Author: Connor Livingston

If you’re like most people, you’ve lost a phone or two in your life. It’s not as simple as the old days when phones were connected to walls. Even cordless phones were easier to find because it wasn’t likely that they would be taken out of range of the base. In the smartphone world, a phone can be misplaced anywhere we go because they accompany us everywhere we go. The numbers behind smartphone losing is beyond belief. Every day, $7 million worth of smartphones are lost. This quick graphic breaks down the numbers behind our missing personal gadgets. Click to enlarge. Courtesy of: Background Check Blog…

As startup success stories go, few can compare to Instagram. When they were purchased by Facebook earlier this week, there weren’t many people crying the standard conviction of “they sold too early!” At $1 billion, most agree that they hit their peak and sold off at just the right moment. This timeline from Visual.ly breaks down the course that brought them from small startup with a clever concept for photo sharing to a company that has made its 13 employees rich and ready for more adventures with Facebook. Click to enlarge. From: Los Angeles Honda Via: Visual.ly H/T: Automotive SEO…

The cloud doesn’t scare me. The future will be more secure the sooner bigger companies adopt standards on cloud computing and data storage that makes sense. By that time, we’ll have the infrastructure in place to make the internet accessible from virtually anywhere. The challenge I’ve had over the past few months with Google Docs is the reliability issue. There are very few things in business that are more frustrating than to lose work because of technology. We put in human effort, knowledge, and creativity into doing things. When we lose access to them (or the entire documents themselves) it…

It’s hard to let a good thing die. Most people who do not have navigation in their vehicle or a portable GPS system at the very least use their smartphones to get them from point A to point B. The days of looking up a route and printing it out are behind us… or so we thought. Nobody told MapQuest and as a result they’re still putting up some pretty decent numbers. This graphic breaks down 6 months of MapQuest user activity. It just goes to show that there are still people who don’t believe in GPS. From: MapQuest Via: Chattanooga Mitsubishi…

Ever since Twitter started making a splash in mainstream and social media consciousness in 2008, it has been a major target of spammers. Its influence on clicks and search have made it USDA prime meat for those promoting nefarious agendas and Twitter has been challenged to sift through the real and fake tweets to try to sniff out the culprits. Now, they’re bringing in the law. They are attacking the source of many of the biggest spam attacks by going after tool providers who help spammers get their messages mass-distributed. The goal is to not only cut off many of the techniques that spammers use to…

Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs in indie pic Jobs. There is a certain cohesive fit with having Ashton Kutcher play Steve Jobs. He’s smart, has roots in technology and good investments, and made mistakes in his career that have made him stronger. The only real problem is whether or not he has the acting chops to be able to pull off playing a tech icon like Jobs. His mentality is right. The once-king of Twitter has moved on to other endeavors, but he still has a stronger tie to Silicon Valley than most actors. His look and voice simply don’t seem to be a match. The goal is to suspend disbelief when playing…

Google has become one of the biggest pranksters every year for April Fool’s Day. Over the years they’ve put out several clever and enjoyable pranks. This year’s first one is also an Easter Egg with plenty of Google Maps searching for people to do. They went 8-bit, NES-style. It’ll make you want to pull out the original Legend of Zelda and run around the maps from screen to screen. Here is the video as well as some of the best ones that we were able to find. Each is linked to the map itself so click away! …

While browsing tech posts on Google Plus (yes, I’m the guy who’s still using G+) I came across an advertorial infographic by Intel discussing the growing needs of the world when it comes to storage and connectivity. The graphic was more of a pitch to use Intel cloud services, but the data portion (image above) got me thinking about a looming challenge. With data creation, storage, consumption, and sharing growing at such a great pace, will the infrastructure be able to improve quickly enough to meet demand? We’re already seeing signs of increased expenses, systems breaking, and delivery elements…

Google is often viewed by the general population as a company with its hands into everything tech. They believe that Google makes money from every direction. In reality, they make money off of ads. Everything else is just development, philanthropy, and in many cases technological “filler”. With 96% of their revenue coming from ads, we found this breakdown at Boston Nissan Dealers that looks at the top revenue channels for the search giant. Click to enlarge. (Source: Wordstream)…

Most of the gender boundaries in America have been broken down in recent decades as women are now doing more things that used to be male-dominated while men are doing more things that were once female-dominated. The technology world is one arena where there is still a disproportionately lower number of women. It’s changing, but there’s still a ways to go. This graphic shows some interesting facts about women in tech. Click to enlarge. Like this infographic? Get more business technology news from IT Manager Daily….