19 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- UberTwitter sheds its BlackBerry exclusivity, comes to the iPhone [TNW Mobile]
- The Twitter Shoe [TNW Shareables]
- Alipay Beats Paypal – Becomes World’s Largest Online Payment System [TNW Asia]
- Android Surpasses Symbian, becomes Asia’s most popular mobile OS [TNW Mobile]
- Star Trek fans: you need to see this! [TNW Shareables]
- China’s GFW: Firewall or Trade Barrier? [TNW Asia]
- What are you thankful for? [TNW Shareables]
- Beirut’s Own Mimix Wins Global Startup Battle [TNW Middle East]
- Is your iPhone having issues with 4.2.1? Tell us! [TNW Apple]
- Gadgets and Celebs: Two (Black Eyed) Peas in a Pod [TNW Media]
- Miso adds Thanksgiving promotions and grand new features to enhance social TV viewing [TNW Apps]
- Location Based Services ready to check-in in Asia [TNW Asia]
- Mobile.me hacking rumors? Here’s how to keep yourself safe. [TNW Apple]
- Aviary puts a Feather in its cap with an HTML5 photo editor [TNW Apps]
- Scrawl lets you edit real life [TNW Shareables]
- Urbian brings their popular Retro Camera Plus for Android to the iPhone [TNW Apps]
- Google Docs is rapidly getting better: now with drag and drop file uploads [TNW Google]
- Facebook is trademarking “FACE”. How far is too far? [TNW Social Media]
- Tim Burton is co-writing a new story with his Twitter followers [TNW Social Media]
- Colorware is selling a MacBook Air with a custom-painted twist [TNW Gadgets]
| UberTwitter sheds its BlackBerry exclusivity, comes to the iPhone [TNW Mobile] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:00 AM PST
The application has enjoyed success on RIM’s BlackBerry platform with over nine million users downloading the client, who have sent 10 million tweets between them. In its porting to the iPhone, UberTwitter offers all the standard Twitter features but adds a new feature called UberView which is meant to make the reading of your important tweets faster and a lot more simpler. Put simply, UberView allows UberTwitter users to interact with and digest content without having to leave the body of the tweet, displaying webpages, photos or videos within the app. The feature, when combined with the composition and sending of tweets, link shortening and direct messaging, make for a pretty useful new addition to the bevy of Twitter applications available on the App Store. UberTwitter isn’t resting on its laurels and welcomes feedback on its new iPhone app, enabling a small button within the app allowing users to submit ideas and suggestions. The company has already seen 10,000 people download its beta version and hopes to release a stable version 1.0 by mid-December, incorporating user suggestions sent using the application itself. To get your hands on the app, you can download it via this link or by performing a simple search on the App Store.Engadget [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]     | ||||||||||||
| The Twitter Shoe [TNW Shareables] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:53 AM PST You’ve seen The Facebook Shoe, well now designer Gerry Mckay is at it again with The Twitter Shoe. It’s important to note that these are just concepts but the more I see them the more I begin to think they’d sell BIG. If twitter can sell wine, surely they can sell shoes – all they need is a devoted following. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Alipay Beats Paypal – Becomes World’s Largest Online Payment System [TNW Asia] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:26 AM PST
According to SINA today, Wang Gang general manager of the merchant division of Alipay.com said that his platform has a daily transaction volume of 2 billion yuan ($302 million). Alipay.com which launched in 2004 has the biggest market share in China and is expanding to new markets to effectively increase its reach beyond the Chinese borders especially after the rapid growth competitor Paypal had also in China during the first half of this year which was nearly 88%. Previously the world’s largest online payment portal, Paypal processed more than 2 billion dollars in transactions to China, the bulk of which were between overseas buyers. Paypal’s efforts to throttle the growth of the Chinese giant took a serious turn earlier this year when it partnered up with Chinese company UnionPay. Reported by BusinessWeek back in March, the partnership would give customers of China UnionPay, a national electronic-payment network, the ability to make Internet purchases from Web sites overseas. Alipay on the other hand has a strong presence in the Southeast Asian markets but plans on expanding their business both in terms of volume and geography to other parts of the world. With this sudden announcement it looks like Paypal is going to have to up their game during 2011 if it wants to get back the title in an online turf war that will hopefully make buying Chinese merchandise even easier and cheaper than ever before.Image [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Android Surpasses Symbian, becomes Asia’s most popular mobile OS [TNW Mobile] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:05 AM PST
Reporting results from the third quarter, GfK notes that Android is the second most used mobile operating system globally, matching statistics provided by Gartner, suggesting that just over 25% of smartphone owners used Google’s software globally. Smartphone sales in Asia rose to 4.7 million units over the last year, growth of over 270%. Sales totalled a whopping $1.48 billion and accounted for almost half of worldwide sales over the previous twelve months. GfK’s data takes into account sales from Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, where Google’s free operating system has prompted manufacturers to look beyond hardware to succeed in Asian markets.
Although Android has overtaken Symbian as the most popular OS in Asia as a whole, Symbian is the leading smartphone OS in Southern Asia although it has been experiencing lower sales as manufacturers move away from producing handsets featuring the operating system. Google has Samsung and HTC to thank for Android’s increased popularity in Asia, companies that have invested heavily into producing high-end, powerful Android smartphones that are starting to overtake computers as the most used devices for browsing the web. With more and more manufacturers looking to incorporate Android into its devices, the number is only set to grow. Eric Schmidt’s dream of pulling in $1 billion a year from Google’s OS might not be a too distant reality.Image Credit [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Star Trek fans: you need to see this! [TNW Shareables] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:02 AM PST Dutch übergeek and Star trek fan Pascal vd Heiden built his own Home Automation computer and modeled it after the LCARS interface from Star Trek. Check out the movie and read his description:
[Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| China’s GFW: Firewall or Trade Barrier? [TNW Asia] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:27 AM PST
Well, when writing my earlier article about Location Based Services in Asia it crossed my mind that we should look at what happens behind the Great Fire Wall when a major western site gets blocked. The answer is simple. The void is filled by Chinese companies who provide the same service but in a localised Chinese version. Of course, one can argue that the local companies have to comply with Chinese laws regarding censorship of user generated content and openness of user identification. That is definitely true, but, is it any coincidence that significant social media trends can be conveniently handed to domestic companies to clone and develop before the major players can build a foothold in the market? Perhaps not. Just to back up this speculation, here is a short list of the Chinese equivalents some of the blocked social networking services:
This is by no means a definitive list but, it is representative of the market. While many of the above companies were around before their western counterparts were blocked, there’s no denying that they have benefited from the removal of the competition from overseas. Thomas Crampton has a more comprehensive infographic on his blog, although not all of the western sites referenced there are blocked in China.image, image [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| What are you thankful for? [TNW Shareables] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:24 AM PST [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Beirut’s Own Mimix Wins Global Startup Battle [TNW Middle East] Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:38 AM PST
That phrase stuck with me over the years, I hadn’t heard anything like that before. I kept wondering to myself why no one taught me that in school or in a workshop. I wondered if there were others like David here in the Middle East. Then I met Habib Haddad. Founder of successful Yamli.com, Arabic-English transliteration tool we’ve covered since it’s launch in 2009. But that’s not all Habib has to be proud of, he’s also the co-founder of YallaStartup a community and platform that solely exists to support startups. I was fortunate enough to meet Habib in Amman during the MENA ICT Forum where he explained to me his vision and how he wants to change the Middle East by creating what he called “an atmosphere that facilitates serendipity”. Habib and YallaStartup co-founders Sami Shalabi of Google and Elie Khoury of Woopra found a perfect opportunity for Middle Eastern startups in Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend is a not-for-profit that gives entrepreneurs a 3 day crash course in building startups. Day1 is matching talent and creating teams (if they don’t join as a team to begin with), day 2 is for design & development, and day 3 is pitching the idea and competing with the other participants. So basically it’s an Entrepreneurial slumber party with adrenaline instead of pajamas, and a startup battle instead of pillow fights. And since it’s global, it happens over a given weekend in 13 cities simultaneously. To get an image of just how massive that is, you should know the show up in Beirut alone was around 250 participants that launched 34 startups in 3 days. It’s mind-blowing I tell you. Addressing participants, the founders said “this event is not a competition but about living the life cycle of a startup in just one weekend! It's about getting interest for your idea, matching you with co-founders and team members, and showing each and every one of you what you are capable of.” The most amazing part of it, is the fact the winners from the 13 cities went head to head with their startups by posting a video describing their startup, which was then voted on and the winner was decided after a couple of days. Guess who dominated the Global Startup Weekend scene? Beirut. One of Beirut’s very own startups called Mimix, a platform to translate all languages into whatever sign language dialect the user chooses, implemented through a graphical representation of hand signs. People who need to speak sign language won’t need to speak any other language if using Mimix. The runner ups to for the Beirut competition were Capsu.ly a free infinite community based storage solution, and Hintout a social platform that revolves around activities & going out. You can read the full coverage of YallaStartup Weekend here. We wish all participants the best of luck and will continue to let you know which of them actually turn into money-making startups in the near future. Check out the Mimix elevator pitch video. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Is your iPhone having issues with 4.2.1? Tell us! [TNW Apple] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 11:37 PM PST This evening several tweets started to pop up, like this one from Scoble— —reporting issues with iPhones hanging and crashing. The problems seem to center around Mail with:
For some people it was a single crash or two, others more. Some folks one reboot (hard reboot I’m going to guess) and it was fine, others (including Scoble) nope. If this is an intermittent bug with Mail, I’m guessing (pure speculation) maybe a connection glitch is causing Mail to flip out. Regardless, Robert brought to our attention, with a tweet of course, that he was tracking reports in his favorited tweets. By my count there were 16 reports thus far. Now, that’s not a lot and honestly I havent had problems on my iPad (I had 4.2. GM2 for a week-ish before 4.2.1. came out) or iPhone (I went from 4.2 to 4.2.1 with no issues). Okay, so putting my tech support hat on I’m wondering:
Searching through the Apple forums, there doesn’t seem to be a hue and cry about this, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem, it could be that in the 36 hours since 4.2.1 has been out not enough people have started using it to have the problem surface. There is the bug where your music disappears, but that appears to just require a re-sync to fix (via DownloadSquad). We’ll investigate this more and update this post as we find out more details. So, have you been having issues since the 4.2.1 update?photo credit, Scoble [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Gadgets and Celebs: Two (Black Eyed) Peas in a Pod [TNW Media] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:10 PM PST
You know, RIM’s upcoming tablet device. While Will.I.Am might actually be an avid BlackBerry user, this still is another example of tech companies working closely with celebrities in mediums other than television ads and magazine spreads to get their new gadgets in the minds of the consumers before they launch. Another example? Microsoft just launched their latest and greatest in the world of mobile software, Windows Phone 7. To celebrate and market the launch, Redmond hired Maroon 5 and Katy Perry to play free shows at two famous venues in two world class cities, San Francisco and New York. Oh, and Minka Kelly and Rob Drydek were also in attendance. (They’ve also recently hired Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus and Sylvie Van Der Vaart to promote the Kinect.) That’s a pretty star studded affair for new mobile software and you know what the funny thing was? It wasn’t labeled outrageous or outlandish. It was, well, normal. Normal for consumers and normal for a company competing in today’s mobile software market, one that has iOS, Android, webOS, Symbian (not for long), BlackBerry and others fighting for the attention of not only teenagers, not only folks in the United States, but millions of people around the world. And what better way to bring attention to your product then having it be the centerpiece of a free concert featuring some of the world’s biggest acts? Or getting it placed inside a music video and in the hands of one of the most popular people on Earth. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Miso adds Thanksgiving promotions and grand new features to enhance social TV viewing [TNW Apps] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 07:19 PM PST Miso, a super sweet iPhone, iPad, Android and web application, is one of the leaders in media check-in services, allowing users to check-in to favorite television programs and movies. With Miso, one can follow programs, friends from Twitter and Facebook, post status updates, check-in to programs and comment on what others are watching. Now Miso has upgraded their product in some really grand ways in addition to launching some Thanksgiving and Black Friday promotions for the app’s users.
For your QVC check-in, viewers can also unlock a limited-time badge for tuning into QVC anytime over the Holiday weekend. A new announcement that I find truly sweet is Miso’s partnership with Universal Home Studios Entertainment to promote the DVD/Blu-Ray release of Despicable Me. For those who have not seen Despicable Me, do so. It is a super fun film.
As if the news above was not enough, Miso has been hard at work on new product updates requested by their users, which also enrich the television watching experience. Some of the new features which have rolled out and will rollout in short order include:
Some really great updates and partnerships from Miso, a site I enjoy using on all the devices its available on. It’s clear that Miso is dedicated to creating the best experience for all of its users. The design of the apps and site is top-notch and their partnerships are with shows that, I in particular, love. If you haven’t tried Miso yet, check it out and download their apps, here. If you need a friend to get yourself started, add me, I’ll do the same and hopefully we can discover new programs together. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Location Based Services ready to check-in in Asia [TNW Asia] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:31 PM PST
The company, Flying Turtle Coffee put a leaderboard on their website and rewarded players with free bags of coffee for achieving certain scores. This was a cool idea, but, it was mainly a manual process. It didn’t use the location technology embedded in many smartphones and at the time, location based players like Foursquare and Gowalla just weren’t on the radar in China. Of course, now, the landscape has changed. Location based services, while still niche players, even in the west, are very much on the radar if only because they are so visible on our Twitter streams. Foursquare have even received the ultimate accolade from the Chinese government, being blocked by the Great Fire Wall, even though, ironically, government owned English language newspaper China Daily has recently launched a Foursquare page. Recent studies suggest that growth the use of location based services in the west is levelling off and may actually be falling slightly, but, that they are poised to take off in Asia. According to analyst, Ryan Lim of Singapore based Blugrapes, quoted here, the landscape is ripe for the adoption of location-based services in Asia, where the use of social media is growing at an exponential rate. The country to watch in the short term is probably Indonesia. The take up of social networks there has been phenomenal with that country easily the world’s second most prolific generator of Tweets. Even in China, where popular sites like Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook are blocked, and 3G services are still rolling out nationwide, homegrown location based services are springing up to fill the void. Jiepang is essentially a Chinese clone of Foursquare providing very similar features and rewards for it’s users. The continued expansion of the smartphone market across the region will only serve to boost the growth of these services. In summary, however, the conclusion of most reports is that, if location based services are to really achieve mainstream market penetration and move out of the niche, they will have to provide true value to their users with genuine rewards. Much like Flying Turtle pioneered last year.image, image [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Mobile.me hacking rumors? Here’s how to keep yourself safe. [TNW Apple] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:21 PM PST Updates below on this…it appears that this may have been just a server hiccup timed with a tip that seemed related. That doesn’t mean changing your password isn’t a bad idea. There is a rumor going around that there has been a security breach on Apple’s MobileMe Me.com and some people’s passwords aren’t working. We’re looking into this now and will update this post accordingly… Stay Tuned. Updates: I checked my MobileMe account and had no problem getting in. Could it be a fluke? As a bit of history, remember there was a pretty significant iTunes breach over the summer, which was resolved. Lots of people (including me) changed their iTunes passwords in the wake of that, perhaps this another good time to change again. Although this might just have been a hiccup, there’s no reason not to just go ahead and change your password regardless. The Holiday Season is one time of the year when breaches can be common. Here’s how to change your MobileMe/AppleID password… Through MobileMe:
In iTunes:
That’s it for passwords in this case, but what about being cyber safe over all? Number one is using good passwords. I’ve gone from a system where I had a number then a partial word then two or three more numbers (e.g. 1coffee234) to using either totally random passwords generated by 1Password or a system like this: Think of a phrase like “drinkteamornings” which is long, but uses all words and switch out substitutions like this: dr1nkt3@m0rn1ng$ which is both easy to remember and a good password. If you use Drinkt3@M0rn1ng$! it’s even better and still easy to remember. Oh and having a good password doesn’t mean you use it everywhere it means that you use several passwords like that for core services coupled with tools like 1Password. Now let’s talk WiFi and shopping. By and large shopping online is a safe experience, but do stick to sites you know well (Amazon, big retailers, etc) and make sure that you see https in the URL (or for Google Chrome a big, green, closed padlock). As for free, public WiFi…I’m steering clear of it and using my iPhone or data stick. Firesheep really changed the game for public wifi. No, none of it is new, it’s just a lot easier now. Tonight’s MobileMe story looks like a false alarm, but keeping your eye out for these things can updating your password isn’t a bad idea. Maybe while you’re in the password updating mood, update/change the passwords on other key accounts (Facebook, Google, Twitter) too.Techcrunch, photo credit [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Aviary puts a Feather in its cap with an HTML5 photo editor [TNW Apps] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 05:42 PM PST
Except if you don’t like Flash. Yeah, all the apps they have run on Flash. Well, until now that is. Code-named Feather, the HTML5 powered photo editor gives you a nice, basic set of tools along with some fun ones like stickers (hats and objects that can be resized and rotated) and fun effects like Instant (think Polaroid), Toy camera, Old Camera, and Retro. I played around with Feather for a few minutes and found that it didn’t seem to like Chrome (beta) as much as Safari, but the result is pretty interesting: So while the outcome is nice, the app is sluggish (I thought it had crashed when I was saving it the delay was so long). The app, I feel, is more of a really cool proof of concept than hard-core app. No doubt that it will get more polish in short order and I’m sure the recent attention is bringing more traffic than would be “normal,” which might explain the sluggish behaviour. I was able to save and download my “creation”, but I couldn’t push it to Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook. That would be a feature that I hope Aviary would add quickly. Yeah, downloading is fine, but we all know pictures are all about sharing. These criticisms aside, Aviary isn’t really going for a new image editor here to compete with (or replace) their Flash-based mainstays, this is a tool that you can embed in your own site. Right, so if you wanted to offer readers a chance to upload and edit their own images, now is your chance. If you follow the Developer’s link you can get the code to embed the tool in your own site. According to RWW; Digital Youth Network, Everloop, Fashism, HowMutch, Hyper Public, Market Publique, Rrripple, Saw You At Sinai and Shopify will be putting the widget on their sites shortly. Feather doesn’t work on mobile clients…yet…but that is said to be coming. Now wouldn’t that be cool. It’s this extension that is the really interesting bit here. Flickr worked with Picnik.com to offer round-trip editing of pictures, but you left Flickr and went to Picnik, in this case you’re stay at Shopify to edit the pictures for your online store. Hitting closer to home, this editor is leaps and bounds better than the image editor built into WordPress now. If there were a WP plugin to add Feather to my site (or TNW), man I’d be all over that. Give the app a try and see what you think (I suggest Safari or stable builds of Chrome). Maybe link to your creations here in the comments, lets see how creative you can be.RWW, Techcrunch [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Scrawl lets you edit real life [TNW Shareables] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 05:00 PM PST Ever had that feeling? When you thought something could be better or just perfect if it just looked a little different? Soon you can edit anything around you with only an App. That App is called Scrawl and here’s a demo: [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Urbian brings their popular Retro Camera Plus for Android to the iPhone [TNW Apps] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:26 PM PST
For the iPhone there exist many great options for fans of photography; Hipstamatic, the great Instagram, and Mobits Cam , to name a few. The list 0f great iPhone camera apps could go on and on and on. Today a new, really slick option for fans of iPhone camera apps has made its way to the iTunes App Store after being exclusively available for Android, Retro Camera Plus. Retro Camera Plus, from Urbian, Inc. is $2.99 in the Android Market, but those with an iPhone and/or iPod touch can snap up this great app for FREE. How does it work and what makes it worth your consideration? Let’s take a look. Retro Camera allows users to capture delicious old-school pictures using 5 cameras, 5 sets of vintage vignetting, film scratch and cross processing effects. The first camera one can use is “The Bärbl” – An East German classic, naturally faded with a scratched film and medium vignetting, the perfect all-round choice. Pictures look really neat when using this camera and its various effects. I chose to take a regular picture and a black and white version for each demonstration. The second camera option is “The Little Orange Box” – The Soviet Staple with aggressive cross processing and scratched square film. It’s crappy plastic lens leaks in light and exhibits strong vignetting. Black and white option for even more emotion. Next up is the “Xolaroid 2000.” Blue / Green cross processing effects and timeless contrast. Black and white option for that classic touch. The “Pinhole Camera” is a really neat option for photos. Full bleed developing and vignetting through the roof, be sure to give this cardboard chimera a go. The “FudgeCan” is a great options for photos taken outdoors. This camera provides pictures developed on square film that wasn’t quite stored… or developed right. Once you’ve captured a photo with Retro Camera Plus, you can view your photos, save them to your camera roll and share them via email, Facebook and/or Twitter. Retro Camera Plus is a really grand app at a price that can’t be beat. If you enjoy creating great vintage-looking photographs, or photography apps in general, Retro Camera Plus is an app you will certainly want to try. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Google Docs is rapidly getting better: now with drag and drop file uploads [TNW Google] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:27 PM PST Google has been making a major push with Google Docs recently, and it’s been pretty interesting to watch. We’ll list the recent improvements in a minute, but first, here’s the latest improvement: drag and drop file uploads. Is this mind-blowing? No, but it should make uploading files that much easier, and – along with the recent addition of adding images to documents via drag and drop – it shows a direction that we really like seeing: easier integration with the desktop. Google also announced “compact controls” today, which basically takes away the Google Docs header, displaying your email address, etc, at the top of the screen so that users of smaller screens have more screen real estate to work with. As we said above, Google has been going all out on Docs over the last six months. Here are some of the most important new features:
Of course, Google is trying to cyphon away as many users from Microsoft Office as possible, and we could see an even greater adoption if Chrome OS becomes an enterprise hit (we’re pretty skeptical of Chrome OS right now though). That said, Docs is a very useful collaboration tool that we’re glad to see getting better, and fast.Google Docs Blog [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Facebook is trademarking “FACE”. How far is too far? [TNW Social Media] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:12 PM PST
The application, which first went into production in 2005, has met some opposition. It would appear that no fewer than 10 different amendments have been made to the initial filing, and it’s still not yet completed. Of course, the reasoning behind this is likely because of Facebook assuming its own ubiquity with any word containing FACE in it. The application raises a couple of valid questions. First off, what about the recent auction of the FaceMash site? Of course, then there’s also the potential for infringement via Apple’s FaceTime product. It’s worth noting, however, that we’re unable to find any report of the previous owner of the trademark (Faceparty.com) initiating legal action against Facebook or any other party. The end result? Nobody is certain, just yet. It’s likely safe to say that Facebook will be a bit more readily available to defend its name or trademarks. However, it’s also worth noting that Apple is likely to not back down, itself. As for you and me? I’m not certain that I can blame Facebook for taking things to this point, but it all depends on what happens because of it. As is true with most things in life, it all depends on the outcome.TechCrunch, Techmeme Discussion [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Tim Burton is co-writing a new story with his Twitter followers [TNW Social Media] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:36 PM PST
His first tweet:
Twittering Burton fans can post their own follow-up narrative, according to the last selected Tweet, by including the hash-tag #BurtonStory. There are two rules to Burton’s version of the age-old game, exquisite corpse: Tweet as often as you like and keep it clean. The final short story will be published on December 6th. Here’s how the story reads so far: Burton’s entry: Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor #BurtonStory 2 He felt his heart pounding hard against his ribs. As he bent down, he saw his own reflection on the surface of the puddle. #BurtonStory I tried several times to add my two cents but Twitter wouldn’t connect, so I’ll just give you readers a taste of my poetic skill. Suddenly the goo spoke! She whispered softly, stop Stainboy, give me a chance, it’s me, I just want to dance #BurtonStoryMovieFone [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    | ||||||||||||
| Colorware is selling a MacBook Air with a custom-painted twist [TNW Gadgets] Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:24 PM PST
Well, Colorware has just the offer for you. For just short of two grand, you can get a brand spanking new 2010 13 inch MacBook Air customized to your liking. Unfortunately, as of right now, they don’t have the 11 inch version available and they won’t tailor a MacBook Air already in your possession so you’re stuck with the big screen if you want one. If you head here, you can check out the absurd amount of customization that Colorware allows you to dabble in. You can choose from metallic, solid or pearl colors and you can add your selections to just about every inch of the device. Options include the Lid, Logo, Screen, Keyboard, Hinge, Bottom, Magic Mouse, and Superdrive. By the end, you’ll get something that is truly personalized and hopefully, beautiful. Here’s one we made using Thanksgiving colors. Or you can get truly ridiculous: So what are you waiting for? Head over to their website and let the inner artist in you run wild.Engadget, Image Credit [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.]    |
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Regular readers of my posts are aware that I truly enjoy photography apps for the 
When it comes to branding your product, there are a couple schools of thought. One of them goes by the philosophy that you can never really have too much visibility. That, according to a 
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