A couple of eye-brow raising stats came out recently. The Society for New Communications Research released a study regarding journalists and their use of social media. It’s no shock that the study revealed the “use of social media tools by journalists is surging, growing in double-digit percentages in some cases.” But, as ZDNet points out… there’s interesting insight to how many of the 341 journalists surveyed are not taking advantage of social media sites.
Beck & Lee (Miami) and the Weston Firm (San Diego) filed a class action lawsuit against Yelp yesterday. Why? Well, according to the Yelp Class Action Website, “the lawsuit alleges that Yelp runs an extortion scheme in which the company’s employees call businesses demanding monthly payments, in the guise of ‘advertising contracts,’ in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews appearing on the website.”
Last year, Kathleen Richards at East Bay Express wrote an article about how several businesses in the Bay Area were contacted by Yelp. John, a restaurant owner in the Bay, was contacted about negative reviews that were featured prominently on his Yelp site. “We can move them,” said the Yelp sales rep. Then came, “Well, for $299 a month.” Ha! What?! Although the article mentions this issue is addressed in the Yelp FAQ, there are a number a local business owners that challenge the statement. Yelp denies the statements addressed in Richards’ article though. The Wall Street Journal did an article on these events.
Spammed Remember how the Australian Government green lighted an Internet filter not too long ago? In retaliation to the proposed filter, a group of hackers, who call themselves Anonymous, took down two government sites: the main website and the Parliament site. Ars Technica tells us “the plan was DDoS government servers first, and then followup with ‘a s***storm’ of porn-related emails, faxes, and prank cell phone calls to government officials.”
Google Buzzdebuted earlier today. A friend mentioned it but I honestly didn’t pay that much attention. But while listening to Merrick, Dools and Ricki-Lee (as I usually do while slaving away on the computer at work), I heard a newscaster on Nova FM describe Google Buzz as a Facebook that uses your Gmail account. Apparently, it was big news. But it just wasn’t catching my attention.
In less than a day, Google Buzz has already taken on severalhits. And I sort of agree with Microsoft, “Busy people don’t want another social network…” Actually, sometimes I’m not even that busy… so maybe it should’ve been, “Lazy and busy people don’t want another social network”?
However, I did stumble upon something fairly awesome from Google today… Mountain Street View! To ready up before the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, Google’s Street View team sent a souped up snowmobile into the mountains of Vancouver and Whistler.
How are you saying good-bye to 2009 tonight? Sleeping like any other day? Dinner with friends? Clubbing with strangers? Counting down with Dick Clark (or is it Ryan Seacrest now)? Here at SoftwareNewsDaily, we wanted to say farewell by reminiscing our top 10 technology news stories of 2009. When I say “our” top 10 stories, I suppose it’s really more “my” top 10 stories. That’s okay, I don’t mind dominating the office opinion; they’ll agree with me. Counting down to the number one story, here are “our” picks.
Backupify is dropping all charges and providing free services until January 31st. Securely back up all your online accounts automatically. As an attempt to gain a stronger and larger customer base, Backupify is providing its services without charge during this promotional duration. Backupify president Rob May urges internet users, “If you sign up during this time period, you get unlimited storage, for free. You get an account that is not a free trial, not free for a limited time, free forever.” Act now, before it’s too late!
Nuance has released another mobile application for iPhone, Dragon Search. Powered by their popular Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, the app lets you search the web just by saying the words. It’s the “fast, easy, and smart way to search online content on your iPhone using your voice,” declares Nuance. Voice your search and receive results from engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Twitter and iTunes. Their top five reasons for getting it?
Most convenient way to search on your iPhone
Amazingly accurate
Up to five times faster than typing
Easy to use
Safer and more productive while you are out and about
And the best reason that’s not mentioned? It’s a free download (at least for now). Download either Dragon Dictation or Dragon Search at the Dragon Mobile Apps site; it’s also available through iTunes.
The Federal Government in Australia is introducing an internet filter that will block access to sites containing obscene and criminal content — think child sex abuse, sexual violence, bestiality, detailed tutorials on how to commit crimes and other things that are most likely found in the Anarchist’s Cookbook. The Huffington Post reports that such material is already banned from Australian sites, but the government has no control over its access on servers overseas.
The reasoning behind such censorship? Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says, “The Government believes that parents want assistance to reduce the risk of children being exposed to such material.” Conroy also believes that some internet content is just not appropriate for civilized society.
Have you been seeing small funky boxes that include a kind of two-dimensional code? Labeled as a “QR code,” these unusual boxes have become the new generation of marketing in our world of ever-evolving technology. So what is it exactly? It’s a code that stores web-site addresses, contact information, phone numbers or other alphanumeric data. Mobile QR codes can be scanned by camera phones with reader software that will then decode that information and launch it in your phone’s browser. Think of it as a printed hyperlink, if you will. HotStuffMonkey has a more detailed overview.
Adobe’s new Flash Platform Services, unveiled Monday, assists in making Flash applications easier to share, and specifically targets social networking sites and mobile devices. The new program will allow users to share Flash apps and games, instead of having to point to a link. Advertisers will benefit most from the new platform, which will greatly improve content publisher’s ability to distribute, track, and monetize flash content.
How good is this? A better way to for advertisers to penetrate and track the lives of internet denizens?
How are you saying good-bye to 2009 tonight? Sleeping like any other day? Dinner with friends? Clubbing with strangers? Counting down with Dick Clark (or is it Ryan Seacrest now)? Here at SoftwareNewsDaily, we wanted to say farewell by reminiscing our top 10 technology news stories of 2009. When I say “our” top 10 stories, I suppose it’s really more “my” top 10 stories. That’s okay, I don’t mind dominating the office opinion; they’ll agree with me. Counting down to the number one story, here are “our” picks.
The Federal Government in Australia is introducing an internet filter that will block access to sites containing obscene and criminal content — think child sex abuse, sexual violence, bestiality, detailed tutorials on how to commit crimes and other things that are most likely found in the 
Have you been seeing small funky boxes that include a kind of two-dimensional code? Labeled as a “QR code,” these unusual boxes have become the new generation of marketing in our world of ever-evolving technology. So what is it exactly? It’s a code that stores web-site addresses, contact information, phone numbers or other alphanumeric data. Mobile QR codes can be scanned by camera phones with reader software that will then decode that information and launch it in your phone’s browser. Think of it as a printed hyperlink, if you will. 
