Monthly Archives: March 2012
YouTube is launching a new platform called “I Will If You Will” for Earth Hour 2012, which lets users challenge others to take an environmentally friendly action for the planet. Earth Hour, now in its sixth year, encourages people to turn off their lights for 60 minutes one day a year. It’s celebrated annually on March 31 betwe... Read More>>
Foxconn might have been forced to make some changes as its labor conditions were put under the spotlight by the media, but one group seems less than happy with the limitations put upon working hours: the workers themselves. In interviews with Reuters, employees have expressed concern that the new 36-hour per month overtime limit w... Read More>>
Facebook’s latest valuation just reached over $100 billion, and for some reason that struck a chord with me, especially considering the number of users on Facebook. So, just because it’s an interesting thing to think about and not a serious calculation, we decided to do some math: The last auction of Facebook shares on the seco... Read More>>
Best Buy said Thursday that it would close 50 stores, while also detailing plans to expand the number of stores with a different concept where customers can go to try out devices and talk to expert staff members; it will boost worker training by 40 percent. The shift in strategy is one that will echo across much of retail in the futur... Read More>>
Google is getting back into the consumer goods market with an online store and a co-branded tablet, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. On Thursday evening the Journal said that the search engine would try directly targeting the consumer market again, this time with tablets. Since consumers tend to buy tablets without a c... Read More>>
It’s a well-known fact that most people don’t get past page one of Google’s search results. This is why the company is doubling down on integrating a social layer into everything that it does. While algorithms can crawl the entire web to find relevant information, could the things that we share on Facebook become a better and mo... Read More>>
VentureBeat is reporting that mobile payment company Square has updated its credit card reader to support hardware encryption. Apparently all Square dongles will now include circuitry that encrypts credit card data (which is turned into audio after a card is swiped) before it’s sent to an iOS or Android device. VentureBeat r... Read More>>
When you visit Amazon’s homepage, you’ve more than likely seen the recommended items that the company suggests you check out. It’s a really great way to get people into the mood of shopping when they might have just come to browse a bit. Sometimes I visit Amazon with an intent to buy something and have no idea of what I want to g... Read More>>
Online movie streaming in the United States is expected to top both DVD and Blu-ray use for the first time ever in 2012, according to a study from IHS Screen Digest. The study suggests that in 2012, Americans will legally stream 3.4 billion movies online — twice the 1.4 billion streamed in 2011 — while DVD and Blu-ray movies wat... Read More>>
College professor Dean Terry is tired of the relentless positivity in Facebook, where everybody is friends with everybody else. So he’s built an app that lets you designate Facebook enemies as well. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this weekend, Terry thinks that real world relationships are a lot more compli... Read More>>
