Fans of The Bachelor are all too familiar with this season’s over-the-top contestant Courtney, who makes snide comments at the camera and likes to take off her bikini top.

Now, a video has popped up on YouTube that has turned some of her signature phrases — from “Winning!” to “I do modeling” — into a catchy Auto-Tune clip.

The contestants are vying for a rose from winemaker Ben, and Courtney has rubbed many of them the wrong way, and this video shows why.

This is not the first time YouTube users have turned pop culture moments into Auto-Tuned videos. The best example of which is Antoine Dodson, whose “Bed Intruder” news interview was turned into a video by Auto-Tune The News and went viral. He was later given the opportunity to shoot a reality television show pilot.

What’s your favorite Auto-Tuned video? Let us know in the comments.

More About: YouTube

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Want to create an app for Facebook’s Open Graph? The mobile space presents a huge opportunity to create cross-platform social games, said Carl Sjogreen, director of product management at Facebook, who spoke to a packed conference center filled with IT insiders about Facebook’s projections for the mobile social gaming and app space for this year.

“You sort of had to have a PhD in Facebook to build an app on Facebook,” he said. Now, with the new Open Graph he said they want to encourage people to create cross-platform social apps.

“If you are building a social application….it’s really important to think about cross-platform,” he said.

Social apps are not as straightforward as creating an iOS or Android app. If you have an app that doesn’t allow you to play with friends who have different devices, that problems trumps any visual features lost by creating a cross-platform device. Social applications need to be inherently cross-platform.

What users want, he says, is to create a dynamic Facebook timeline that tells their story — whether that means they’re sharing the games they play, vacation photos or their favorite recipes.

“For the platform to be complete, we need to have all of that,” he said. “We have millions of people playing games on Facebook every day and that’s an important part of their experience.”

The moderator, AJ Glasser of InsideNetwork, asked Sjogreen about Facebook’s vision for how the API should work 12 months from now. (...)

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We live in a world where new digital products are solving problems daily — from managing our finances to remembering the groceries. Often, they’re solving problems we didn’t know we had, like the need to connect several times a day in 140 characters or less. Occasionally, they’re creating new problems (but that’s a topic for another conversation).

What we’re just starting to see, and what is for many the most exciting trend in technology, is the emergence of digital products designed specifically to provide social services at scale. This isn’t a rant about the death of the traditional non-profit, but a birth announcement. Non-profits (and other organizations aimed at making a social impact) are taking new approaches that look less like direct service and more like Google. These aren’t just brochure websites. They’re tools — proprietary, unique and scalable. And this means there’s an increased need for talented digital product managers in the social sector.

Let’s take a quick look at where organizations have been focused for the past several years; we’ll call it Non-profit Digital Engagement 1.0.

In this phase, a handful of tools came to dominate our understanding of how non-profits could engage in the digital space. Specifically, these were tools that enabled people to email Congress, sign a petition, tell-a-friend, send a letter to the editor or make a donation. This toolset focused on two activities: fundraising and advocacy — raising money and making noise. Those activities are important for most organizations, but they represent only a small slice of how non-profits actually aim to create change. And partly as a result, too many organizations were applying the same tools to engage people around wildly different problems. (...)

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Name: commentto

Quick Pitch: Comment anywhere.

Genius Idea: Commentto is a browser add-on service that allows users to highlight, bookmark, comment, save and share bookmarks and excerpts on websites.

Do you ever want to add extra knowledge to a news story or other content on the web? Well, browser add-on commentto lets you comment on anything you want.

Commentto allows users to highlight paragraphs on websites and add additional notes or comments. Users can also save information from a webpage to a personal commentto account folder. In the commentto popup, users can edit the title of the clip, add comments, and place the excerpt into a folder. Commentto does not track website history, but keeps a digital record of the websites and excerpts saved.

This add-on feature is especially helpful for those doing research and want to return to a webpage at a later date. Students could benefit from sharing notes, too. It can also be a useful tool for programmers, or anyone really.

“I code everyday, and many times I search online for solutions to problems I have with my code,” said Kandarp Dave, the founder of commentto. (...)

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Twitter humor is a brand-builder, a great writing exercise, and if you’re really good, it might even land you a job (but probably not, so settle down).

So, what does it take to get laughs at this 24/7 digital cocktail party? We asked some of the funniest tweeters around for their tips on cracking wise in the one-liner Renaissance.

1. Start by Being Funny in the First Place

Bill Corbett knows a thing or two about landing short quips. He's a writer/performer over at RiffTrax.com, and an alum of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show that invented this stuff.

"First bit of advice: Be a funny person. There may be nothing you can do about this one.

Second bit of advice: Try to understand the short form, and be playful within it. Not everything needs to read like a classic "premise, punchline" joke...But understand that tastes vary wildly. Not everyone will think you're hilarious, and some dicks will make sure to tell you so. (...)

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Walgreens is tweeting mobile coupons to customers who check in on mobile apps including Foursquare, Yelp and Facebook — letting customers in on deals while they shop.

The retailer is taking advantage of knowing who is in one of its 8,000 national locations. It is one of 40 companies currently using LocalResponse technology, which aggregates more than 1 billion checkins per month.

January check-in tweet deals at Walgreens included discounts on Halls cough drops coupon, flu shots and Energizer batteries, according to AdAge.

LocalResponse is a check-in aggregator that collects publicly shared information from more than 200 million users across platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram.

Walgreens stands as the first retailer to use LocalResponse to send promotions for packages goods, but joins a long list of big-name clients.

The startup had its soft launch more than two years ago, but will relaunch its beta in a couple weeks. However, it’s picking up speed, signing up multiple big brands including Verizon, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, General Mills, Hershey’s and others. LocalResponse recently received $5 million-backing from various companies.

Some of these brands have their own way of utilizing LocalResponse. Verizon, for example, uses it to respond to customers tweeting frustrations about other phone companies. Verizon tweets back with a $100 discount for individuals to switch carriers. (...)

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Meet Walk off the Earth, the ultra-talented quintet that turned its version of a sleeper hit into a viral phenomenon on YouTube and earned itself a record deal.

The Canadian indie band posted a video covering Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” last month, and it has since been viewed on YouTube nearly 50 million times. The clip shows the band playing on a single guitar. One strums the guitar while the others tap and pluck along. Now the band — which has been together for nearly six years — has earned itself a record deal with Columbia Records.

The captivating video caught the attention of Russell Crowe and Alyssa Milano, who tweeted the cover to their Twitter followers, and the band recently performed on Ellen. Even Gotye — the Belgian-Australian singer songwriter — has cheered on the band:

“I know who to ask for help with acoustic versions of Somebody: Walk Off The Earth. Hilarious and brilliant,” @Gotye tweeted.

Gotye’s original version — uploaded to YouTube in July 2011 — is still beating out the cover with nearly 65 million views.

The band has since posted a thank you video and message on its site: “We just wanted to make this video to say thank you to everyone who has shared and posted the video and made this crazy dream come true for us,” one member wrote.

BONUS: 15 Wannabes That Found Fame on YouTube

1. Avery

Teen star Avery was a big YouTube hit in 2010 with both covers and original material. The latter netted her a Universal record contract (supposedly following a bidding war) after her videos were viewed by A&R folks. (...)

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The honors are well deserved. DKNY’s Twitter account and Tumblr blog, both of which are run by Donna Karan International SVP of Global Communciations Aliza Licht, are entertaining, informative and exceptionally on-brand. The Twitter account features, among other things, live blogs of CW show Gossip Girl each week, and frequently engages in conversations with followers of all stripes. Meanwhile, the brand’s Tumblr has become a go-to resource for humor-laced PR advice.

Winners were determined entirely by popular vote, following an open nomination round. One award — the Fashion 2.0 Visionary Award — was presented for the first time to Gilt Groupe cofounders Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, and was exempt from the voting process.

The awards, handed out for the third time at the SVA Theatre in New York City Wednesday evening, are designed to recognize innovation in an industry that, before the latter half of 2010, was sincerely behind other industries in its adaptation of digital media.

A full list of nominees and winners (in bold) are displayed below.

Best Twitter

@BetseyJohnson
@DVF
@DKNY
@OscarPRGirl
@RachelZoe

Best Facebook

Bergdorf Goodman
Burberry
Dior
Gucci
Oscar de la Renta

Best Blog by a Fashion Brand

Alice & Olivia
DKNY PR Girl
Kate Spade
Rebecca Minkoff/ Minkette
Tory Burch/Torypedia

Best Website

Burberry
Coach
Elie Tahari
J Brand
Marc Jacobs

Best Mobile App

DVF
GAP Style Mixer
Ralph Lauren Collection
Tiffany & Co. (...)

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Every so often, the media tells us about an automotive manufacturer on the cusp of delivering wireless, cooperative systems. The reader immediately thinks of Knight Rider, and wanders through a fantasy of connected car heaven.

However, this type of news is often miles from accurate; connected car offerings in the near-to-distant future are a different reality. This article examines the delays behind that “nearly done” automotive technology, and analyzes the value of our research dollars.

In 2005, several automakers introduced cooperative, wireless systems at the Intelligent Transportation Society World Congress in the parking lot of the San Francisco Giants’s then SBC Park. Messages were sent vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure via dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) or, as it would later be renamed, “IEEE 802.11p (5.9 GHz).”

Most of the applications were safety-related systems that offered a seemingly futuristic understanding of position, speed and road conditions. But that was six long years ago – so, what has changed? Apart from the Giants stadium name-change, not much. Technology is no closer to the marketplace. Let’s explore why.

The “Co” in Cooperation

If you’ve heard the saying “the second mouse gets the cheese,” then you understand the fate of the first mouse — snap! (...)

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Snooki's Match Game

Jersey Shore star Zucki ... uh, I mean Snooki has just unleashed her first Facebook game.

Dubbed Snooki’s Match Game, it strikingly resembles Facemash, Mark Zuckerberg's site from 2003 that challenged users to pick the hotter person pictured in two separate photographs.

Click here to view this gallery.

Jersey Shore star Zucki … uh, I mean Snooki, has just unleashed her first Facebook game.

Dubbed Snooki’s Match Game, it bears a striking resemblance to Facemash, Mark Zuckerberg‘s site from 2003 that challenged users to pick the hotter person pictured in two separate photographs.

The new game is simple and has two parts. First, it spits out six photos in each round — one on the left that players match with one of the five photos on the right. Players guess which two people are dating based solely on looks. Part two involves players using a meter to rate which one of those two people is hotter. That’s it.

Match Game records players’ scores and ranks them in several categories, including “Couples Most Often Matched Correctly,” “Longest Streak of Correct Guesses” and “User With the Highest Correct Guess Percent.” Players also can invite friends to play, and submit couples to be put into the game’s repertoire of photos.

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“Commentator — dislike female commentators,” read one option in a drop-down menu that enables viewers to provide feedback about coverage topics including blacked-out games, camera angels and audio/video issues, according to a screenshot posted by Twitter user Megan Soisson on Tuesday. Here is the tweet:

wait this is a serious complaint of @espn viewers? twitter.com/msois/status/1…

— Megan Soisson (@msois) February 7, 2012

Soisson is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania and sports editor of its student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. She was looking into why a major upcoming basketball game against Harvard University would not be televised on the network, and was directed to a contact page off the main ESPN website, which is where she found the complaint option.

“I was really shocked about it and upset because I’m a female sportswriter, so it’s like one of my dreams to be a sideline reporter — and to see there was a specific area to comment against female reporters was upsetting,” Soisson told Mashable in an interview.

She then tweeted the picture to to a few female broadcast professionals, including ESPN’s Hannah Storm (pictured at left in photo at top right) and Sage Steele.

“Sage are you aware of this? Found it yesterday,” she wrote to Steele. To Storm she wrote, “did you know this existed? Found it yest.”

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Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman announced at the 21,000-member New York Tech Meetup on Wednesday that Bay area tech Meetup groups had more RSVPs in 2011 than those in any other city.

New York City had the second-most members of Meetup tech group RSVPers, followed by London, Washington D.C. and Chicago. The fastest-growing tech scene on Meetup, based on RSVPs, was Hong Kong, followed by Melbourne, Detroit and Paris.

This ranking, of course, is heavily dependent upon Meetup adoption and not a direct indicator of startup scene size. There are few objective ways to compare the size of “scenes” that all sides seem eager to compare.

New York City in particular has taken to positioning itself as a tech mecca. In the last year, the city has pumped up its digital initiatives, welcomed prestigious startup accelerator TechStars, opened new offices for Twitter and Facebook and announced plans for a 2.1-million-square-foot Cornell tech campus.

Along the way, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has framed New York City as a Silicon Valley rival.

“We understand that we will not catch up to Silicon Valley overnight,” he said in a speech to the business community. “Building a state-of-the-art campus will take years, and attracting a critical mass of technology entrepreneurs will take even longer. But — as with everything we have done — we are taking the long view. (...)

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The study, which analyzed how Americans are watching the 2012 presidential race, also found that interest is down from 2008 across mediums. 29 percent of respondents have said they’re following news about the election “very closely,” down from 34 percent the same time last year.

The campaign has lost the interest of many young Americans. In 2008, 31 percent of people aged 18-29 said they were paying close attention to the political showdown. This time around, only 20 percent are dialed in.

Could it be that ambivalence on the part of younger people (who are generally more engaged with social media) is causing the low numbers of engagement with campaign news on services such as Facebook and Twitter?

Possibly, suggests the data.

While 42 percent of people aged 18-29 got campaign news primarily from the Internet in late 2007, only 29 percent are doing the same in early 2012. But their lack of engagement is reflected in all forms of media: cable news, network news, local TV and local newspapers have all seen a downward trend for political coverage and that age bracket.

However, people over 30 are using the Internet as their primary source of campaign news more often in 2012 than in 2007. And the Internet is still the place where young people who are engaged with politics turn for their politics fix, followed closely by cable news. The 18-29 age group also ranked Facebook as the place where they most often learn “something” about the political campaign, even if it’s not their primary source for news.

Did you expect more people to be turning to Facebook and Twitter for political news? (...)

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The BBC’s new rules require journalists to file a story and tweet simultaneously instead of tweeting before submitting a story. According to a report from The Guardian, the rules apply to all the company’s corespondents.

The new policy is designed to get stories into the editorial process as quickly as possible.

“We prize the increasing value of Twitter, and other social networks, to us (and our audiences) as a platform for our content, a newsgathering tool and a new way of engaging with people,” the BBC’s social media editor told The Guardian. “Being quick off the mark with breaking news is essential to that mission. But we’ve been clear that our first priority remains ensuring that important information reaches BBC colleagues, and thus all our audiences, as quickly as possible – and certainly not after it reaches Twitter.”

The BBC’s updated social media rules come a day after Sky News instructed its writers not to retweet anything from rival organizations or outside a particular reporter’s beat. That means a Sky News journalist covering, say, national politics couldn’t tweet about his or her favorite soccer club on a personal account.

Sky News cited similar reasons for its new Twitter policies, while adding that content retweeted from other news outlets have not been vetted by the company’s own internal editorial process.

In an email seen by The Guardian, the company says that news desks have learned “from Twitter details that should have been first passed on to them.”

The new social media rules of Sky News seek “to ensure that our journalism is joined up across platforms, there is sufficient editorial control of stories reported by Sky News journalists and that the news desks remain the central hub for information going out on all our stories.”

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Mobile game developer Wooga recently ranked as the third most popular game developer in terms of monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook with more than 40 million players each month. The company has so far released six games: Brain Buddies, Bubble Island, Monster World, Happy Hopsital, Diamond Dash and Magic Land. The games are available in seven languages. Versions that sync to mobile devices will soon be launched as well.

The characters in Wooga games — unicorns, princes, trolls and buck-toothed giraffes, for example — combine a Disney-like wholesomeness with the madcap look of video game characters, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario.

Wooga, based in Berlin, was founded in 2009 by Jens Begemann, Philipp Moeser and Patrick Paulisch.

The company says it experienced 185% user growth in 2011, and plans to add 100 new employees this year.

“Wooga’s growth is organic in every sense. Only 5% of our new users come through paid ads and 40% through viral features, with the remainder coming from cross-linking through our existing games,” CEO and co-founder Jens Begemann said in an interview.

Just this week, the bipartisan, tech-promoting organization TechNet released a study, which found that apps have created nearly half a million jobs in the United States since 2007, dubbing the result the “app economy.”

Do you play Wooga games? What do you think about them? Tell us in the comments. (...)

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High court judges consider whether Paul Chambers' tweet about blowing up Robin Hood airport was a joke or a real threat

Two senior judges have retired to consider whether a Twitter message threatening to blow up a snowbound Doncaster airport was a joke or a menace to society.

In a landmark high court appeal, Sir Peter Gross and Mr Justice Irwin heard it would take 'a halfwit' to treat as a real threat the tweet posted by Paul Chambers in January 2010.

The 28-year-old trainee accountant was preparing to fly to see his new girlfriend in Northern Ireland when snow closed Robin Hood airport and he tweeted to his 690 followers: 'Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!'

A week later he was arrested by five police officers, questioned for eight hours, had his computers and phones seized and was subsequently charged and convicted of causing a menace under the Communications Act 2003.

'The preponderance of evidence was that this was a joke. This was a steamroller to crack a nut,' said Ben Emmerson QC, appearing for Chambers, who was in court with his now fiancee, Sarah Tonner.

The case has attracted huge interest among Twitter users, not least among celebrities including Stephen Fry who have supported fundraising efforts for Chambers' legal costs. The hearing was attended by comedian Al Murray and Graham Linehan, the writer of Father Ted.

Emmerson asked the judges to consider whether 'a message can be menacing if it is not intended to convey a credible threat'.

He said: 'If the sender of a message doesn't seek to convey a threat it shouldn't be regarded a criminal offence. (...)

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He won an Orwell prize for his writing. But since being identified against his wishes as NightJack, detective constable Richard Horton hasn't penned another word

Detective constable Richard Horton – the blogger formerly known as NightJack – is an unlucky man. In 2009, after winning an Orwell prize for his anonymous chronicle of life as a Lancashire police officer, his identity was disclosed against his wishes by the Times – a discovery that was revealed this week to have been made through the hacking of his email.

Horton was reprimanded by his local constabulary, and though he is understood still to be a serving officer, yesterday neither his lawyer nor Lancashire police would confirm his current role. He has not penned a word since. 'Once I get the taste of hubris out of my mouth, I may get back to writing but I'm not doing anything at the moment,' he told the Guardian in 2009. 'I'd like to write a novel but the fun and enjoyment went out of it with the Times thing and I lost the flavour for doing the book.'

It's a shame, because his prose was pithy, witty and informative. 'Lee takes Mike's watch and wallet as trophies,' he wrote of one case. 'Stamps on Mike's head more for the sake of completeness than anything. I mean, that's just what you do, you stamp the head when they are down. Everyone does that. It's soft not to.'

Horton is especially unlucky given that most other police bloggers have evaded the dubious methods of email-hacking journalists. 'Inspector Gadget', whom Horton cites as an inspiration, has been going since 2006. Now his site has received nearly 9m hits, he sells merchandise from 'Ruralshire' (his pseudonym for the area he works in), and he is one of several police bloggers to have published a book: Perverting the Course of Justice. (...)

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Facebook amended or added 26 new documents to its SEC filing and these updated documents provide more color on Facebook’s stock allotment and its relationships with other companies.

As first reported by Business Insider, that includes a more detailed look at how Facebook and Zynga work together.

In original IPO filing, it was revealed that Zynga accounts for 12% of Facebook’s revenue. That news was enough to lift Zynga’s stock and made clear that the relationships is symbiotic.

The amended filings include a Developer Addendum effective as of May 14, 2010 that discloses the developer relationship between the two companies.

The documents says, in part:

The parties acknowledge that FB desires to enable Zynga to build the Zynga Platform on top of the Facebook Platform, and the parties desire to, amongst other goals set forth herein, work together to increase the number of users of each party’s products and services.

The parties further acknowledge that Zynga is making a significant commitment to the Facebook Platform (i.e., using Facebook as the exclusive Social Platform on the Zynga Properties and granting FB certain title exclusivities to Zynga games on the Facebook Platform). In exchange for such commitment, the parties have committed to set certain growth targets for monthly unique users of Covered Zynga Games.

In essence, what this agreement says is that in exchange for building atop Facebook’s platform, Zynga got Facebook’s assurance that it would meet certain growth targets.

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News that popular social bookmarking site Pinterest might be generating revenue by adjusting and tracking the links attached to user-generated pins made the rounds online on Wednesday — but according to the site’s affiliate tracking partner, the concept is hardly a new one.

A report by social media blog LLSocial brought attention to the fact that Pinterest — which allows users to collect and share things they like on the Internet — is using a service called Skimlinks to add affiliate links to products.

“Is Pinterest receiving revenue from tracking user-generated pins? Yes, but there is nothing negative about it,” Skimlinks CEO Alicia Navarro told Mashable. “Affiliated networks help companies monetize their sites and there’s nothing illegal or wrong about it. It’s common, effective and smart. It should be celebrated.”

It’s so common, in fact, that about 18,000 retailers are working with a network of 26 affiliated partners, Navarro said. Publishers from small blogs to bigger companies such as Pinterest work with affiliated partners so when a link directs a visitor to a retailer involved in the affiliated network and makes a purchase, the merchant will pay the affiliated network, who will then pay the publisher. Skimlinks takes about 25% of the generated affiliated revenue.

“The advertiser or retailer pays only if the user makes a purchase,” Navarro said. “Pinterest is one of many companies using services like this, and it’s become an ubiquitous practice in online marketing, like investing in banner ads or texting programs.”

However, the cause of concern by some was that Pinterest doesn’t disclose that it modifies its links by adding a tracking code on the site. (...)

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Doctors can now save lives and office space with the latest cloud-based technology that will let them view live medical endoscope scans (medical images of internal organs) on their Apple iPads.

Current endoscopic images are generally viewed on bulky video monitors plugged into the wall. The new wireless endoscopy tools created by Envisioner called Endosync will mobilize doctors and maybe help them better diagnose illnesses in patients.

Here’s how it works: A wireless endoscopy transmitter hooks up to a traditional endoscopic camera that goes inside a person’s body. It transfers live video footage of internal organs through an encrypted Wi-Fi network to an iPad app called eGoPad. Doctors can view the footage live on their iPads and make audio notes.

The technology is in its final stages of development and should be released in March.

What do you think of Endosync’s innovative medical technologies? Tells us in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Envisionier Medical Technologies, Inc.

More About: camera, ipad, ipad app, ipad streaming, medical, Video

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
(...)

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According the Content Marketing Institute, Content is one of the fastest growing segments in Marketing and an increasing number of marketers are relying more and more on their strategies to achieve success online.

Is this a surprise to you? Because if it is, you have probably been living under a rock for the last couple of years.

With the amount of content that goes left and right in front of you, on your screen, there are content creators, curators, users that share and consume on a minute to minute basis. Now, that doesn’t mean all that content is successful in reaching its goals or has even been put out there with a business goal.

In my case here at SocialMouths for example, I basically rely a good 90% on pure content marketing. Basically, I connect with people that arrive to my blog because they followed a tweet or a share with an interesting headline, liked what they found, some of them became regulars and some of them I even ended up having a relationship that in time turned into a client agreement.

You can understand that I am interested in everything regarding Content. Today, the cool team at BlueGlass Interactive sent me their new Infographic called “The Content Marketing Explosion”. It includes lots of data and I recommend you bookmark it and take some time to chew on it. I will leave you alone now so you can enjoy it, before that I’ll just point to these two facts I want you to remember:

• 90% of marketers are doing some form of Content Marketing, even if they don’t know it (Have you been doing some content marketing without realizing it?)
• 60% of B2B marketers plan on increasing their efforts this year
(...)

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Perkins was on the receiving end of an especially savage slam by Los Angeles Clippers star Blake Griffin last week. Griffin took a pass on the left side of the court and leapt from just inside the lane. He absorbed a body blow from Perkins, then rose higher in the air and threw the ball through the rim from a nearly impossible distance.

The moment was immediately immortalized on YouTube, where it went viral. Twitter exploded, too. Both Perkins’ and Griffin’s names trended on the network, and players from around the league tweeted astonished reactions.

But Perkins thinks that LeBron, as one of the league’s signature stars, was out of line when he joined the chorus with this tweet saying that his own incredible dunk from the night before had been topped by Griffin:

Dunk of the Year!! @blakegriffin just dunked on Kendrick Perkins so hard!! Wow!! I guess I’m #2 now. Move over #6

— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 31, 2012

“You don’t see Kobe tweeting,” Perkins told Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday night. (...)

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Online dating sites frequently trumpet their ability to corral the most compatible fish in your sea through sophisticated algorithms. But a psychological study released this week says that you may be better off doing it the old-fashioned way and just meeting a stranger at a bar.

A team commissioned by the Association of Psychological Science says that the algorithms employed by sites such as eHarmony, Match.com and OKCupid don’t do much much to determine whether sparks will fly when they compare people’s interests and personalities, according to a recent Reuters interview with report author Eli Finkel.

“There’s no better way to figure out whether you’re compatible with somebody than talking to them over a cup of coffee or a pint of beer,” said Finkel, an associate professor at Northwestern University.

Finkel and his team found that the massive databases of potential matches don’t reveal enough about the people behind the profiles. And the sheer volume of options can overwhelm users to the point of “shutting down” and making poor decisions because of too many choices, according to Finkel, who compared the situation to shoppers at an overstocked supermarket.

“Eighty years of relationship science has reliably shown you can’t predict whether a relationship succeeds based on information about people who are unaware of each other,” Finkel told Reuters.

The researchers did not have access to the algorithms themselves, but Finkel scoffed at the accuracy of websites’ studies of their own success.

“The assumption is that they work,” he said. “We reviewed the literature and feel safe to conclude they do not.”

Finkel and his team’s research will be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. (...)

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The consensus among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters was that Groupon was going to post a profit of 3 cents a share on revenues of $473 million. Groupon beat the latter figure with sales of $506.5 million, up 194% vs. the comparable period in 2010.

For the full year 2011, Groupon’s revenues jumped 419% to $1.6 billion vs. $312.9 million in 2010. In other positive news, the company’s worldwide customer base grew to 33 million-plus, an increase of 275% for the year and more than 20% quarter over quarter. Active customers are defined as having purchased a Groupon in the previous 12 months.

Despite those upbeat numbers, investors focused on the loss. In a release announcing the results, Groupon didn’t outline the reason for the loss. However, Groupon has in the past Read the original article...

In the blog post, titled simply “We are sorry,” Morin says Path values its users’ trust more than anything, which is why the company opted to delete the “entire collection” of user-uploaded contact information. (The full text is below.)

“We made a mistake,” Morin writes. “Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.”

In the apology, Morin reiterated that Path takes the storage and transmission of personal information “very, very seriously” and said the data was used only as a friend-suggestion tool and to notify users when contacts joined the network. Morin says the information was always encrypted during transmission and stored on Path’s servers using “industry standard firewall technology.”

In an update to the iOS app, which is now available on the App Store, Path version 2.0.6 will prompt users to opt in or out of sharing their phones’ contacts with the app. As before, if users change their minds, they can email Path’s customer service department and the company promises to delete the information from its servers.

After downloading the update, the app will prompt you to let it access your address-book data with the following screen:

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Do you make time for your blog?

Twitter. Facebook. Google+. LinkedIn. Pinterest. Email. Sometimes it feels that by the time I’ve checked all my social networks, I don’t have any time left to actually visit my own blog. It’s only a matter of time before I’m caught with lipstick on my collar, so to speak. I love my blog, but sometimes I feel like I’m cheating on it.

There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us suffer from shiny ball syndrome. I should really write some new posts today. Ooo, look at all those new pins. Ooo, someone sent me a funny email. Ooo, I have new messages on Facebook. Ooo….

Our blog feels stale and boring with all the interesting things to do online. (...)

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There were virtually no details beyond the invite, but it’s expected Microsoft will open Windows 8 downloads to consumers who will be able to install and preview the new OS on current hardware. Typically, these previews cease to function sometime after the final operating system ships, which will likely be this fall. The Consumer Preview should also represent the first major update since Microsoft delivered the Developer’s Preview at its Build conference in September of last year. Response to this anticipated update should be big: millions downloaded the Developers Preview last fall.

Mashable has been running that first preview for months and reading the steady stream of posts from the Windows 8 team on its Building Windows 8 Blog, which outlined how Windows 8 will handle everything from memory- and power management to virtualization, password protection and sign-in. With its cubist, Metro-style interface, Windows 8 represents one of the most fundamental changes in the platform’s 27-year history. Microsoft sold 450 million copies of Windows 7, so there is a vast, built-in audience for Windows 8. Still, the company reported in a recent earnings call that PC sales were flat (mostly because of declining netbooks sales). Clearly, Microsoft wants to get consumers excited about the next version of Windows and help reignite Windows sales across desktops, laptops and, now, tablets (the category that ate the netbook’s lunch).

The event is scheduled to last two hours, which means we should get a complete rundown of all the differences between the Developer and Consumer builds, the ecosystem Microsoft wants to build around the Metro interface platform and, finally, see some new hardware running Windows 8. We have, of course, briefly seen a laptop or two, like Lenovo’s Yoga, running Windows 8, but we’re still waiting for the anticipated parade of ARM-based Windows 8 tablets.

Mashable will be reporting from the event later this month.

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Tumblr has actively been attempting to showcase the networks talents lately, ast week the company hired two veteran journalists to cover the sites best content and now they have hired several emerging fashion bloggers to kick off New York Fashion Week.

Tumblr on Wednesday announced on its staff blog that they have partnered with Milk Studios, a photography and studio conglomerate who will take a team of five “local emerging voices in fashion from Tumblr to cover the events” to cover the events.

Readers of the massive blog network can find information using the NYFW tag or they can follow these five bloggers: Alex, Bryant, Chloe, Lucie and Miguel

News of this type of “intimate” interaction was a smart move for Tumblr after BetaBeat in September broke news of the company’s attempt to monetize New York Fashion Week by selling premium ads to willing brands. BetaBeat wrote at the time:

The proposal asked for $100,000 to have 4 of Tumblr’s “select bloggers” produce 15 posts for the brand’s Tumblr during the week, with the “exact nature of the content to be agreed upon prior to the start of the week.” For $150,000 brands could get ad placement on the official NY Fashion week Tumblr. For $350,000 they could get ad placement on the Tumblr tagged “fashion” page. For $10,000 big fashion brands could spend a little quality time with the 20 select bloggers at a private event. Product placement was also offered “At cost”, with the “influential tastemakers” being promised at a group rate.

Eventually BetaBeat admitted that the plan was still “rough around the edge” and was never implemented, in fact bloggers being targeted were never even notified of the potential move.

In the meantime Tumblr is the perfect platform for covering fashion and photography thanks to the company’s huge emphasis on photo-heavy layouts and micro-niche focus on each Tumblr blog.

This time around Tumblr will not attempt to monetize fashion week and announced:

“It’s just a beautiful portal for folks to feel like they are experiencing the New York Fashion Week. (...)

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A new project from Google is trying to learn “how everyday people use the Internet” — by looking over their shoulders while surfing the web.

The project, called Screenwise, is accepting volunteers to install a browser extension that will share browsing information with Google. “What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone,” Google says on the Screenwise site.

Volunteers earn a $5 Amazon gift card just for signing up and can earn up to $25. Google requires volunteers be at least 13 years old, have a Google account and be willing to use Chrome.

Google told Search Engine Land:

“Like many other web and media companies, we do panel research to help better serve our users by learning more about people’s media use, on the web and elsewhere. This panel is one such small project that started near the beginning of the year. Of course, this is completely optional to join. People can choose to participate if it’s of interest (or if the gift appeals) and everyone who does participate has complete transparency and control over what Internet use is being included in the panel. People can stay on the panel as long as they’d like, or leave at any time.”

Check out the video above to learn more. Would you be willing to let Google watch how you use the web? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Mashable is excited to announce that Mashable Connect 2012 will take place May 3-5 in Orlando, FL. Registration is now open!

Mashable Connect is Mashable’s annual destination conference that brings our community together for three days away to connect (offline!) in an intimate setting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World®.

Held in a unique location away from everyday distractions, this is a rare and valuable opportunity to be surrounded by digital leaders across industries.

At Mashable Connect you’ll spend time with Mashable’s passionate and influential community, hear from top speakers who will provide insight into the the technologies and trends that are shaping the next era of digital innovation, and get to spend time with the Mashable team.

Building on the success of last year’s Mashable Connect, this year’s conference will introduce new ideas on stage and even more opportunities to connect in meaningful ways.

To keep Mashable Connect as intimate as possible, only a limited amount of tickets are available. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to be a part of this year’s conference, so get your ticket now!

We’re excited to announce the initial line up of speakers below. Stay tuned for updates to the agenda!

Mashable Connect tickets include hotel accommodation, meals and refreshments, special events in the Disney Parks, exclusive networking opportunities and much more. (...)

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GigaOm founder Om Malik cited location and staff as reasons for the acquisition.

ContentNext — which owns MocoNews, paidContent:UK and ContentSutra, in addition to paidContent — has offices in New York and Europe.

Staci Kramer will remain the editor of paidContent. The site’s executive editor, Ernie Sander, will become executive editor of Giga Omni Media, and the majority of ContentNext’s staff will remain with the sites — bringing the combined GigaOm editorial staff to a total of about 20.

“The combined group will be a powerhouse,” Kramer and Sander wrote in a post on paidContent that announced the acquisition.

GigaOm is purchasing ContentNext from Guardian News & Media, which acquired ContentNext in 2008 and will take a minority stake in GigaOm.

Though the 6-year-old GigaOm has 4.5 million monthly unique visitors and is building out a premium subscription model, it was expected to turn a profit for the first time in 2011.

It has accepted $15 million in funding to date.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, photographeer

Disclosure: paidContent is a publishing partner with Mashable

More About: gigaom, paidContent

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Chrome for Android

YouTube and Google Maps are both integrated into the new Chrome for Android.

Click here to view this gallery.

Google announced its signature Chrome browser would start to roll out to Android phones on Tuesday. If you’re one of the lucky ones running Ice Cream Sandwich, also known as Android 4.0, you’ll be able to download Chrome on the Android Store.

As you can see from the above gallery of screenshots taken from both Google and our experience running Chrome on a Galaxy Nexus, tabbed browsing is a big highlight of Chrome for Android. It also boasts the ability to have simple private browsing sessions.

Most importantly, Chrome for Android blends in with other Google services seamlessly, such as Google Maps and YouTube. It was easy for us to import tabs from our computer browsers as well.

Have you downloaded Google Chrome on your Android yet? Tell us what you think in the comments.

More About: android, features, google chrome, ice cream sandwich, mobile browsing

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The Vita will start at $249 in the United States for the wireless-only model, and $299 for the 3G version, according to the PlayStation website. But Vodafone, the Vita’s exclusive 3G carrier in the UK, recently announced that 3G version will sell for £279 there, or about $440. The wireless-only version will go for £218.99, according to multiple reports, or about $350.

Gaming blog Kotaku, meanwhile, reported on Tuesday that North American Vita users will not be able to take advantage of Sony’s UMD Passport program, which allows gamers to transfer their PSP titles to the Vita.

When Sony released the Vita in Japan in December, buyers there were able to register their PSP disc games on their PlayStation Network accounts then download them to the Vita for a small fee. Vita users in North America will still be able to play the PSP games that they bought digitally rather than in disc form.

Sony announced a firmware update for Vita owners in Japan this week, although it’s unclear whether or not the upgrades will be immediately available for buyers in North America and the U.K.

The update will add a new maps feature to the console and introduce video recording to the device, which was previously only able to take still photos.

When the Vita made its worldwide launch in Japan in December, Sony sold more than a quarter-million units in its first two days on the market. That failed to match the debut numbers of the relatively similar Nintendo DS several months prior though, and analysts considered it to be a middling debut for the Vita.

Mashable got a hands-on preview of the Vita in December, and came away impressed by its intuitive touch interface, augmented reality capabilities and excellent graphics. (...)

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Today we are particularly excited because all of those things are well underway. You can see the first round of speakers for BlogWorld New York announced on the home page here. But we have a few new important change this year. First of all you will see our lowest prices ever for content creators. If you register by February 22nd it is only $147 for bloggers, podcasters and Web TV producers. Here comes the cheesy infomercial part BUT Wait There’s More!

WE ADDED AN EXTRA DAY FOR THE BLOGGER / PODCASTER PASS!.. That’s right, 3 full days of conference content, networking and learning from the smartest content creators in the world for $147. That is half off our lowest price ever and over $300 less than our full price 2-Day pass last year.

Why did we lower the price for content creators? Because those of you who have been to  BlogWorld & New Media Expo before know this event is a dream come true for me. I was a blogger who wanted to meet my friends, peers and heroes in the blogosphere. I wanted to learn how to podcast, create and embed YouTube videos and last but certainly not least I wanted to learn how to make money with my content that I put so much passion and time into. (...)

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1. Philips Fidelio

The Fidelio is designed to look good even when there's nothing docked. When there is, you can enjoy digitally processed sound at optimal acoustic volume.

A proximity sensor activates the backlit control panel, while the free Philips DockStudio app promises to help you get more out of your listening experience.

Cost:: $199.99

Click here to view this gallery.

If you opted for a white iPhone, you’re not going to want to compromise those cool, classic Apple looks by sticking it in a generic black speaker dock.

We have found 10 speaker solutions — docks, speakers and clocks — that come in a ice-white finish to match your favorite handset.

Take a look through the gallery for our choices. Let us know in the comments about any other white accessories you’ve found to match your iPhone.

More About: apple, features, Gadgets, iphone, iphone accessories, speakers, Tech, trending

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In the past year, marketers distributed more business-to-business content on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter than ever, according to CMI.

Content marketing encompasses new techniques and methods of sharing information. Spreading unique, helpful bits within the industry or with consumers creates brand awareness, new customers and client loyalty. Businesses should be sharing information from company research and client data. Data can be displayed in web infographics, articles outlining business tips, videos and slideshows.

This BlueGlass Interactive infographic suggests businesses look at Coca-Cola, Mint.com and American Express as examples of companies that are sharing great content. Coca-Cola has a huge online presence on Facebook, Twitter and other avenues where customers and potential clients can share ideas, photos and videos.

The companies outlined below make interactive material that people want to share, and, in turn, new methods of content marketing means new avenues to reach and converse with your customers.

What new and traditional social networking sites does your company use? Tell us in the comments.

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Thrillist is a leading men’s multi-platform lifestyle publication with over 3 million daily subscriptions in 21 localized markets in the U.S. and the UK. Since its launch in 2005, Lerer has overseen the growth of Thrillist‘s marketing, sales and business development efforts, as well as its expansion into ecommerce with the acquisition of members-only online retailer JackThreads.com, and the launch of localized deals platform Thrillist Rewards.

Lerer was among Crain’s “40 under 40” class of 2010, Entrepreneur magazine’s “Top 5 Entrepreneurs of the Year,” and Silicon Alley Insider’s “100 Coolest People in Tech” for the fifth year running. He’s also been featured on the cover of AdWeek’s “Digital Hotshots” issue and the front page of The New York Times business section.

Lerer serves on the board of directors for the East River Development Alliance, a New York nonprofit organization, and is an associate member of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS). He is also the co-founder of Lerer Ventures, a New York-based angel fund that invests in media and technology.

YEC Global is an international mentorship program of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only nonprofit comprised of promising young entrepreneurs. (...)

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The cuts affect workers at three factories — Salo, Finland; Komarom, Hungary; and Reynosa, Mexico. Those factories will focus on smartphone product customization, according to a release from Nokia. Device assembly, which had been executed at the factories, will now be done in Asia “where the majority of component suppliers are based.”

The jobs are expected to be phased out throughout the year.

Though Nokia had announced a plan to “align” its workforce last September that included the closing of a factory in Cluj, Romania, the extent of the cuts had not been previously disclosed.

Nokia’s cuts come as the company is transitioning from phones based on the Symbian OS to Lumia phones that use Windows Mobile. Nokia lost $1.4 billion in the four quarter as revenues fell 21% from the year-earlier period.

The company’s continuing decline in market share prompted another round of cuts in April 2011 that included the loss of 4,000 jobs in Denmark, Finland and Britain. The company also transferred 3,000 employees working on Symbian to Accenture.

As of Wednesday afternoon, EST, Nokia’s stock price was up about 1% on the news.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Erkka P.

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But a new report from social media blog LLSocial reveals that the site may be “quietly” generating revenue by adjusting and tracking the links attached to pins that are posted by users.

LLSocial noted that Pinterest may be collecting money through an affiliate program when pins are connected to ecommerce sites. For example, a picture of a sweater pinned to someone’s online board might have a link that connects them to a site where the sweater can be purchased, and this is when Pinterest reportedly steps in.

“If you post a pin to Pinterest, and it links to an ecommerce site that happens to have an affiliate program, Pinterest modifies the link to add their own affiliate tracking code,” LLSocial said. “If someone clicks through the picture from Pinterest and makes a purchase, Pinterest gets paid. They don’t have any disclosure of this link modification on their site.”

LLSocial said Pinterest is reportedly doing this via a service called skimlinks, which automatically scales the site and adds affiliate links to products associated with an affiliate program. The service makes money by taking a percentage of the generated affiliated revenue.

Although adding a tracking code isn’t rare, the blogger said Pinterest isn’t informing users about the practice.

“As most bloggers are aware, when you use an affiliate link in your post, you need to provide some type of disclosure either by it clearly being an ad, mentioning it is an affiliate link or at a minimum providing some type of prominent disclosure that your site features affiliate links,” LLSocial said. “This is done because you have a financial interest is promoting the product.”

“In Pinterest’s case, since they are not creating the content and are inserting the links automatically, they might feel that they are not promoting affiliate linked pins any more than other pins, and thus they don’t need to disclose as the placement is not affected based on the financial gain,” the site continued.

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• Steve Coogan among 15 people settling phone-hacking claims
• Heather Mills to give evidence to Leveson on Thursday
• Paul Staines to expose privacy junctions in public interest
• Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver 'backed phone hacking'
• DPP 'drafting' interim policy on prosecution of journalists

4.43pm: Surphlis has now finished giving evidence.

4.41pm: Surphlis says her experience in Northern Ireland has been echoed by other groups throughout the UK.

4.38pm: Paul Dacre's second witness statement and Hugh Grant's third witness statement have now been published on the Leveson inquiry website.

4.26pm: Alastair Brett, the Times legal manager who was placed in the centre of the Times email hacking row yesterday by editor James Harding, wants to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry, the Evening Standard reports:

… today a friend of Mr Brett said he was not acting without authorisation, saying: "Alistair has a completely clean conscience.

"When Patrick told Alastair he had hacked into Horton's email account he was furious. The language was blue - he had never been so cross with a journalist. But he still does not believe he should have dropped Patrick in it."

Mr Brett is also understood to be frustrated at the impression he was acting without authorisation, insisting the newspaper was "dragged to court" by Mr Horton to defend itself because he was applying for an injunction.

(...)

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What happens when Apple iPhone 4S’s mobile assistant Siri sprouts legs and holds a grudge? Take a look at the Youtube video being shared like crazy and scaring people into doing menial phone tasks for themselves.

“Psycho Siri” explores what could happen with the technology that speaks to you — and it’s going viral on YouTube.

Eighteen-year-old aspiring filmmaker Andrew McMurry and his brother, 21-year-old Nathan McMurry, starred in and produced the film in about a week. “Psycho Siri” starts off with Nathan finding an iPhone on the ground outside class without any apps or a SIM card, but with Siri fully loaded.

The four-minute clip has already garnered more than 346,700 views since its YouTube launch Feb. 3.

“I am overwhelmed by the amount of great responses the video has been getting,” Andrew told Mashable. “People seem to really like the whole ‘Siri turning into a psychotic murderer’ idea.”

Andrew says he wanted to incorporate Siri into a film because of the recent advancement of artificial intelligence and it’s something he thinks about often. Plus, the “monotone computer voice” creeps him out.

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For users of the social network Path, a recent discovery is causing a lot of concern about privacy. A developer working on a Mac OS X version of the mobile app found out that Path, once installed, will send a user’s entire address book to Path’s servers — without telling the user.

Like many privacy issues, the news spread quickly over the Internet. Path CEO Dave Morin replied to the developer, Arun Thampi, saying that the issue was “an important conversation” that Path took very seriously. The contact information that’s uploaded to the company’s servers is only used to help a user find friends and family quickly, Morin said.

He further explained that Path has an opt-in for its Android app, and that one would be added to the iOS version as soon as Apple approves it.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of things. A commenter on Thampi’s original post pointed out that Path needn’t upload an entire address book to find a user’s contacts. Matt Gemmell suggested that the app could analyze a user’s address book locally on the phone itself, only uploading data essential to identifying friends on the network. Morin replied saying it was a good idea.

When asked why the app wasn’t opt-in in the first place, Morin deflected, saying that Apple’s App Store guidelines “do not specifically discuss contact information.” Another commenter disagreed, saying that Path, without the opt-in, violates section 17. (...)

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Dacre's press-card system would help newspaper journalists, but what about those outside traditional businesses?

The Dacrecard might well be an effective way of rebuilding trust in newspaper journalists, but at the price of excluding the public from its rightful place in the democratic process.

I can see how Paul Dacre's proposal to certify journalists would appeal as a cure-all for the ills of an industry distrusted by the British public.

On the surface, a 'GMC-style', industry-run, scheme that bans journalists from all press events and briefings if they misbehave seems a great way to help restore faith in newspapers.

But that's entirely the point. Dacre's press-card system does an awful lot to help those in newspapers, but at the cost of gutsy, determined citizens who operate outside of the employment of big legacy media businesses.

By effectively handing the power to choose who attends press conferences to the newspaper industry, the 'Dacrecard' system could kill off local voices holding power to account.

The digital revolution, and the dramatic drop in the cost of publishing that went with it, saw the emergence of passionate, dedicated volunteers who – fed up with the decline in local news coverage – chose to suffer long council meetings and dreary briefings in order to scrutinise those representing them.

Theirs is not a popular role. Many tell tales of obstructive council representatives and exclusion from meetings because they are not considered 'proper' journalists. A press card they could never hold would only make matters worse.

'I'd imagine local authority press officers around much of the UK have a big smile on their faces today,' says Simon Perry, co-founder of the Ventnor Blog which provides local news on the Isle of Wight. (...)

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Smart-flashcard startup Brainscape launched a new deck of flashcards called Tech Startup Genius on Wednesday that promises to protect you from this situation. The free iPhone app, personally authored by Brainscape founder Andrew Cohen, includes three sets of flashcards: people you should know, orgs you should know, company formation basics and fundraising basics.

Cohen put the cards together using lists from popular websites, third-party evaluations and recommendations from his peers in the startup world. What made the deck and didn’t, in other words, was mostly subjective.

“If I had a different name for this, it would be ‘The basic stuff I wish I knew when Brainscape started two years ago,’” Cohen says.

Brainscape flashcards, including the new tech deck, are different than paper index cards in that they incorporate learning theory. Questions in Brainscape apps require recall, not multiple-choice selections, ask users to reflect on answers by noting their confidence in them, and use those confidence grades to determine how often each card should be spaced in a deck.

The startup’s 40 apps have been downloaded almost 1.5 million times and cover topics ranging from GRE prep to mythology. Cohen says the company brings in about $300,000 in revenue per year.

They’re good flashcards, but they’re still flashcards. Don’t plan on leaving the “Tech Startup Genius” app with any better chance of creating the next big thing than you had going into it.

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But while most WordPress users are well aware of Akismet, various caching plugins and other near-essential tools for blogging, over the years I’ve found a slew of lesser-known plugins that have become indespensible to me and my bloggging.

Though the full list could probably go on for quite some time, here is a list of five of the more important plugins I’ve run across and how they’ve helped to make me a better blogger over the years and are plugins I probably wouldn’t build a new site without.

Editorial Calendar

Have you ever had a great idea for a post but forgotten what it was when you sat down to write it the next day or the next week? Have you ever finished a great brainstorming session but had no idea when you’d have time to post all of your new ideas? Then you need an editorial calendar.

The editorial calendar plugin for WordPress makes it easy to jot down your post ideas, arrange them by date to plan out when you’ll run each one and then rearrange them as things change. Did you get an urgent news item that has to run today? Drag today’s planned post to another day and keep moving.

The process is incredibly smooth and efficient, making it easy to manage your posts and plan out your blog weeks, even months in advance.

WP CleanFix

One of the things that makes WordPress great is its use of MySQL database for storing posts, comments and other data. However, that database is often WordPress’ greatest weakness as it can get bloated and slow very easily.

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