Archive for July, 2011

A timeline of the social buying universe

Jul 11 by Connor Livingston | add comment

In many ways, social buying was inevitable. Once eCommerce started really taking off last decade followed by the growth of social media, the two seemed destined to come together like chocolate and peanut butter. We trust each other more than we trust companies and the concept of using power of more »

Fallout New Vegas, Old World Blues trailer is epic creepy

Jul 11 by Rocco Penn | 1 comment

As video game franchises go, Fallout has the longevity and innovative newness that few have been able to duplicate. The latest trailer of the downloaded content for “Old World Blues” will have fans rushing for the credit cards. Mixing gore, psychedelic visuals and audio, and the classic fighting more »

The ever-expanding world of mobile device payments

Jul 10 by JD Rucker | add comment

The last few months has seen mobile device payments skyrocket. As consumers move in droves to smartphones and companies create more “wallets” that use mobile screens and other technologies to register payments, the history of money appears to have a new chapter. Barter, coins, paper, plastic, more »

Trends we'd love to see: nude gaming parties

Jul 8 by Connor Livingston | 1 comment

The demand to make viral videos is skyrocketing. Animals, babies, and special effects flood YouTube daily in videos made by companies and marketing firms in an effort to get views and exposure for a brand. One tried and true method of getting views is through skin. Sex sells. We just didn’t know more »

The biggest challenge facing Google+ (that nobody is talking about)

Jul 8 by Rocco Penn | 10 comments

Google+ faces dozens of major challenges as it tries to break into the social networking world. Facebook is a fierce and aggressive competitor now that just broke the 3/4 of a billion users mark. Google’s reputation based upon past social attempts is tarnished. A large portion of those who will more »

Winners and losers in the tech talent war

Jul 7 by JD Rucker | 1 comment

The amount of available talent in several technology industries is not keeping up with the demand in recent years. As new and even old technologies continue to embed themselves deeper into our day-to-day lives, many companies are proactively going after talent wherever they can, including more »

Games, weather, and social media top mobile app downloads

Jul 6 by Connor Livingston | add comment

Our mobile devices have many uses to us, well beyond the talk and text functionality of the past. Millions of mobile apps are downloaded to smartphones and tablets every day. The types of apps we download are an indication of what uses we see for mobile devices. According to a recent study by Nielson, we want more »

TeamWox: Making your company more efficient

Jul 6 by Navneet Alang | add comment

Though there are myriad software and services for managing various aspects of a company, they are often divided into components: use one thing for accounting, another for team management, another for internal discussion. It can get a bit unwieldy, particularly in terms of having everyone on more »

Online shopping is soaring (as if you didn't know)

Jul 6 by Rocco Penn | 1 comment

Brick and mortar stores are closing on nearly a daily basis. We have all seen companies like Blockbuster and Circuit City lose their wars to the online variations of their products. It isn’t just eBay and Amazon. Social sites like Groupon and Facebook are pushing online transactions, while other more »

Augmented Grocery Shopping: How a Korean grocer moved virtual shopping to the subway

Jul 5 by JD Rucker | 9 comments

It’s the kind of experiment that seems like it was hatched for a satirical spoof video, but the results were anything but funny. Home Plus, the 2nd largest grocery chain in South Korea formerly known as Tesco, needed to increase their market share without building more stores. The idea they had more »

Twitter buys social analytics company BackType

Jul 5 by David Lux | 1 comment

Just weeks after snapping up TweetDeck, Twitter has acquired social analytics start-up BackType. The company’s main product, BackTweets, has helped companies like AOL and Microsoft understand the influence of their tweets. BackType has also been in the midst of developing Storm, a new data-processing tool that the company calls the “Hadoop of realtime more »

The social network security test

Jul 4 by Rocco Penn | 1 comment

Security is always a concern online, but on social networks it’s doubly so as we put more and more personal information on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Some have been accused of lackadaisical measures to keep our data away from prying eyes. With the increase in mobile social networking, more »

Dial-Up modem sound is creepy when slowed down 700%

Jul 4 by JD Rucker | 6 comments

It’s a sound that few of us have heard since the last time we saw a modem that looked like the one above. Still, it’s a sound that will always be recognized by anyone born in the 80s or earlier – the dial-up modem sound. We may have moved on and there may no longer be a need to hear that ever-so-annoying high-pitched more »

Michael Bay caught recycling footage from The Island for Transformers 3

Jul 3 by Connor Livingston | 3 comments

There’s nothing wrong with reusing old material on new projects. It’s done all the time in Hollywood. Heck, the Wilhelm Scream has been used over and over again for 60 years. However, if you do recycle material, it’s important to be sure that it was either content that was found on the cutting room floor (and not more »