News
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The Final Days for Google Wave Have Arrived: Read-Only Now, To Be Turned Off in April
Google Wave once looked like it could become Google's next big thing, but in the end, the service was too complicated and never developed enough of an [...]
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100 Million “Users” Later, Google+ Gets the Daily Show Treatment
Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen has been tracking the growth of Google+ for a while now and his estimates for the site's growth have been pretty spot-on from [...]
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Teenagers Don’t Care About AR Apps and QR Codes
Last year, it looked like augmented reality apps were at the cusp of becoming mainstream as numerous ad campaigns and mobile apps started to use this technology. [...]
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Microsoft: Gone Google and Now You Regret it? We Have Alternatives
When Google announced that it was going to integrate Google+ with its search results, its biggest competitor in the search market, Microsoft's Bing, remained quiet while social [...]
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European Parliament Wants to Cut Mobile Roaming Fees
With networks that typically span the whole country and plans that generally shield U.S. mobile phone users from paying extra roaming fees these days, being outside of [...]
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Opinion
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Kindle Fire: A Minor Threat to the iPad, Major Threat to Other Android Tablets
Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet runs Android, has a nice screen, is fast, cheap ($199), features an innovative browser, and – thanks to being an Android tablet at heart – offers support for thousands of apps out of the box. I doubt, however, that it’s a major threat to the iPad. The tablet manufacturers that should be very worried however, are those who are also in the Android business, including Barnes & Noble with its $249 Nook Color. The reason for this, I think, is Amazon’s superior ecosystem and the low price.
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As Music Gets More Social, is Apple Getting Left Behind?
When I opened Spotify on my desktop this morning, a pop-up informed me that “Spotify Loves Social” and that I should discover “great music with [my] friends.” To get started doing just that, all I had to do was click “Get Started.” Spotify also conveniently pre-checked the opt-in to Facebook’s new Open Graph feature. I’m not sure most mainstream users will understand that opting in to the pre-checked Open Graph opt-in means that all their listening data will not just be forwarded to Facebook, but that their friends will likely see everything they play on the Facebook ticker as well. As Spotify now forces its users to have a Facebook account, chances are quite a few people will sign up for this “service” unwittingly.
No matter what you think about this, though, it’s clear that the future of music is social. Facebook has partnered with everybody who is anything in this business, including Spotify, Slacker, turntable.fm, iHeartRadio, MOG, SoundCloud and Rhapsody. The one exception: Apple.
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Sorry Facebook, But That Stuff I Share on Your Site is Not the “Story of My Life”
[rant] Facebook’s announcements today represent nothing short of a major paradigm shift of how it wants its users to interact with its service and each other. Sure, [...]
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Want to Join Our Private Beta? Pay Up
A small but growing group of startups now makes its beta testers pay to join their private betas. “Paid beta” used to be a derogatory term for software that was shipped too early and with too many bugs. Now, however, companies like Mightybell and Cabana have decided to use small payments as a way to keep their beta programs small and focused.
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