There hasn’t been a movie since The Sixth Sense that had more potential for disaster than Star Trek: Into Darkness. No, Spock doesn’t see dead people, but that doesn’t take away for the desperate need to avoid that annoying co-worker who loves to talk about the movie he watched this weekend. Kudos to J.J. Abrams for pulling off one of the hardest challenges in Hollywood – making a movie that appeases the long-time faithful while still offering a complete experience to those who aren’t as familiar with the source material. Rotten Tomatoes, the consolidated source of reputable reviews, gave the…

If there’s one major flaw with the way that many businesses use automation tools, it’s that they’re not able to properly control the flow of content from its longest form down to it’s shortest form. This is unfortunate because using RSS feeds to post to Facebook and Twitter from a blog, for example, doesn’t save much time at all but minimizes the effectiveness of the networks. It’s all about flow. It’s about taking advantage of the strengths of the various networks will not falling into the traps that each allows. Let’s take a look at an example of content flow. In this case, we’re going to work it down…

For all of their technological genius and massive resources, Google sure doesn’t know how to make hardware. It’s a problem that has plagued them for years but it seems to be best highlighted with the Chromebook Pixel. Over at CNET, they were focused on one of the major bugs with the laptop – the challenge the device has with connecting to cameras. There’s good and bad that comes with having an operating system that is designed to be light and shareable. One of the bad parts is that you often miss some of the common accepted notions that other operating systems (and their users) take for granted. Because…

There are two stages to this gambit by Yahoo that must be accomplished. They have to beat out Facebook, Microsoft, and anybody else interested in the 10-digit price that Tumblr is likely to fetch in the coming days. Then, they have to let the site be as it is and make no changes at all to the platform. The Swisher/Kafka tandem over at AllThingsD have reported that the Yahoo board is going to meet this weekend to discuss buying the social blogging platform for a reported $1.1 billion in cash. Sources said that the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that buying Tumblr was going…

Yes, Microsoft seems to have given Google the hump lately with their new update for the YouTube app on Windows Phones. The problem is that users of this app can now save videos on their phone and play them as much as they want offline, oh no! In fairness, it is clearly stated in YouTube’s terms and conditions that granting users the ability to store videos is prohibited. I’d like to bring forward the fact that this app isn’t the first of its kind; in fact there are loads of ways to lift YouTube content. On your PC, there are ample extensions available, along with dedicated websites where you can download…

When it’s time to choose a college, there are a few questions most people consider. Is it a party school? What major programs does it offer? How expensive is it? Is it far enough away from my parents? While all of these questions are worthy of consideration, you should also ask yourself, “How safe is this school?” This infographic explores the ten most unsafe college campuses in the United States. The rankings are based on how many property crimes and violent crimes are committed compared to the number of students who attend the universities. The West Coast and the Southeast have the highest…

Content speaks for itself. It speaks for a company. It speaks to the people. Most business websites are sorely short on content. Sure, they have sales content and information about the company, but so few today are actually putting out high-quality content about relevant topics that make their websites more of a resource. Today, people want to trust a company before doing business with them and content is the easiest way for them to understand that you know what you’re doing. It’s not just about having information for visitors to see in order to convince them that you’re an expert. It’s also about…

Smart phones have given millions of people easy access to information. Visually impaired consumers, however, have limited options when trying to use smart phones. That could change very soon with the release of the world’s first Braille smart phone.   What will it do? Here’s the problem faced by engineers: A Braille smart phone needs a way to make screens more tactile, so blind people can read with their fingers. Current designs use a technology called “Shape Memory Alloy” that allows metal to make and retain shapes on a screen. When a visually impaired person with one of these phones receives…

Ten million down. Ninety million to go. That’s the news out of Samsung as their mobile chief announced today that they were nearing the 10 million unit mark in sales and believe that they may be on pace to break 9-digits with their current flagship before all is said and done. “We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week,” said co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun at a press event in Seoul yesterday. “It is selling much faster than the previous model S3.” The device has been on sale for less than a month, launching in Korea on April 26th and expanding to much of the rest of the world…

Yahoo is quickly going the way of AOL in that it’s becoming a place that simply isn’t “cool”, at least to the emerging internet users and those 20- and 30-somethings who still want to be cutting edge (and 40-, and 50-…). Everyone knows it, even Yahoo itself. “One of our challenges is we have had an aging demographic,” said CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference. “Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years.” They started heading in the right direction by getting a hip, young CEO to run the…