| Enterproid: Now Work & Play Can Safely Coexist on Your Mobile Phone Enterproid is a new mobile startup launching today which helps companies better manage the personal smartphones used by employees for work purposes. The first product from Enterproid is Divide, a platform for separating work and personal profiles on one device, and allowing them to be managed separately. With this new service, I.T. has limited access to the device, as compared with the fully-managed deployments of business-only smartphones in years past. I.T. can still wipe data from lost or stolen phones, but only corporate data. It can deploy enterprise apps over-the-air, but it can't see what personal apps a user has installed. And it can't track the location of a phone unless the employee gives it permission to do so.
Continue reading »
 
Has Google's New Algorithm Really Cleaned Up Search? Google made a change to its search algorithm last week that it said was designed to help users find more "high-quality sites." Although Google never described this move as one aimed at tackling the problem of content farms, many observers have viewed the algorithmic adjustments as Google's attempt to clean up its search results, following a number of complaints about the quality (or lack of quality) of the information in the sites that are retrieved and are highly ranked. Google did say that the change would impact over 11% of sites, but would help surface those "with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on." So, is a search via Google better now? Is original content easier to find while content farms are buried on subsequent results pages?
Continue reading »
The Facebook "Like" Starts to Replace the Share Button's Functionality Facebook is rolling out a change to its social sharing buttons: "Like" will now act a lot more like "Share." In other words, when you hit that "Like" button to express your thumbs-up approval of a particular site or story, Facebook will now post an update to your wall that includes a lot more details about what you're approving. A Facebook "Like" will now include a picture, a headline and a little blurb, along with the option to comment, just as it does when you purposefully share a story to Facebook.
Continue reading »
And the Winner of the Academy Award Goes to... Real-Time Social Streams? The 83rd Academy Awards were broadcast this evening. The stories that will wrap up the evening's awards, fashion, and festivities are sure to focus on the winners, on the dresses, on the really really really badly scripted banter. But for those of us tuning in via Twitter, I'd say the show was a great success. It provided plenty of material for running commentary, historical insights, quips and quibbles. For the funniest original writing, for example, I'd give a nod to Roseanne Cash for her #JaneAustinattheOscars tweets. All the tweets, not just those from celebrities and insiders, were vastly more entertaining than the show itself, and the reason I'd wager that a whole new crowd of curious onlookers are tuning in. It's not about watching the Oscars per se. It's about being able to participate in the online community that's watching the Oscars. It's no longer sufficient to wait for the water cooler, to invoke a tried morning-after cliche. It's about checking-in and chatting with others and sharing the broadcast together.
Continue reading »
#EQNZ: Social Media Response to the Christchurch Earthquake Last Tuesday New Zealand time, the city of Christchurch suffered a destructive and deadly earthquake. Measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, the quake wreaked havoc because it was shallow and close to the city center. It was the second major earthquake to have hit Christchurch in 5 months, after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake on September 4, 2010. While the loss of life wasn't nearly as bad as the Haiti earthquake of January 2010, Christchurch has been devastated and its people are emotionally scarred. They've endured months of aftershocks since September, then the cruel shock of another Big One. It's easy to feel helpless after such a devastating natural disaster, but social media tools have been usefully deployed over the past week. Last Tuesday we looked at how the Web mobilized straight after the quake. In this post we look at 3 specific ways that social media has stepped up to the plate, since then.
Continue reading »
Google Confirms Gmail Troubles As Some Users Report Their Email History Wiped As much as I long to achieve "inbox zero," waking up to find my email wiped clean actually sounds pretty nightmarish. But that's what happened to many Gmail users this morning, who logged into their accounts to find they've been wiped clean. No email in. No history of what's been sent. No folders. Nothing. Just a standard "Welcome to Gmail" announcement as though they were using the service for the very first time. Users took to the Google forums and to Twitter to express their concerns. Google has responded there, saying it's aware of the problem and is working on a solution. We've contacted Google for more details and will update the story as we know more. UPDATED: According to a Google spokesperson, "Today a very small number users are having difficulty accessing their Gmail accounts, and in some cases once they're in, trouble viewing emails. This is affecting less than .08% of our Gmail user base, and we've already fixed the problem for some individuals. Our engineers are working as quickly as possible and we hope to have everything back to normal soon. We're very sorry for the inconvenience to our customers."
Continue reading »
Startup Claims It Can Sell Your Used MP3s Legally While not quite a truism, it's pretty widely accepted that a music startup is a bad idea. The record industry is at best unsupportive and at worst litigious when it comes to digital music sales and sharing and when it comes to welcoming (or crushing or suing) new companies and technologies. So it's hard not to be quite skeptical about the claims from a new startup - ReDigi - that it plans to launch a marketplace where you can legally sell your pre-owned digital music.
Continue reading »
Check Out the Companies That Make ReadWriteWeb Possible Our readers know ReadWriteWeb as the blog that's ahead of the technology curve. Our sponsors know us as that, too. Once a week we introduce our sponsors to our readers and let them know a little more about who they are and what they do. You can say thanks to the companies that make ReadWriteWeb happen by tweeting them (see the link below each sponsor) or following them using our Twitter list. Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? Our readers are smart, tech-savvy decision makers; 40% have a graduate degree or PhD, and over 45% play a key role in information technology purchasing decisions. More than 1 million people on Twitter follow us to stay abreast of the latest Web technology trends from around the globe. To find out more about our sponsor packages, visit our advertising page or email our COO.
Continue reading »
Cartoon: Maybe Start Using Get Satisfaction, Too? There's something about the way people at the top of the heap react when they start to feel the hierarchy shift beneath their feet. It's as though they go through four of the Kübler-Ross stages simultaneously - denial, bargaining, violent rage and depression (actually, that last one looks a lot more like self-pity). Acceptance only seems to kick in once it's wheels-down in the luxurious-place-of-exile of the now-former dictator's choice.
Continue reading »
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment