before,” says Matthew Roberts, CEO of Vocal. “The Mac computer is just the start because Vocal’s platform makes it easy for the app to be available on other platforms that users may want.”

Air Dictate, a speech recognition app also available for the iPhone 4S, is similar to Vocal because it also enables users to enter text on their Mac’s by speaking into their iPhone 4S. Unlike Air Dictate however, Vocal does not require an iPhone 4S. The app provides a text box on the Mac computer which users can type their commands into using their keyboard.

Roberts is currently rewriting the application to use true natural language processing to ensure the app translates exactly what the user says. The new version is expected to be available in a few weeks.