Saturday, August 25, 2012

Jury awards Apple $1.05 billion in Samsung patent dispute ruling

Jury awards Apple $1.05 billion in Samsung patent dispute ruling


Live: Apple vs. Samsung: jury decision

Facebook acquires Threadsy, the company behind social graph analytics tool Swaylo

Facebook acquires Threadsy, the company behind social graph analytics tool Swaylo:  Facebook acquires Threadsy, the company behind social graph analytics tool Swaylo
Today, Threadsy, the company behind social analytics tool Swaylo, has announced that it has been acquired by Facebook.
The company has raised $6.3M to date, and no price has been mentioned for the acquisition. We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment. Users who have SwayloPro accounts will not be affected, as it will be treated as a separate company. Regular users will be out of luck once the deal goes through.
Here’s what Threadsy’s CEO, Rob Goldman, had to say on its blog:
Swaylo offers you the opportunity to see what kind and how much attention you’re getting for the things you post, share, and like on social media networks. Through an analysis of your social graph, Swaylo reflects your Sway – the impact your online activities have in your social circle and across the social graph.
Today we’re announcing that Threadsy will be acquired by Facebook. Threadsy is the company that operates Swaylo.com, provides people with their Sway score, and helps businesses, organizations and brands connect with their social influencers.
This is incredibly exciting for us! We built Swaylo because we believe Facebook and other social media services are the digital representation of our lives. There is no better opportunity to take Swaylo’s vision to the next level than at Facebook.
Convo 134 520x259 Facebook acquires Threadsy, the company behind social graph analytics tool Swaylo
The service allows you to log into your Facebook account and view a dashboard that includes all of your social interactions. This could mean that Facebook is planning something similar for its users. Of course, this would also be useful for brands who run pages on the social network as well.
Goldman went on to detail what will happen to its users and to thank Threadsy’s investors:
Once the deal is done, people will no longer be able to access their Sway scores on Swaylo.com. But SwayloPro will continue to operate as separate, independent company owned by its current investors. SwalyoPro helps businesses connect with influential people on social media – here’s where you can find more info.
I’d like to extend a huge thank you to our investors John Johnston from August Capital and Amy Errett from Maveron Capital. They believed in us early and provided the guidance, support and capital needed to make Swaylo a reality.
Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who had a hand in this phase of Swaylo’s growth, especially our small but mighty and talented team. I’d like to extend a special thank you to my Co-Founder and CTO, Udi Nir, and our Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer, Sabrina Riddle for their leadership, vision, and contributions to Swaylo’s success.
Sincerely,

Rob Goldman

CEO & Founder
Convo 135 520x372 Facebook acquires Threadsy, the company behind social graph analytics tool Swaylo
Swaylo also gives you a good idea of who influences you on Facebook as well, information that is valuable to users, brands…and Facebook itself.
Threadsy started out as a way to bring your Twitter and Facebook streams together, but pushed its focus on Facebook full-time. That seems to have paid off, literally.
UPDATE: Facebook has confirmed the acquisition of Threadsy with no other details.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Buffer becomes the first app in Apple’s iOS App Store to support App.net

Buffer becomes the first app in Apple’s iOS App Store to support App.net: Screen Shot 2012 08 22 at 1.43.31 PM 520x245 Buffer becomes the first app in Apples iOS App Store to support App.net
The social update scheduling service Buffer became the first company to release an app onto Apple’s iOS App Store supporting the new real-time communication platform App.net. The notice was posted on the service by App.net founder Dalton Caldwell.
Buffer recently announced that it was supporting App.net on the service, which we covered last week. The addition of it to the iOS app in an update that’s live now marks the first appearance of App.net in Apple’s official store. Since there are easily a dozen iOS apps that are in beta or Alpha stages right now, many of which I’m playing with, I don’t doubt that it’s just the first of many.
Photo Aug 22 1 22 04 PM 520x780 Buffer becomes the first app in Apples iOS App Store to support App.net
Yesterday, Buffer’s Leo Widrich posted about the integration, and why Buffer chose to support App.net from ‘day one’ of its Alpha launch.
For us, the answer is very clear. Our goal with Buffer is to build tools that make it easier and smarter to use any social platform. We have done this with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And now, we do the same with App.net. Dalton and his team have an incredible focus and truly embraced and actively supported us as app developers right from the start. That is something we wanted to be part of and they continue to iterate incredibly fast.
We are extremely friendly with Twitter, App.net, and any other social platforms we support. All we want is to help expand the usability of these platforms with innovation built on top of them.
He also notes that, since IFTTT also has a Buffer channel, this makes the social glue service compatible with App.net also.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Supercharge Ubuntu’s Unity Dash with Lenses & Scopes: 5 Lenses to Install

Supercharge Ubuntu’s Unity Dash with Lenses & Scopes: 5 Lenses to Install:

The dash on Ubuntu’s Unity desktop allows you to search for applications, files, music, and videos – but you’re not just limited to these. Install custom lenses and scopes to extend the dash with more features.
Most additional lenses and scopes are currently found outside the official repositories. Unfortunately, many useful lenses, including the dictionary lens, books lens, and Tomboy notes lens, aren’t yet available in PPAs for Ubuntu 12.04.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Cloud Foundry and Cloud9 | Cloud9 IDE Blog



Cloud Foundry deployments are not only super fast (~15 seconds!), but Cloud Foundry is also in the unique position as the leading open-source PaaS, enabling developers to install it on their own server. Cloud9 in turn allows users to specify the URL of the server they want to deploy to.


read more...

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

A million Instagram Android app downloads in a day isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? 5 million in 6 days.

A million Instagram Android app downloads in a day isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? 5 million in 6 days.: unnamed2 520x245 A million Instagram Android app downloads in a day isnt cool. You know whats cool? 5 million in 6 days.
Instagram is enjoying the biggest week in its existence. The company, already riding high on its iOS success, launched its Android app and captured 1 million downloads in its first day and unless you live under a rock, you will know that yesterday, Facebook came in and bought the company for a cool $1 billion.
Whilst everyone digests yesterday’s news, Instagram has just hit another impressive milestone — 5 million Android downloads in six days — making it one of the biggest Android app launches of all time. In fact, the iOS version of the app took about six months to reach 5 million users, on Android it took just six days.
Android users had been waiting a long time for the photo-sharing app to launch on the platform, and when even when the company launched its pre-registration process, smartphone owners rushed to be a part of it. When it opened pre-registration for its Android variant on March 24, it attracted 430,000 pre-registration signups in the following days.
Soon after launching on Google Play, Instagram was seeing 2,000 sign-ups a minute. The impact this had can be seen on the download graph below, which dipped shortly after launch as the initial demand subsided.
Today’s milestone is shown on Instagram’s Google Play page, which now registers downloads between 5 million and 10 million:
Screen Shot 2012 04 10 at 09.59.121 520x203 A million Instagram Android app downloads in a day isnt cool. You know whats cool? 5 million in 6 days.
We put the app through its paces to see how the Android flavor compared against the one that iPhone users have grown to know and love. We found that much of the aesthetic had been ported over from iOS, with just a few concessions to Android user interface conventions.
The news will be of equal importance to Facebook, which is seeking to push ahead with its mobile offerings, as it decides just how it will incorporate the service into its social network. For now, Instagram will operate as it always has but its a question of when, not if, the company will start to make changes.

source: thenextweb.com

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

9 Ways to Add LinkedIn to Your Company Website

9 Ways to Add LinkedIn to Your Company Website:





Brian Honigman is a social media account manager at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics certified partner that also specializes in social media, search engine optimization, and PPC. Follow him at @Brian_Honigman and read his blog at BrianHonigman.com.
Adding LinkedIn’s social features to your company website is a great way to tap into both a large-scale recruitment platform and a targeted network of business contacts. Don’t believe it? Well, according to a study conducted by Bullhorn, a web-based software and services firm, LinkedIn is the leading social network for job recruiting.
Another study conducted by HubSpot, an inbound marketing company, showed that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter. These stats highlight how increasing the integration of LinkedIn on your website can help improve the success of your business.
If you’re ready to get started, here are nine key plugins and examples.

1. Share Button





The Share button should be placed on your site next to white papers, technical product guides, articles, throughout your blog, and on any other page that features content of a professional or business nature. This allows your site visitors to click the button and share the related content via LinkedIn.
Also, because LinkedIn’s audience is business-centric, the LinkedIn Share button should be used much more sparingly than, say, the Facebook Like button. For instance, placing a Share button on a product page for jeans would not be relevant to the average LinkedIn user, but placing a Share button on an article about the impact of jean sales on your industry would make sense. A natural place to install a Share button is a company’s blog.

2. Recommend Button





Using the Recommend button on your website lets visitors recommend your company’s products or services on LinkedIn. The Recommend button can also be used in the product and services sections of your LinkedIn company page. Keep in mind that this plugin isn’t right for every type of product or service page. Ask yourself if what you plan to add the Recommend button to is something that has a business-to-business use and is relevant to the LinkedIn audience.
A good example of a company using the Recommend button well is Intel. In this case, Intel used its LinkedIn company page to feature products with high recommendations. By putting a Recommend button beside a product on LinkedIn, and linking it back to the product page on Intel’s website, Intel can use LinkedIn to generate even more recommendations.

3. Follow Company Button





The Follow Company button give companies a way to grow their LinkedIn company page directly from their website. Once a user is following your company on LinkedIn, they can see your status updates in their LinkedIn news feed, which can help you regularly engage them and develop leads for your business.
The Follow Company button comes in two variations and is most effective when used on the homepage, blog, and contact page of your website. Some companies have also used the button in the header and footer of their site as a constant reminder to visitors to join them on LinkedIn.

4. Company Profile







The Company Profile plugin is essentially a virtual business card, but for your whole company. As you can see from Mashable’s Company Profile above, the plugin features your company logo, a Follow button, a summary of the company, and the number of employees at the company who are on LinkedIn.
There are three ways to display a Company Profile. The above is the most extensive because it includes the Follow button, giving web visitors the opportunity to follow your company on LinkedIn. The other two options simply feature the LinkedIn logo until you either click or hover over it for more info.
You can place this plugin on your homepage, except for the largest version, which should be featured lower on the page. The smaller versions of the plugin can be added wherever you list other social networks on your homepage. Lastly, placing the Company Profile on the about, contact, or careers page of your website is a good idea.

5. Company Insider





The Company Insider plugin allows you to highlight your company’s employees, which helps to give a human face to your business. This plugin can be customized for visitors to your website in three different ways: It can highlight the current employees of a company that are in your LinkedIn network, new hires to the company, and promotions and changes within your employee structure. The most ideal place to use this plugin is on your company’s careers page, much like the MSLGROUP example above.
This feature helps job seekers get a sense of your company’s growth, see how quickly current employees move up the career ladder, and most importantly, see any employees who are in their LinkedIn network. You also have the option to hide any of the three features of this plugin, although it’s recommended that you show them all.

6. Member Profile







The Member Profile plugin serves as your business card on LinkedIn. The example above is how the regular Member Profile plugin would display on your website. There is also a Full Member Profile plugin, which is similar, except that it allows for a much more extensive view of your profile. This plugin is most commonly found on personal blogs and on the websites of smaller start-ups. That’s because most companies elect to add LinkedIn plugins that highlight the organization as a whole, as opposed to one individual.

7. Apply Button





The Apply button allows applicants to quickly and easily apply for a job directly on your website with their LinkedIn profile. You can choose to customize this feature with your company logo, color choice, and three custom “yes or no” questions. With more coding, this feature can also be integrated into an existing applicant tracking system like Jobvite.
This plugin is beneficial for job applicants because all that is necessary for them to apply to a position is an updated LinkedIn profile. It’s a beneficial addition to your company’s recruitment efforts because it quickly allows you to see an applicant’s referrals, recommendations, and network of related contacts. It’s best utilized when placed on your website’s career page.

8. Sign In With LinkedIn





The Sign In with LinkedIn function allows people to sign in or register with your site using their LinkedIn credentials. This is a particularly beneficial addition for your customers because it allows them to quickly identify themselves when they attempt to leave a comment on your blog or forum. Your company also benefits because it receives insightful information from the people who register. This knowledge can be used to make more informed decisions concerning the ebb and flow of web traffic, for example.
Really, any website that requires visitors to register or sign in can benefit from Sign In with LinkedIn. Career-oriented websites can really gain the most from this functionality, which is exactly what visualize.me, shown above, does with their resume visualizer.

9. Jobs You May Be Interested In





The Jobs You May Be Interested In plugin helps job seekers by showing them only the jobs your company has posted on LinkedIn that relate to their experience and expertise. The best placement for this plugin would be on the careers or jobs section of your website. However, this plugin is only relevant if you’ve paid to have jobs listed on LinkedIn. Above are the job listings most relevant to me at American Express when I’m logged into LinkedIn. If you were to view this plugin live, and be logged into LinkedIn, the results would be specific to your LinkedIn profile.
This plugin also allows a company to show all jobs from multiple companies that are relevant to a LinkedIn user’s experience. This particular function is mostly for job listing websites because it’s highly unlikely your company would want to highlight job openings at other companies.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, gmutlu
More About: contributor, features, integration, linkedin




source : mashable

Rapportive: Know your contacts


Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox



Recently Rapportive has become LinkedIn company

Rapportive connecting people

Geeks and repetitive tasks