Monthly Archives: January 2011

Google is reported to be working on a Groupon competitor.

A Google spokesperson said that the Internet giant was recruiting businesses for a new Google Offers service. According to web reports, Google Offers looks and operates much like Groupon or LivingSocial. It is saidinclude Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Google Buzz and e-mail sharing options.

“Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program,” the company said in a statement. “This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted.”

Google recently tried to buy Groupon.

Twitter has reached nearly 200 million users registered accounts who post 110 million tweets per day as of the January 1, 2011, writes Oliver Chiang on Forbes.

That’s up from 160 million registered accounts as of September 2010 and 95 million tweets per day as of early December

Full article: http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2011/01/19/twitter-hits-nearly-200m-users-110m-tweets-per-day-focuses-on-global-expansion/

Amazon Web Services has announced Elastic Beanstalk in beta.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an even easier way for you to quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud. You simply upload your application, and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring. At the same time, with Elastic Beanstalk, you retain full control over the AWS resources powering your application and can access the underlying resources at any time. Elastic Beanstalk leverages AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Simple Notification Service, Elastic Load Balancing, and Auto-Scaling to deliver the same highly reliable, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of businesses depend on today. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is easy to begin and impossible to outgrow.

More info: http://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/

After a year of development, the social network for Christians, BlessedWays.com, has officially launched its’ new website. The site functions similarly to Facebook, but is unique because it caters specifically to a Christian crowd.

BlessedWays social networking site allows users to create a profile, search other profiles, share photos, videos and stories and create or join groups. Users can find sermons, play games, add events, join discussions, send private messages and see all of the latest site activity.

The site connects with Facebook so users can complete their BlessedWays profile page in just a few clicks and invite their Facebook friends. Blessedways.com offers a clean layout, ease of navigation and registration is simple and free.

“The goal of BlessedWays is to offer members an online community where they can connect with other Christians, share, and grow,” says founder Ken Kellam. “We hope if more Christians know there’s a social network out there for them, they’ll join us on the site, interact within other members and have some good, clean fun.”

Currently, as an incentive to join their site, Blessedways.com is having a contest. They are giving away an iPod Shuffle to one lucky user on Valentine’s Day. Register at www.Blessedways.com to be automatically entered to win. Please see site for complete contest rules.

The goal of BlessedWays is to offer members an online community where they can connect with other Christians, share, and grow. BlessedWays is a Christian Social Networking site that allows users to create a profile, search other profiles, share photos, videos, stories and create or join groups. Users can find sermons, play games, add events, join discussions, and see all of the latest site activity.

BlessedWays
6745 Stagecoach Rd
Manitou, KY 42436

Emil Protalinski on TechSpot.com writes “UK government to offer PCs for £98, Internet for £9.

“The UK government wants to offer low-cost computers as part of a 12-month trial during Race Online 2012. The scheme, which aims to reach out to the 9.2 million adults that are not yet online, 4 million of whom are considered socially and economically disadvantaged, aims to “make the UK the first nation in the world where everyone can use the web.”

Prices will start at £98 ($156.01) for a refurbished PC, with subsidized Internet connections available for as little as £9 ($14.33) a month or £18 ($28.65) for three months. The cheap computers will run open-source software (think Linux) and will include a flat-screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, dedicated telephone helpline, delivery, and even a warranty. The cheap Internet packages will use a mobile dongle to help people access the web.”

Full article: http://www.techspot.com/news/42005-uk-government-to-offer-pcs-for-98-internet-for-9.html

Tubetorial has posted a useful article an video “Getting Started With Google Analytics”.

This program gives you a lot of stats about your site including traffic numbers, the keywords and sites that send you traffic and much more.

Video at: http://www.tubetorial.com/getting-started-with-google-analytics/

Nokia is to drop its Ovi Music Unlimited Service, previously known as Comes with Music in most countries.

The service was introduced as a competitor to Apple’s iTunes, Comes with Music launched in 2008 and was bundled with various Nokia handsets.

In a press release, Nokia said: “”There will be no disruption to the service for our existing customers in these markets or anyone who in the future purchases an Ovi Music Unlimited-edition device from stores while stocks last — they can continue to enjoy unlimited downloads for the duration of their original Ovi Music Unlimited subscription and keep those tracks forever.”

Facebook has announced that developers of Facebook apps can now gather personal contact information from their users.

“User Address and Mobile Phone Number
We are now making a user’s address and mobile phone number accessible as part of the User Graph object. Because this is sensitive information, we have created the new user_address and user_mobile_phone permissions. These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs.

Please note that these permissions only provide access to a user’s address and mobile phone number, not their friend’s addresses or mobile phone numbers.”

The article on the Facebook developers blog goes onto post JavaScript SDK code to enable this.

Security firm Sophos describes it as ‘a move that could herald a new level of danger for Facebook users’ and advises users to remove their home address and phone numbers from the network immediately.”

Facebook post: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/446

Graham Cluley writing on naked security says:

“Facebook is already plagued by rogue applications that post spam links to users’ walls, and point users to survey scams that earn them commission – and even sometimes trick users into handing over their cellphone numbers to sign them up for a premium rate service.

Now, shady app developers will find it easier than ever before to gather even more personal information from users. You can imagine, for instance, that bad guys could set up a rogue app that collects mobile phone numbers and then uses that information for the purposes of SMS spamming or sells on the data to cold-calling companies.

The ability to access users’ home addresses will also open up more opportunities for identity theft, combined with the other data that can already be extracted from Facebook users’ profiles.”

Full article: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/01/16/rogue-facebook-apps-access-your-home-address-mobile-phone-number/