| Visa Launches Real-Time, Location-Based Discounts for Gap Customers Visa is launching its own version of the location-based discount, in a move that rivals Facebook Places Deals, Foursquare and other mobile social networks hoping to capitalize on a shopper's physical presence in order to offer them bargains. But in Visa's case, no "checkin" is required. In fact, neither is a smartphone. Instead, the credit card company is experimenting with SMS text messages containing offers which are sent users who opt-in to the new program. In its initial phase, clothing retailer The Gap is Visa's only partner. Discounts are sent to consumers in predefined zip codes and demographics after qualifying transactions are made with their Visa cards.
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Nielsen: U.S. Smartphone Users Concerned About Privacy and Location Data The Nielsen Company's latest research, released today, into consumers thoughts on their privacy and their location data seems well timed in light of yesterday's news that iPhones contain a hidden file that chronicles users' movements. And no surprise - even without knowing about this recent revelation of the potential for iPhone tracking - most consumers responding to the Nielsen survey said they are concerned about the implications of sharing their location via their mobile phones. 59% of women and 52% of men say that they have privacy concerns when it comes to the apps they download onto their smartphones. Those older than 45 were the most concerned about their privacy, while those between the ages of 25 and 34 were the least concerned.
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PlayBook Launch Better Than Expected: About 50,000 Units Sold After mixed reviews detailing the unfinished state, not to mention the bugs and quirks that comprise RIM's new 7-inch tablet computer, the BlackBerry PlayBook, few expected yesterday's launch to be anything short of failure. But as it turns out, the tablet did better than expected - at least according to analysts. Early reports estimate that Research in Motion (RIM) moved around 50,000 units on day one of the PlayBook's commercial availability. There are even some reports of the tablet selling out at major retailers. Of course, 50,000 is a drop in the bucket when compared with Apple's booming tablet business. For comparison's sake, Apple sold 300,000 iPads on day one last April - a launch that defined the tablet market itself.
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News.me Goes Live With Bold New User Experience & Business Model There was a time in the United States when anything that called into question moral clarity, the black and white of a clear perspective on right and wrong, was deeply distrusted - if not actively shut down. Seeing the world through other peoples' eyes was considered not an essential act of empathy but a slippery slope into drug use, homosexuality and communism. Fortunately, brave pioneers of intellectual freedom helped us bust out of the 1950's and begin to appreciate the world in all its rich and painful complexity and subjectivity. As of today, with the launch of News.me on the iPad - there's now an app for that. (iTunes Link) A collaboration between the New York Times and the data wonks at URL shortener Bitly, News.me shows you the news from other peoples' perspectives - and other people are very different from ourselves! I have found it quite appealing to use for the last several months - it's been one of my very favorite ways to learn about the world using my iPad. Even before launch, hundreds of publishing partners are intrigued as well. It's a strikingly new model for both users and publishers.
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Silicon Sisters Launches First iOS Game, Made By Women For Girls The stereotypical gamer is male, in his teens or early twenties, devotedly gaming from his parents' basement. The actual make-up of the gaming population, however, is strikingly different. The average gamer is 34. And 40% of all players are women over the age of 18 - the industry's fastest growing demographic. Whatever the actual composition of the gaming population, there's still very much the sense that gaming is a man's world - both in terms of audience and in terms of developers. This isn't to say, of course that there aren't women playing and building all sorts of games. Oh the tales I could tell of raiding in Everquest! Oh the chainmail bikinies! Oh the princesses I have rescued! Oh, I do wonder sometimes, what would video games for women, by women look like? Would they be different? If so, how? That's something that the new Vancouver-based gaming studio Silicon Sisters is tackling. The first female-owned and run video game studio in Canada, Silicon Sisters is committed to building games for women and girls - and building these games by women and girls. Formed by former Radical Entertainment executive producer Kristen Forbes and former Deep Fried Entertainment COO Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch, the studio releases their very first game today, School 26, available for iOS.
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Obama at Facebook: "We Want To Start Making Science Cool" President Barack Obama and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down at Facebook headquarters this afternoon to have a townhall meeting that was streamed live to the Web. Via Facebook Live and Livestream, Obama answered questions from Zuckerberg, the crowd and participants across the Web. Even though Obama was sitting on stage at the quintessential Web 2.0 corporation, not much of the conversation veered towards technology. Questions included the national debt, the budget, the economic recovery, the Dream Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), immigration, Medicare and Medicaid and education. For a while it sounded more like an "Obama For Re-Election in 2012" campaign stop than it did a conversation with one of the leaders of the Internet industry.
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Loopt Introduces Qs: Real-Time Polls in Place of Reviews Think about your average, smartphone-enabled visit to a new restaurant: You sit down, take a gander at the menu and quickly pull out your phone to look up the latest Foursquare tips and Yelp reviews. Some are novels of glowing hyperbole while others lament the irritable waitress and denounce the spot as the diner on the seventh level of hell. Either way, you often find yourself overwhelmed and more confused than when you started out. Loopt, the mobile location tracking app and social network, announced today a new feature called Loopt Qs, "a fun, really social way to get bite-sized insider info and share your own opinions about a local place."
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Skynet Has Gone Live: Everything is Fine Cyberdyne Systems' global defense network, Skynet, went live yesterday. Some experts expect it to go cuckoo bananas tomorrow and kill all humans. Those experts have been derided by many of their peers as Luddites. We here at ReadWriteWeb are sure that everything will be fine. IBM's Watson, known affectionately by his late human handlers as /killymcdeathstab5000/, is not behind us, occasionally sparking a blue bolt of plasma across the terminal nodes of his clawlike iDiscombobulator. We are having tea and enjoying ourselves.
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Google Earth Builder: Managing & Mapping Companies' Geo-Data Google's mapping tools - namely Google Earth and Google Maps - are among its most successful consumer-facing products. Google Earth alone has been downloaded more than 700,000,000 times. But the company today is aiming to expand the reach of those services by targeting the enterprise market with a brand new tool: Google Earth Builder. The new product will let companies upload, process and store their geospatial data in the Google cloud. As it utilizes the popular Google Maps and Google Earth tools, Earth Builder will enable users to share and publish mapping data without requiring any technical expertise or GIS training.
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A Final Tweet From the Front Lines: Tim Hetherington Hundreds of Libyans are reported killed in clashes between rebel forces and the Libyan army in the city of Misurata - a conflict that international press is working hard to keep in the light of international attention over the past several weeks. Today news has emerged that one member of the press has lost his life in the conflict. Tim Hetherington, taking photos for Getty, was among a group of press struck by fire from Libyan forces. Two of Hetherington's colleagues are in grave condition. Why are we writing about this tragic event on a technology blog? Because I thought it was notable that in the long history of war reporters risking their lives to tell terrible but important stories, we now know some of Hetherington's final thoughts before his life ended. Not because he filed a story with the news wires, not because his photos were published in the newspaper, but because he had access to a lightweight public messaging system on the iPhone he carried in his pocket: Twitter.
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