Sociolatte

We're pleased to announce the overall winners in the Android Developer Challenge 2 . These winners were selected after two rounds of scoring by thousands of Android users as well as an official panel of judges . Please see our official page for more information about the challenge. The Android Developer Challenge 2 (ADC2) was announced in May and attracted entries by offering winners cash awards. The overall winner of ADC2, SweetDreams, an app that helps users sleep at night by sending late calls straight to voicemail, earned its creators US$250,000. Second prize overall went to What the Doodle!?, a multiplayer game of online Pictionary, while WaveSecure, a mobile security app that backs up data, allows users to track their phone and can lock it down or wipe all data to make the handset useless to a thief, took third. The categories included: Education/Reference Entertainment Games: Arcade/Action Lifestyle Meida Productivity Social Networking Travel Misc An original p...

A girl aged 13 meets man aged 19 on Facebook and decide to meet the same day. He arrives at her home and stays on for two days hiding in her closet. Her mother had was surprised to find the person in her daughters closet. "The girl allegedly told authorities she had sex with the man in her bedroom and then hid him in her closet, where her mother discovered him hiding early Monday, police said." The age of consent in Michigan is 16. The man has been arrested and is awaiting possible criminal sexual conduct charges. An original post by Sociolatte

Using 140 characters at a time Rick Moody kicks of his new tale. The idea was first suggested to him by an innovative new magazine called " Electric Literature". So far there have been 174 tweets from the author who will be tweeting every 10 minutes with a break at night. What role twitter will play in contemporary literature is left to be seen. There seems to be some direction with authors now able to create stories with 140 letter characters at a time. He is tweeting from the "Electric Literature" twitter homepage and can be found here . I am sure this would be good for short story writers. Maybe more authors would do the same thing and bring a cultural revolution to our generation. Will people really want to read a story on twitter? An original post by Sociolatte

Did it have anything to do with his tweets  while on furlough? Roger Avery who shared the award with "Quentin Tarantino" for best screenplay; movie "Pulp Fiction" was sentenced in September for Vehicular Manslaughter. Which driving drunk in his benz he hit a pedistrian who succumbed to his injuries and Rogers wife was also badly injured. In October tweets started appreaing on his twitter account. "(“The building is an imposing example of the Brutalist architectural movement,” he wrote) and details of his furlough program " “I wouldn’t doubt that it had something to do with those tweets,” Captain Bonfiglio told The Star. But on Monday he told The Associated Press that Mr. Avary’s Twitter posts had not played a major role in Mr. Avary’s incarceration. So now he is back behind bars and no longer tweeting. This is Taken from the LA Times "On Thursday, after The Times published reports about the short messages, Avary was transferred to county jail. ...

Yes it's out Yahoo has released it's list of top searches for the year 2009. They have said that the top search has been : Michael Jackson" followed by "twilight". Twitter apparently was not among the top most searched key words. Am wondering why is that so important. The reason being that when people want twitter they now go directly to twitter. It is no more a phase that needs to be searched through search engines. You want twitter you go to twitter and join the fun. Bing Top Searches Michael Jackson Twilight WWE Megan Fox Britney Spears Naruto American Idol Kim Kardashian NASCAR Runescape Yahoo Top Searches Facebook Twitter Hulu Bing iPhone LinkedIn Dollar Stores Palm Pre Rosetta Stone Kindle So this is an indicator of what our current generation is most interested in. An original post by Sociolatte

Its just not Bing that has launched its cashback services. Yes till Dec 2 shopping using Bing will healp you save alot on most deals as bing has tied up with a large number of retails and you benefit from using bing to shop. Either on Black friday or Cyber Monday. Google also has a large number of deals it has launched with Google Checkout. Found on the official Google Blog " Holiday savings with Checkout 11/30/2009 12:01:00 AM This holiday season, Google Checkout can help you save time and money. You can shop quickly and easily with one secure login for thousands of stores across the web. And through December 17, save with exclusive discounts of $5, $10 or $20 at hundreds of participating stores, including TigerDirect.com, BlueNile.com and Petco.com. And for Cyber Monday , you can take advantage of special limited-time offers available at Toysrus.com, Babiesrus.com and Buy.com. Visit our new Checkout deals page for more details and to browse participating stores. Finally, if ...

Thousands of people have begun an internet-based protest on Facebook, against the government of Saudi Arabia and their handling of the floods . It has been reported that more than a 103 people have died in flooding. "The deaths have been blamed on poor construction of houses and infrastructure like bridges, and residents of the city say the government had been made aware of allegations that they were of poor construction." The flooding happened in the western city of Jeddah right in the middle of the Hajj season None of the pilgrims have been hurt but mostly local citizens have suffered in the worst flood to have hit in years. Facebook has become the medium of protest as there are not many other avenues to do the same. An original post by Sociolatte

With it's growing popularity both online and offline. The Global Language Monitor is reporting that "Twitter" is the most used work in the English language. It has surpassed words like Obama and H1N1 the scientific name for swine flu. With twitter all forms of communication has been limited to 140 characters that has done wonders for the Social Site. With its huge popularity with celebrities and businesses both big and small. This comes as no surprise. Even people who actually do not use twitter still talk about it. That it's doing the rounds comes as no surprise. You're either talking about it or using it. Either ways people have some sort of affiliation to Twitter.  "The Top Words are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.58 billion speakers".. An original post by Sociolatte

It has been reported that a US woman discovered the photo on Jesus on her iron. She shared the photo on Facebook and was reassured by friends that the image was visible to them also. This means she said that things are going to be ok and everything is taken care of. Faith has a way of giving people hope. " Mary Jo Coady, 44, of Methuen , Massachusetts, spotted the image while doing a load of ironing." We have uploaded a picture for you to verify the picture An original post by Sociolatte

An iPhone commissioned by an Australian Gold Mining Magnet. Has been built with a value price of  3.2 Million USD. "Goldstriker, a Liverpool based company which specialises in customisation of high-end luxury gifts and gadgets, was reportedly commissioned by an Australia-based gold mine magnate to design the said iPhone." The iPhone has been christened the iPhone 3G Supreme. "has 271 grams of 22ct solid gold accompanied with 136 diamonds worth 68ct in the front. The Apple logo on the back side of the phone is made of solid gold lined with 53 flawless diamonds. Even the navigation button on the front is embedded with a very rare 7.1ct diamond. The iPhone Supreme comes in a solid granite chest weighing 7kg along with a Kashmir gold and Nubeck leather inner lining. Stuart Hughes, the founder of Goldstriker International who resides in Liverpool, had apparently taken nearly 10 whole months to design and create the iPhone 3G Supreme ."   Now that is an expensive and beau...

A San Diego professor has developed a cell phone tool that would help guide illegal immigrants across the border. Ricardo Dominguez said the primary reason for developing the tool was " To offer a way for people who are crossing the border a way not to die". This is because an estimated 3,861 to 5,607 people have died over the last 15 years trying to cross the border. The tool works much the way GPS works and helps people to get from one destination to the other plotting the shortest and safest possible way. many illegal immigrants die while trying to cross be getting lost or being abandoned by smugglers. "This cheap app can and will be used by Mexican drug cartels, drug and human smugglers and foreign criminals to commit their crimes on the American side of the border," Schwilk said . "When that happens, Dominguez may be subject to felony aiding and abetting charges." As a human you do not want people to die with the dreams of a better life. Rules are mad...

People in Seoul, South Korea finally got their taste of the iPhone on Saturday. Being a tech savvy society. About 65,000 people placed orders since Nov. 22, according to KT. Liked the headline on cnn.com that said "The iPhone's got Seoul". The reason why the iPhone took so long to debut in South Korea is because the government was trying to protect local manufacturers and carriers for several years. Since the announcement last week of the debut of the iPhone local manufacturer Samsung slashed the Price of it's iPhone like phone called Omnia2. There have been 40,000 pre-orders for the iPhone since the announcement if it being offered in Seoul. Local manufacturers Samsung and LG account for 90% of the cell phones sold in South Korea. KT Corp the carrier offering the iPhone said iPhones will sell fast as they are a status symbol in this tech-Savvy country. The iPhone is already changing the pricing of Smartphones in the country. As South Koreas are willing to spend heavi...

The world's second-largest PC brand entered the cellphone market this year with 10 models, with all but the Android phone using Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Acer has launched its SmartPhone running with Google's Andriod software this week. Acer will sell only 50-100 devices each year. They do not plan to get into competition in the smartphone market but will do this in their own time. Android had 3.5 percent of the global smartphon e market in the quarter ended September, compared with none 12 months earlier, while Microsoft saw its market share fall to 8.8 percent from 13.6 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Canalys. It features include a 5 megapixel camera which can also double as a video recorder. On-board memory of 256 MB. Rechargeable battery with 300 minutes of talk time. 3.5 inch WVGA touch screen with high resolution Also offers hard core social networking support. The Acer Liquid An original post by Sociolatte

The Iraqi government has launched it's own YouTube channel to counter "Lies" from the media and to show their own successes. To view the announcement from Mr. Nouri Al-Malik prime Minister of Iraq click here . To view the official channel of the Iraqi Government please click here . It is really unclear what effect this is going to have on the people of Iraq with the country not having brad band more suitable to video streaming. But people outside of Iraq can view compare and analyze. In another video Eric Schmidt spoke about how good this is and people will have a lot to see and discover with this new channel. Run by the current government there is a lot to expect. They are going to post videos that show the country in a different spot light. An original post by Sociolatte

Google has improved its movie search site adding show times, trailers, reviewers, genre filters and Google Maps of theater locales . Google this week extended its new movie search capabilities to Apple's iPhone, Android-based devices such as the myTouch 3G, Motorola Droid or HTC Eris, and Palm WebOS smartphones.When you click on movies on your mobile browser you can then click on "More Movies" for a whole list of other options. These options include trailers and local theaters where the movie is playing. And while you search for theaters Google gives you the option of finding the theater nearest to you. The new search results are available in US, Uk, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. An original post by Sociolatte

This post confirms my ownership of the site and that this site adheres to Google AdSense program policies and Terms and Conditions: ca-pub-6496364869298321 An original post by Sociolatte

Imagine a Facebook group being created asking people to commit mass suicide on Dec 21. Thats ewxactly what happenned. The group has since been taken doen. But police say they are truinmg to contact all the 190 members which of course if not possible as people from different countries had joined the group. The South China Morning Post said the person who started the group had written that it was " meant to be an inside joke ", where people talked humorously about ways to take their lives. The police said they would like to provide free counseling for both students and parents. To help prevent such acts. Apparently there was a female member of the group who posted pictures of herself trying to commit suicide in school. What started out as a joke could have proved to be very costly. Things have been stopped and providing free suicide prevention methods I think is a good initiative. An original post by Sociolatte

The aspiring realitTV stars who appeared to have gate crashed the white house's state dinner. Appeared to have been people with experince who have done this before. Socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi , who are apparently auditioning to have roles in the Bravo cable channel’s forthcoming “The Real Housewives of Washington,’’ penetrated layers of security Tuesday night to mingle with the likes of Vice President Joe Biden. She has been reported to have spent as much as 8 to 10 hours getting groomed before the event. The staffer doing Salahi’s hair asked to see the White House invitation, he said. “She starts rummaging through her purse, and then said, ‘It must be out in the car.’ She is also set to appear on "Larry King Live". The aspiring reality star seems to have a knack of getting into the spot light and making a fine appearance. Think of the pressure that one goes through to become a reality TV star. There are so many out there. How is open supposed to stand out? They...

Snapture one of the most popular paid for iPhone Apps has got an upgrade. You can now share photos on either Twitter or facebook. With different color modes. Once you click your photo it immediately makes the photo App social. You can also send the photo via email. Snapture has already been downloaded more than 700,000 times (much of that from when it was a free jailbroken app), which is not bad for a slightly better mousetrap. Price: $1.99 Check it out now by clicking here An original post by Sociolatte

Yeah the news is out Amazon's kindle2 now offering PDF support. e-readers maybe the way to go in 2010. Manufactures have now got the price right and books are good to read. With Barnes and Nobel's Nook, Sony Reader and a whole number of lesser know manufactures. e-readers are set to be the big thing for 2010. They also make a great gift and help your friends read more. With Google's effort to digitize public domain books there are thousands of classifieds out there for your to read. "The technology is improving. This year brought a lot of essential enhancements to e-readers , including touchscreens (Sony), bigger screens (Sony Reader and Kindle DX), longer battery life (Kindle 2), a color LCD (Nook), and PDF support. Storage is plentiful too. With its SD card slot, the Nook can hold more than 17,000 books--more than anyone would read in a lifetime." If only their pricing could come even further down they might achieve greater success. An original post by Sociolatt...

What does a company do when they do not have a lot of money for advertising. Start a Facebook campaign. Yes, that's what IKEA did precisely. They hired a advertising agency called Forsman and Bodenfors to run their Ad campaign. What the agency did was to create a Facebook profile for store manager (Store based in Malmo) and then took pictures of this beautiful town and uploaded it to his photo album. Then it put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it . So thousands of swedes started tagging themselves to pictures of sofas and beds and what not. The word quickly spread around the web. So personal pages have become the social medium to spread the word. This campaign is simply awesome. Brilliant thinking I must say. To view the profile please click here . An original post by Sociolatte

A group of Magazines including Times Inc and Conde Nast plan to build a huge digital Newsstand for publications in multiple digital formats. With the sales of print magazines slumping. Publishers are eager to turn things around and drive sales and revenue. The new magazine would sell all publications from a single site. Making ti easier for users to login and purchase from a single destination istead of multiple websites. the alliance of competing publishers would develop software standards for magazine viewing on iPhones, BlackBerrys, e-book readers and other platforms, people with knowledge of the plans said . An original post by Sociolatte

AT&T- News Room From the AT&T newsroom comes the news that HP will launch its new Smartphone in the US market. Names HP iPAQ Glisten "It has both a touch screen (AMOLED, no less!) and a full QWERTY keyboard. It runs Windows Mobile 6.5, and is compatible with the expected set of hardcore enterprise apps that WinMo is known for. It has all the radios inside that the busy professional could ever hope for, including 3G for the U.S. and Europe, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. It has a pretty decent camera, which comes in at 3.1 megapixels. It also has pretty decent looks." Power users now now stay connected with outlook calendering, Microsoft word and excel.  Also comes with an integrated inbox that summarizes recent emails, calls, and texts. Users can turn on the built-in Wi-Fi quickly with a dedicated on/off button and enjoy high-speed Internet access – featuring automatic access to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots included at no additional charge with select smartphone d...

The National Retail Federation estimates 134 million people will shop this weekend . That's up 6 million from last year. Fifty-seven million know where they plan to go and 77 million are waiting to see where the best offers will come from. That's where the Internet comes in. Twenty seven percent will shop online. So how are companies gearing up for the coming weekend. Toys "R" us is using their FB page to spread the news of their circular so people don't have to wait to find it in the newspapers. Click here to view their Facebook page and become a Fan Find more deals from Toys "R" Us here on their twitter page Happy Shopping!!! An original post by Sociolatte

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google has just made a presentation at the Iraq's national Museum. What they are going to do is create a virtual copy of all the collections in the museum at their own expense. And make it available freely on Google. Amira Edan, the director of the museum was very happy speaking to reporters that the collection of four millenniums of treasure will now be able for the world to see. The Museum remains closed  because of the fear of violence. "Ambassador Christopher R. Hill described the project as “part of an effort spearheaded by the State Department to bring technology to Iraq. We thought, what better way to do that than bring Eric Schmidt here?” A part of the collection has already been digitized by the by Italy’s National Research Center but where not extensive enough. It is also reported that Mr. Schmidt arrived in an conveys or armored suburbans, helicopter cover and snipers on roof tops. The images should be available by early next y...

The photo of Michelle Obama that can be found on Google search where she is depicted as having monkey-like features is not going to be removed. Google has said that content is not removed from it's search unless it is "content that promotes hate or violence towards groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status or sexual orientation/gender identity." Source: LA Times Although Google won't alter the process that places the offending image among its top results, the company placed a house advertisement with the headline "Offensive Search Results" above the picture. Clicking the ad leads to a statement that says, in part, "We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google." The image is found on the blog "Hot Girls" Google says that they are generally biased towards free speech. So they have issed a disclaimer before you view the image but removing it is not an opti...

Concert producer Live Nation (LYV) is now offering video and audio from concerts at its network of venues for purchase and download in Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iTunes Store.Offering artists a live way to share concerts with their fans. It is being dubbed as " next-generation wired recording studios ". The iTunes store has added a new section dedicated exclusively to live recordings. The offering kicked off today, and currently has recordings from OK Go, Jesse McCartney, Saving Abel, A Fine Frenzy, Duffy, Plain White T's and Ziggy Marley available for download. Others will be added in the future.  So for those of you who miss your favorite concert there is now a way for you to gain access and watch your favourite artist in live concert. Sales of concert DVDs have dipped with everything going online. This is sure to be a way to bring back revenues to live recordings. With it being easily available and accessible An original post by Sociolatte

Facebook users have been warned to watch out for a worm than appears on the users interface in the form of a bikini clad woman. With a text that says " Want 2 c something hot?" With a red button below that says " Click da button, baby!" "This worm uses what is technically known as a CSRF (Cross-site Request Forgery, also called XSRF) attack," AVG emerging threats researcher Nick FitzGerald told ITWire.com.au. "A sequence of iframes on the exploit page call a sequence of other pages and scripts, eventually resulting in a form submission to Facebook "as if" the victim had submitted a URL for a wall post and clicked on the "Share" button to confirm the post." Facebook is reportedly working on fixing the problem." From AVG An original post by Sociolatte

Facebook Inc. took steps to solidify the control of founder Mark Zuckerberg and other existing shareholders in the event the social-networking company goes public . Facebook said Tuesday that this should not be seen as a signal that the company is going public at this time. FB has announced that eventually they will go public. But as of now the thing that has been done is the solidifying of key share holder stock. So Facebook will convert existing stock holders to Class B which has ten times the voting power of class A stocks. It said it is introducing the structure "because existing shareholders wanted to maintain control over voting on certain issues" and "focus on the long-term." So when the company eventually goes public and existing investors hold onto their shares the dual-class structure would enhance their control and fend of unwanted suitors. Giving the key share holders more control. This was the same thing followed by google before they went public. An or...

According to the LA Times there were two other incidents of incited violence against redheads from the school at Calabasas. This brings the total to three students who suffered violence as a direct result of a message posted on a facebook group. The message said that Friday was "Kick A Ginger Day" and redheads were targeted. This FB group is based on a 2005 episode of "South Park" "Ginger" is a label given to people with red hair, freckles and fair skin. No arrests have been made as these are not being considered as hate crimes. FB on the other hand said that they rely on users reporting content that is not appropriate and this group not the message was reported. "Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said the network relies on its more than 300 million users to report problems with groups or events. Staff members then follow up to see if groups should be removed or reported to law enforcement, he said. Schnitt said he had not been made aware of this speci...

Soon you will no longer need to leave your inbox to reply to your friends status update. Facebook has apparently been testing a new feature that allows you to reply to a status update directly from your inbox. It is currently being tested by a very few subset of users and will be rolled out for everybody pretty soon. Convenient you say; yes it will be real easy with not having to login to FB every time you want to comment. There are no answers from them right now with how they plan to manage the spam that could be associated with something like this. Will be available across the network in the coming few weeks . An original post by Sociolatte

Linkedin like Facebook has expanded its platform to allow developers to Create APIs and widgets that can be used on Linkedin itself or on other websites. They plan to do a one-up on Facebbok connect. Faceboook connect is the leader in social sharing and connects people across websites with FB connect. Which has established itself as the platform of choice for website owners to use the share button and other widgets and gadgets that can be built and used for free. Linkedin now wants to become the professional social connector by offering the APIs and Widgets that you can build and use. If you would like to access the developer platform on Linkedin click here . Its interesting because I am sure this will be used a lot by recruiters and professional networks to keep in touch with their respective clients. This will help because it is already branded as a Professional Networking Site and people coming across these gadgets already have some preconceived ideas as to what to expect. There wil...

Yes Google is going full steam ahead with display advertising. The First major step seems to be its acquisition of Teracent. Ads that are displayed on the web are categorized into two; Text Ads and Display Ads. text ads are the ones you see on most sites on the web. They are displayed beside this post also. Display ads are ads that could show banners, graphics and what not. These are used by large companies as they are good fort branding. So when an Ad is displayed a display ad can show you the store nearest to you with directions and a photo included. Currently Yahoo is the leader in dispaly ads with 14.5 percent market share in September, according to comScore. This type of Advertising says Google could be the next billion dollar business. Google did not disclose the terms of the Teracent deal An original post by Sociolatte

Companies both large and small are turning to social networking sites for a number of reasons. 1. With the large pool of people on these sites it becomes necessary to have a presence on the sites. Facebook offers pages where companies can create their profile and users or fans can join these pages and get up to date information from the company. It adds a real social feel to the company and new product role outs can now be done live on a Facebook page. 2. Twitter with its versatile openness to one and all offers companies to reach out to customers and clients much more easily. People find their fav companies on twitter and become followers. This allows companies to much more easily push their products and their services. Feedback is also live as they can track in real-time what is being said about them. 3. Companies needs to have a social presence. It seems much easier to have a social presence than to have a social site. It is less expensive as Facebook and Twitter can Handel the traf...

With Microsoft offering Facebook, Twitter and last.fm live on the Xbox. The company is reporting that there are millions of people now using it. As reported by cnet.com Accoring to the statistics available "the first-week figures show that at least 2 million Xbox Live users have logged into Facebook, and that half a million Last.fm accounts were created in the first 24 hours of availability. Dennis didn't address how many Xbox Live users have used the service's Twitter feature, except to say that there have been "tweets from nearly every market where we have Xbox Live." The numbers are set to increase with the total number of Xbox live users being 20 million. Since the above statistics are only for the first week of it's launch. Its sure to increase as more poeple try it. The implementation lacks some of the richness of the original sites. But is sure seems to be enagaging as we see from the large number of poeple using the social networks through Xbox live ...

Now you can check your tweet level with a new program called http://www.tweetlevel.com/ . By using this free tool you can check how important you are within your circle of Contacts on Twitter. Checked it out and here's the low down. 1. Your Influence Score:. This tells you how influential you are within your circle. Which mainly has to do with whether your interact with your followers or not 2. Your Popularity Score: This has to do solely with how many followers your have. You score I think would decrease if you were following more than those following you. 3. Your Engagement Score: With how you interact with your community of followers and people you follow. Are you active or just tweeting without engaging with people. This is interesting. 4. Your Trust Score: Has to do with the big question. Do people find you trust worthy enough to be Retweeted? If your not retweeted the site says then maybe you need to work on building trust with your network. All in all there are some good poi...

With the Hugh popularity of social games namely " Farmville" and "MafiaWars" created by Zyanga and used by players for free on Facebook. It is being reported that if the company were to go public it would be valued at $1 Billion. Considering it's huge popularity on Facebook and it's never ending addition of new users. It has has now created the cyber-farmer. Who sometime simply cannot get enough of his farm. The way revenue is made is by displaying third party ads, also be offering cyber currency which users can purchase by paying with real currency. Third party ads that advertise services make up for only 10% of their revenue says the company. It has been reported that some of these third-party companies have also been displaying shady ads that mislead users. This is being cleared says the company. None of this has stopped it's growth or it's popularity. Analysts of social gaming say this might just be a soon to pass fad. That user's interest...

Police are probing the assault on a boy that has red hair. This possibly happened as a result of a Facebook page saying it was "Kick a Ginger Day". He was beaten by 14 of his classmates. Police are also investigating whether assault charges can be laid. To R eported by the LA Times The boy was kicked and hit in two incidents on the campus of A.E. Wright Middle School by as many as 14 of his classmates, Lt. Richard Erickson said. The students who participated in the attack may have been motivated by a Facebook message telling them that Friday was "Kick a Ginger Day," Erickson said. A very simple question is being asked over and over again. Doesn't Facebook monitor these pages. Does Facebook need to approve every page that is created? An original post by Sociolatte

Digital video player now adds a bunch of new channels for you to choose from . Roku which launched about a year ago is a digital player that allows viewers to play Roku's digital player was the first to allow netflix costumers to watch tv shows and movies on their TV's. Was praised because of its simplicity an $100 price. The concept of bringing digital based media to the living room is not used and been around for years. With the new channels you can now view pics from both flickr and Facebook, internet radio from Pandora, Web videos and podcasts from Revision3 and blip.tv. In all customer will be able to access 10 new channels without having to pay anything extra. This keeps increasing the way social media gadgets grow in popularity and usability. An original post by Sociolatte

South Korean carrier KT will start selling the iPhone this month. Taking the iPhone's travel around the world to another country. Which now takes the total to 86 countries around the world where the iPhone is available. This is following the launch in chine which was launched through Chine Unicom. The south Korean market is dominated by local manufactures LG and Samsung. The iPhone's release was delayed by regulatory hurdels which was crossed on wednesday. This sleek phone will be available and we need to wait and see the kind of reception it receives on it's first day of launch An original post by Sociolatte

Music composed in the signature 140 character limit. That is what has been done by a researcher from the UK. The album is called sc140 and contains 22 pieces by artists from around the world, each piece created with just 140 characters of code.  As reported by PCworld " "It all started a few months ago," said Stowell, who is studying for his PhD in Queen Mary's Centre for Digital Music (C4DM), in a statement. "I was writing in a programming language - called SuperCollider - that tells a computer what sounds to make and posted a tweet containing the instructions to create a sound like waves crashing on the shore. The next thing I knew people were tweeting back with sounds and music of their own. Some of the tweets made such great music that I couldn't just let them vanish into the ether. So I brought all the best ones together in an online album." Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" would looks like this in a Tweet: {b="GGHJJHGECCEG".ascii.s...

Yes. Microsoft and News Corp are in discussion to start "de-indexing" web content that belongs to News Corp from Google. Which may start a president in the newspaper industry that could lead to them asking search engines to pay to index their content. As reported by FT.com . Microsoft may have approached other big publishing houses to do the same. maybe offering a lucrative deal. "Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chairman, has said that he would use legal methods to prevent Google “stealing stories” published in his papers." And "Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, has said that the company is prepared to spend heavily for many years to make Bing a serious rival to Google." Wow. Thats some serious competition that microsoft has started to instigate. Will it pay to get De-Indexed from the world's largest and most efficient search engine? It does turn things around though. Putting new pressure on the whole business of search and indexing. Lets wait and...

Thats what Twitter COO Dick Costolo said speaking today on a panel at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp event in San Francisco. Twitter ads will be "fascinating," "non-traditional" and "really cool," Costolo said. "People will love the ads when they see it." He also went furthe to explain that their business model will also allow for users to pay for certain APIs. Like if you want to see a detailed analytics dashboard of your account. Or add multiple authors to your account. These will be offered as premium services. For common folk like us things will always be free on Twitter. In fact small start-ups can still use some APIs at a reduced cost. All in all Twitter promises that the ads will be "really cool" and fun to watch. Promising an increased user experience without being troublesome and boring. An original post by Sociolatte

Yes as previously announced by twitter the geotagging API is now live. It currently cannot be used from the web but is available Twitter applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro. This feature enable you to add geotagging to your tweets. "Think Globally. Think Locally" they said on their blog. To turn it on now you need to go to your account settings page on Twitter and activate it as it is only an opt-in service. Under the "Enable Geotagging" Button is the "Delete all Location" button. What this does is if you want to turn the geotargetting feature and delete your location history then this is the button you use. It is also important to note that if you decide to delete your location history it might take up to 30 minutes and there is no guarantee that it will be completely erased from all third-party applications. The Blog further stated "It's important to note geotagging is disabled by default for a...

To keep it simple Sony plans to start a store what wouldent just sell, digital music, movies and books. They will try to connect users with each other as reported by an article in BusinessWeek . This service will be called Sony Online Service. So as soon as you buy a TV or a music player. Sony plans to register the user for this service. Which is aimed at creating brand loyalty and more communication within a large network of Sony fans. So once you register for the service it would be easy for you to share the videos you photos with your friends across the network. They might also be live streaming. These are the kinds of social features they plan to have across the network. Kind of like an iTunes store but with more social features bringing in a community feel. There will be a button to tell you what your friends are watching. With its huge network of 33 million registered users sony sells downloadable games, TV Shows and Movies. Future plans include allowing other websites also onto ...

If you would like a visual tour of google chrome PC World has the slide show Click here to view . With all this cloud computing and having to access your programs from a cloud. The question that arises is will there be local storage. What if you want to store your pictures an files locally. Since the OS will rely heavily on solid-state memory, both in the form of USB flash drives and SD cards. You can store your pictures and files on a USB drive or Flash card. Maybe they would even rent out space So with local caching turned off and no local storage. Google netbooks may offer the best protection for business travellers against espionage. The security on the notebook will be tight. An original post by Sociolatte

Real-Time Search Directories With the release of Twitter's user lists which by the way is user generated it opens up for us something that in the last decade was taken over by machines. Storing and indexing of web sites has been religated to the management of machines with less and less human intervention. Yahoo one of the earliest directories on the web experimented for a while with human based search directory additions but gave up on the effort. Well things on the interenet has come full circle. True it might be run by machines but man is winning. Human intellignece and brotherhood. That is what is standing tall. Twitter's users create lists and share them with friends. This is what I follow and recommend. And so we go to our friends and see what they recommend. Search engines work well but how well. Aren't we most of the time hit by spammy sites. But we do trust our friends and know they will not deceive us but directing us to scammy accounts. Twitter's list have op...

Google announced that it would be using speech recognition technology to create captions to help the deaf and hearing impaired. The company would be using the same technology that is used in google voice that converts voice to text for the voice service. For its initial launch it will be available to only a handful of YouTube content partners like Berkeley and Yale. Once your transcription is on it can be captured and converted into 51 languages.  To read more about it on YouTube follow this link An original post by Sociolatte

Google has provided a sneak peak into their Chrome Operating System. At the sneak peak provided at their Mountain View HQ the operating system took 7 seconds to start up. Looks very much like their Chrome browser. Much of the applications are going to be relying on cloud computing.Which would mean that programs are not installed on your PC but are used over the Internet and accessed using a browser. Google will also be releasing the code for this program for those who would like to play around with it. Using an open source agreement. It is still not clear as to which hardware makers were planning to use the OS but am sure there will be many who would like to give it a go. The OS will be released by 2010 and will power lower end PCs called netbooks An original post by Sociolatte

With its declining use as an Internet search engine. Yahoo now wants to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. By indexing twitter feeds along side breaking news stories. Google and Microsoft have had plans along the same lines. But yahoo is going to be the first to incorporate tweets on its search result's page. By doing this Yahoo is surely bringing in the latest gossip along side breaking news stories. With real-time search feel to the whole thing. Users will now be able to see what is hot and happening along with what people are saying about the topics in real time. Bing has been testing incorporating tweets in its search results but have not announced when it will be ready. Google also has plans to incorporate tweets in its search engine. Real time search now is the big thing. Thanks to Twitter An original post by Sociolatte

Yes we all know the question on top of your post used to be "What are you Doing?" now it's changed to "What's Happening?" shows the significant change in the companies outlook. The service was started as a way for friends to keep in touch using short messages. But has since largely been ignored by users. The service has changed into a sharing network with everybody inventing their own use for the service. So it does not really matter what the question above your answer bar is. Everyone has their own used for this service. An original post by Sociolatte

The class action suit claims that Facebook and Zynga Inc scammed gamers out of information for cash. popular games "Mafia Wars" and "Farmville" have become so popular that the gaming company is believed to have pushed shady ads. In exchange for points or virtual currency that is used by gamers to climb levels. Gamers click on these ads because after filling a form in exchange for "virtual currency" which you would have had to buy with real currency. They are rewarded with virtual cash for their time and effort. An example cited was an "IQ Test" where they were asked for their cell phone number. After which they realised that they were subscribed to an annoying SMS service and getting rid of it later was almost impossible and were also being charged a minimum amount for the service. The defendants are claiming $5 Million An original post by Sociolatte

Oprah Winfrey has announced that she will be ending her popular daytime talk show when her contract ends on Sept 2011. The show that brought the highest number of viewers was when she had a sit down with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Oprah has been a real crowd puller and has proved she can move people to vote, give to charity and what not. The latest buss is that she is teaming with Discovery Networks to launch The Oprah Winfrey Show (OWS) which she will help program. It may go live in 2011. This is the end of an era of day time talk shows. It is going to be difficult to replace her or for others shows to gain this kind of momentum anytime soon. Anyways to catch the buzz tune into Fridays live show where she will be talking about it An original post by Sociolatte

Twitter lists now get descriptions. Yes you created a list and now have it on display. But viewers may need to know more about that list. A simple list with a heading is not enough. You can now state clearly what this list is about and other descriptions you might want to add. If you have a list title maybe techie-bloggers-i-think-are-way-too-geeky. Techie is a key word and many people searching will find your list along with a hoard of other lists matching the word techie. Now you can add a description to say what the list is really about and not bother too much about the title. Brings clarity to the whole list thing. Lists will not begin to get much more professional and maybe an interactive feature to be added to list will make a world of difference. An original post by Sociolatte

The program is called chase community giving. facebook users will vote for which small organization across the United States is deserving of winning. You can start voting from now till Dec 15th. When the top 100 charities will be announced. From he 15th Of December another round of voting will last till the 29th. 5 runner ups will be announce along with the grand prize winner on Jan 1st. The top five runners-up will receive $100,000 each and the 100 finalists, including the top winners, will be awarded $25,000 each. Along with the grand prize winner who will be awarded 1Million So if you wand to take part in this program here's the link http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/ Access it now to make a difference An original post by Sociolatte

Microsoft on Wednesday launched the public beta of office 2010. It has expanded its sharepoint integration and lets users interact real time using outlook. So employees can edit word, excel and other office documents simultaneously. It has a huge advantage and wants to become the new face of social media interaction. Users using outlook can now see user profile from linkedin and other social networks in the future. To download the office 2010 professional plus now simply head over to its official page and click on the get it now button. Download and experiment. An original post by Sociolatte

Reports indicate that both facebook and myspace have refused to embed a 'report abuse' button. This is a button that can be installed that once clicked will do the following. "According to a report in New Scientist, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has devised the free “abuse button” that would link children and teenagers to advice and put them in contact with counsellors and law enforcement officers" And both sites have claimed that due to technical issues this cannot be done. Facebook also saying this has been tried before but has not been successful. Also since the sites are global facebook would like to have its own global reporting system An original post by Sociolatte

So finally you'll be able to access facebook and twitter on the Xbox 360 and let your friends keep tabs of your game. Not to be left behind sony added the social networks to their playstation 3. If your not a gamer you are still going to feel the effects of it. As your gamer friends status might be updated with their game progress. Off course this feature can be switched off if you know you take really long to finish a game and don't want your friends to know. An original post by Sociolatte

Well thats the argument. I think it pays to look at the prefix "De" and :Un". Well the suffix "De" would mean to remove or reduce. Therefore destabilize would be the opposite of stabalize. And the suffix "Un" would have more to do with undo. Think of the words undress, unfold, unable, unblock. So what should the word be?. You decide An original post by Sociolatte

The feature is now slowely rolling across the network. My account already has it and I have also begun to use it. If you would want to know what a retweet is. For those who are new to twitter. It is a simple function where you can retweet a friends message to all your contacts. You find a cool quote and would like to share it acoss your network Simply retweet it. Right now the feature is only available on twitter.com. But should come to the favourite twitter client soon. Curently when you click on the retweet button you are asked "retweet to your followers?". If you click the X button next to it. The option closes. Retweets works via sms too Will keep this topic undated An original post by Sociolatte