nptech.info

pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaboobie/280743143/" title="Halloween Parade - Calculator by cthoyes, on Flickr"img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/96/280743143_dae5b4e8a9.jpg" width="150" height="110" alt="Halloween Parade - Calculator" //aAs the cloud computing market gets more crowded, a number of Web-based calculators are popping up to lure customers./p pThese online calculators deserve their fair share of scrutiny. For the most part, they are there for the vendor to tell their own story in a way that shows the benefits of their service. Huge savings and incredible returns are pretty much what you are given when you pop in your numbers, requirements and company information. In the end, what you get is barely insightful. What the vendor gets is far more./p pAt their best, these cloud computing calculators provide a thumbnail view of the market. At their worst, they are slick tools for generating sales leads./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21627amp;cb=21627' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21627amp;n=21627' border='0' alt='' //a/p pHere are three that we looked at. None of these calculators should ever be used to decide how to use cloud computing services. There are just too many factors to consider when making such a decision. It's a complex undertaking for any established company. It's why cloud management companies do so well. They provide a full gamut of services to help companies decide what should be in the cloud and what should not./p h2Astadia/h2 pa href="http://www.astadia.com/itx_us/"Astadia/a developed a cloud calculator based on the data it collected from the integrations it did for its customers. Its main purpose is to show the return on the Google, Amazon Web Services and Force.com platforms./p pThe calculator is heavily biased. a href="http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid201_gci1518962,00.html"SearchCloudComputing.com/a observes that the actual calculator itself was built on the Force.com platform. Astadia develops marketing and sales apps. Much of the apps it develops are created on Force.com./p h2Google Calculator/h2 pobject width="640" height="385"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4fv1Wc7ipMY?fs=1amp;hl=en_US"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4fv1Wc7ipMY?fs=1amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"/embed/object/p pThis one stinks.a href="http://www.gonegoogle.com/#/company-name" The Google Cloud Calculator/a is hardly a calculator at all. It's an advertisement and a lead generator./p pThe calculator asks for your company name and then the number of employees. Input two employees and the calculator says you will save about $31,000. Put in 15 employees and you will also save about $31,000. So, either Google is inflating the numbers for a two employee company or is vastly underestimating the savings for a 15-person company. /p pGoogle does not have to promote itself in this manner. Google Apps is an excellent service, it can stand on its own. Cost comparisons are fine but to call it a calculator is a bit far fetched./p h2Windows Azure/h2 pThe Windows Azure cloud calculator is better than the Google calculator advertisement. It still requires a high dose of skepticism, especially considering that it was built by a marketing firm. /p pBefore you launch the calculator, they issue a disclaimer. That at least removes a bit of the marketing gleam. /p pThe calculator asks a series of questions. SearchCloudComputing.com makes the point that the calculator is no doubt collecting hordes of marketing information. Again, its more of a marketing ploy than anything else. Still, Micrsoft at least tries to show some integrity:/p blockquote"You should not view the results of this report as a substitute for engaging with a third party expert to independently evaluate you or your company's specific computing needs. The analysis report you will receive is for informational purposes only," it reads. It also assumes a rough estimate of $20,000 per year to manage a server on-premise, and about $4,000 for the Azure equivalent."/blockquote pThere are plenty of other cloud calculators. Rackspace has one as does Amazon Web Services. Our advice is to treat these calculators like you would any marketing information. They are simply tidbits of information that should provide nothing else but a snapshot of the market./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/cloud-calculators-a-sign-of-sl.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/t4ufa7oynNI" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="arcdetriomphe.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/arcdetriomphe.png" width="150" height="114" /If you're capable of seeing past the old stones of Paris and the picturesque rural villages, you'll realize that France is every bit as technologically advanced as any other Western country - more so in some areas. Not only does the country have a higher percentage a href="http://www.journaldunet.com/cc/02_equipement/equip_hautdebit_fr.shtml"of homes/a with high-speed Internet than the a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html"U.S./a (plus it's a href="http://gizmodo.com/5390014/internet-speeds-and-costs-around-the-world-shown-visually"faster and costs half as much/a), it ranks a href="http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/blogs-en-france/15-a-20-millions-de-blogs.shtml"first in the world/a for number of blogs per Internet user, and has a formidable market of Internet consumers who a href="http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/magazine/strategies-mots-cles-2009/e-commerce-france.shtml"spent euro;5.5 billion online/a in the first quarter of this year./p pWhen I came to Paris in 2006, I had a well-developed idea for a startup and nothing else. It's now been about three years since I joined the fray as an entrepreneur and tech blogger. In that time, I've discovered that the startup scene is infused with passion, energy and a strong spirit of collaboration./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21573amp;cb=21573' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21573amp;n=21573' border='0' alt='' //a/p empa href="http://www.lipstickgeek.com"Pamela Poole/a is a blogger, translator and tech writer, and founder of a href="http://francophilia.com"Francophilia.com/a, a social startup for Francophiles. Originally from California, she now lives in Paris, where her involvement in the vibrant startup scene keeps her from spending too much time in the bakeries./p/em pThere's a thriving geek culture in Paris, and no lack of software development expertise, thanks to superior universities that produce superior engineers. The startup scene is relatively young, however, which is partly due to some pretty fundamental cultural barriers. But these barriers are showing some wear and tear./p div class="super-pullquote"pbWant to start up in France?/b/p pWhile foreign entrepreneurs wait for the Startup Visa to become a reality so they can go launch their startups in the US, France has quietly had a similar program in place for some time. The French government has translated the JEI program into English as the a href="http://www.france-science.org/innovation/yei/home.html"Young Entrepreneurs Initiative/a, an annual competition run by the French Embassy to the US. The name is a bit misleading - you don't actually have to be young, but your project does. YEI is essentially the same as the JEI program, and winners of the competition can come to France and enjoy the same benefits as startups with JEI status. So what are you waiting for?/p/divpThere are numerous events and organizations in Paris that exist solely to foster entrepreneurship and tech innovation, many of which get partial financial support from local, regional and national government. France is not a socialist country, but it's a socialized country, and a href="http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=8406"the French get a lot in return/a for the taxes they pay./p h2The Big Players/h2 pa href="http://siliconsentier.org/"Silicon Sentier/a is perhaps the best-known player in the Paris startup scene. It's essentially an ecosystem whose mission is the care and feeding of innovation. Among other activities and programs, Silicon Sentier runs a href="http://lacantine.org/"La Cantine/a, a coworking center, hip geek hangout and bustling hub for Paris tech events and activities: barcamps, workshops, competitions, launch parties, press conferences - you name it./p pa href="http://www.capdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/cap_digital_plaquette.pdf"Cap Digital/a and a href="http://www.systematic-paris-region.org/fr/index.html"System@tic/a are among a href="http://www.competitivite.gouv.fr/spip.php?rubrique44amp;lang=en"a number/a of a href="http://www.ambafrance-UK.org/New-article,8617.html"tech clusters/a in Paris. The boards of these organizations include large companies, local and regional government representatives, universities/public research labs and SMEs. Through them, entrepreneurs can hook up with Ramp;D resources in universities and companies, and get access to a robust support network that provides opportunities for visibility, growth and financing./p pa href="http://doc.openfing.org/FING/LAFING/PUBLICATIONS/BOOK_FING_ENG.pdf"Fing/a, another major player, is "an idea accelerator, a think tank and a resource for innovators." Fing may be a think tank, but it fosters startup success in very concrete ways. Startups can submit their projects to Fing, which provides support to over 200 projects a year through events, programs, and access to a large network of resources./p pa href="http://www.leweb.net/"LeWeb/a, Europe's largest (and the world's second largest) Internet conference is held in Paris every December. It was created and is run by French entrepreneur Loiuml;c Lemeur (a href="http://seesmic.com/"Seesmic/a), and it includes a competition for European startups. Yes, it happens in Paris, but it's held in English because it's an international conference. LeWeb is a world-class tech conference, and the speakers on the program are always the icregrave;me de la cregrave;me/i of the startup world./p h2Incubators, Accelerators, Competitions/h2 pWe have those too. Some, like a href="http://blog.seedcamp.com/2010/03/seedcamp-loves-paris-in-springtime.html"Seedcamp/a, a href="http://startupweekend.org/"Startup Weekend/a, a href="http://barcamp.org/"barcamps/a and the a href="http://www.opencoffeeparis.fr/"OpenCoffee Club/a are imports from other countries. Others are homegrown, like a href="http://www.seednetworking.fr/"SeedNetworking/a, the brainchild of some alumni of HEC (one of France's best business schools) and Ecole des Mines (one of the excellent engineering schools), who tweaked the speed-networking concept to get entrepreneurs who need developers and developers who need projects in the same room for some fast and furious face time./p pThe major engineering and business universities have incubators for students and alumni, though some of them are less Internet oriented than others, and there are a few unaffiliated incubators as well, like a href="http://www.parispionnieres.org/"Paris Pionniegrave;res/a, which receives both public and private funding and supports women-owned startups, and the incubators of a href="http://www.incubateurparisdev.com/" Paris Deacute;veloppement/a, which is funded by the city of Paris and the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Big names like a href="http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/"Microsoft BizSpark/a and a href="http://www.sun.com/startupessentials/indexb.jsp"Sun Startup Essentials/a have a presence here, of course, and a href="http://www.thefunded.com/"The Funded/a recently launched their a href="http://www.founderinstitute.com"Founder Institute/a in Paris as well./p pOne thing we are missing here in Paris is longer-term intensive accelerators of the a href="http://ycombinator.com/"Y Combinator/a variety, but they exist in the U.K., so it shouldn't be long till they hop across the Channel./p h2The Funding/h2 pThe funding landscape is complex from a foreigner's point of view because the government is very often involved somehow. There are public entities that seem to be frequently renamed or merged, as well as semi-private and private organizations, and their activities are all very intertwined with each other. And it's acronym hell. But the bottom line is that there is money for startups, and a lot of it comes from those taxpayer Euros I mentioned earlier. In fact, about three fourths of startup money comes from public funds./p pOne obstacle startups have traditionally faced here is that public and private funding is largely skewed towards projects that involve an Ramp;D/new technology component. French investors are more risk averse than their American counterparts, and the possibility of a patent is reassuring to them./p pAnd, until recently, business angels have been relatively few and far between. This is in part because the government historically filled the seed-funding void, and that is where people tended to turn. But angels are getting more structured, more active, and there more of them. Plus there's been another important new development: Several highly successful French Internet entrepreneurs-turned-investors, who are considerably less skittish than your traditional French investor, are taking matters into their own hands (a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-frances-new-and-awesome-super-angels-2010-4"Meet France's New and Awesome Super Angels/a)./p pThe chart below shows the general funding options available to French startups./p img alt="FundingFrench.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/FundingFrench.jpg" width="600" height="430" / pStartups can access public funding in a number of ways. A rite of passage for many is to go through a href="http://www.oseo.fr/"OSEO/a, which will analyze and validate a project. OSEO validation in turn makes early-stage startups eligible for a variety of support services and funding options. OSEO can be involved during very early stage activities, such as business plan creation and feasibility studies. It also provides support and guidance well beyond that phase./p pA startup can be designated a a href="http://media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/2010/74/2/JEI-2010_135742.pdf"iJeune Entreprise Innovante/i/a (Innovative Young Enterprise). The JEI program was created in 2004 and is managed by the Ministry of Research. Having JEI status is pretty much a golden ticket to financing, and JEI startups also get tax breaks and other benefits. To qualify, your project has to have an Ramp;D element. There is also the iConcours national d'aide agrave; la creacute;ation d'entreprises de technologies innovantes/i (National competition to help create innovative technology companies). Winners of this contest can be awarded up to euro;450,000 for Ramp;D./p pPrivate individuals who want a tax break can put money into special investment funds (a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonds_commun_de_placement_dans_l'innovation"iFonds commun de placement dans l'innovation/i/a) that are meant to be invested in innovative companies. These are managed by various wealth management entities (iConseils en gestion de patrimoine indeacute;pendents/i, or CGPI). The condition for receiving the tax break on these investments is that 60% of the money must go to early-stage, innovative companies, and it must be invested within two years of receipt by the CGPI. OSEO can designate a startup as an iEntreprise innovante au titre des FCPI/i, which makes it eligible for this kind of investment. This designation is similar to JEI but has a broader view of "innovative" and is less strict about the Ramp;D element./p pPocirc;le emploi is the government agency that provides unemployment compensation, but it also helps those recipients who are creating a small business or startup by providing extended compensation and breaks on the social charges (retirement, medical, disability, etc.) that businesses normally pay to the government./p pa href="http://www.reseau-entreprendre-paris.fr/reseau-entreprendre-paris/fr/s01_home/s01p01_home.php"Reacute;seau Entreprendre Paris/a, a network of business owners, and a href="http://www.france-initiative.fr/"France Initiative/a, a network of local organizations, are examples of the many semi-private organizations that support startups. They themselves receive both public and private funding, which they use in turn to provide financial support to startups through incubators and other established channels./p pI've focused on some options for early-stage startups here, and haven't discussed VC funding or the many organizations here that help French startups expand internationally. For a comprehensive guide (in French) to starting up in France, I highly recommend a href="http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/wp-content/themes/Ezratty4/forcedownload.php?file=/Files/Publications/Accompagnement%20des%20Startups%20en%20France%20Feb2010.pdf"Accompagnement des startups high-tech en France [PDF]/a, and for an overview of the funding cycle, a href="http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/wp-content/themes/Ezratty2/forcedownload.php?file=/Files/Publications/Cycle%20de%20financement.pdf"Exemple de cycle de financement de startup en France [PDF]/a; both are by a href="http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/"Olivier Ezratty/a./p emstrongNext page: /strongThe Jeunes Pousses/em pemsmallPhoto by a href="http://www.sxc.hu/profile/dafalias"Konstantinos Dafalias/a/small/em/p !--nextpage-- h2The Startups/h2 div class="super-pullquote"RWW's Never Mind the Valley series: ?php include("../../never_mind_valley.php"); ? /divpYou may think you've never heard of any French startups, but it's possible that you're using apps you don't even realize are French. If they've picked a name English speakers can pronounce and translated their sites into English, they blend right in. Take a href="http://www.netvibes.com/en"Netvibes/a, the pioneer in the personalized dashboard space, which has been written about a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/fastsearch?search=netvibesamp;x=0amp;y=0"a number of times/a here on ReadWriteWeb. They're a href="http://www.faqs.org/websites/netvibes.com/"going strong/a, and constantly adapting their platform to users' changing needs for information and social media aggregation. And there's a href="http://www.dailymotion.com"DailyMotion/a, which is eating into YouTube's market share and had a a href="http://www.beet.tv/2010/02/frances-dailymotion-seeks-to-double-its-us-market-share-this-year.html"70% jump in US traffic in 2009/a./p pThere are plenty of successful startups in France that cleverly capitalized on the fact that startups in other countries didn't localize for the French market. The model of a href="http://www.sarenza.com/"Sarenza/a is similar to that of Zappos, and it dominates the European market for footwear online. There are also original models that are either being copied or stealthily moving into English-speaking markets, like a href="http://en.vente-privee.com/vp4/Login/Portal.ashx"Vente-Priveacute;e/a and a href="http://www.priceminister.com/"PriceMinister/a. PriceMinister, a site for C2C/B2C sales of new and used goods (at a fixed price) is the top e-commerce platform in France (recently surpassing eBay.fr and Amazon.fr). It has infiltrated the U.K., and I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. were on its radar, where it'll surely give eBay.com some healthy - and much needed - competition. Vente-Priveacute;e is a retail site selling designer products at invitation-only online sales. One of the top e-commerce sites in France, it has expanded into other European countries and its model has given rise to some me-toos in other countries./p pThe French have their share of exemplary startups in the enterprise space as well, including a href="http://www.bluekiwi-software.com/"BlueKiwi/a, an enterprise social platform, and a href="http://www.exalead.com/software/"Exalead/a, which offers powerful and easily integrated search tools to help businesses and institutions get the most out of their information assets. Exalead's true entrepreneurial colors still show, thanks to its internal project incubator, a href="http://labs.exalead.com/"Exalabs/a. (Exalead was a href="http://www.exalead.com/software/news/press-releases/2010/06-09.php"just acquired/a by the technology giant, Dassault Systems.)/p pThese are some French startups that have made it to the big time. But what about the little guys? All those struggling, bootstrapping, Ramen-eating founders? As a matter of fact, Paris is crawling with them. Some are clearly aiming no further than the French market, but a number of them are out of the gate in at least French and English with a view to conquering the Web. Just like anywhere else, French startups run the gamut from basic Web apps that focus on a specific niche need, to ambitious and powerful platforms that are likely to give the current leaders a run for their money. Here's a list of just a few of our ijeunes pousses/i (sprouts)./p pi(E= in English)/i/p pa href="http://www.english-attack.com/fr/beta-preview"English Attack/a: Edutainment site that teaches English using Internet content that real people actually use: music, video, gaming, and more. (E)/p pa href="http://www.gamecreds.com/"GameCreds/a: Impressive social universe for gamers. (E)/p pa href="http://kontestapp.com/"Kontest/a: Ready-made solution for creating and managing a variety of interactive contests to provide user communities memorable experiences on Facebook and the iPhone. (E soon!)/p pa href="http://www.mymeetingsondemand.com/decouvrez-meetings/"Meetings/a: Nice collaborative app that manages all activities related to meetings: communications, attachments, agendas, action items, scheduling, etc./p pa href="http://www.monarbre-matribu.com/"MonArbre-MaTribu/a: Crowd-sourced reforestation project, very nicely done. One Euro plants a tree. (France only, for now.)/p pa href="http://www.pearltrees.com/"Pearltrees/a: A bookmarking site with a new approach to organization of content that resembles mind mapping. (a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/fastsearch?search=pearltreesamp;x=0amp;y=0"Covered previously/a on RWW.) (E)/p pa href="http://www.plyce.com/index"Plyce/a: Feature-rich location-based social network. They appear to be of the opinion that badges and mayorships are so last week. (Gotta like that thinking.) (E)/p pa href="http://www.regioneo.com/"Regioneo/a: You know all those cute little French open-air markets where small producers sell their amazing artisanal food products? This site lets you order directly from the producers. (France only, unfortunately)./p pa href="http://www.synthesio.fr/corporate/fr_index.php"Synthesio/a: Web app that provides extensive data from multiple sources for companies that want to track buzz and reputation, and identify trends and influencers. (E and more)/p pa href="http://tellmewhere.com/"span style='color:#002CE2'TellMeWhere/a: A real-time urban guide powered by user recommendations on everything from bars to barbers across the globe. Web and mobile. (a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/fastsearch?search=tellmewhereamp;x=0amp;y="span style='color:#002CE2'Covered previously/a on RWW.) (E)/p pa href="http://www.yoocasa.com/"Yoocasa/a: A private online space, developed in collaboration with child psychologists, where families interact in real time through photo slideshows, video chats, interactive games, and more. (E)/p pa href="http://www.ulule.com/"Ulule/a: Beautifully designed crowdfunding platform for projects that are artsy or for the betterment of society. (E) /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/09/never-mind-the-valley-heres-paris.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/keCwWOEfx2M" height="1" width="1"/

If you’ve seen Danny Boyle’s movie Sunshine, you may be a little disappointed: NASA’s mission to visit the Earth’s Sun won’t include sending people up there. But it will be sending a spacecraft into the Sun’s atmosphere, approximately four million miles from its surface. The project, called Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch sometime before 2018.

Four million miles doesn’t sound very close, but it’s still very exciting, since this is a region no other spacecraft (created by us) has ever encountered. NASA plans for the project to “unlock the sun’s biggest mysteries.”

Although the spacecraft will be relatively far from our star’s surface, its carbon-composite heat shield will have to withstand intense radiation, as well as temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics – why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system?” said Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington.

“We’ve been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers,” said Fisher.

[Image credit: NASA]

More About: mission, NASA, space, spacecraft, sun, Sunshine

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angry tapir writes "Facebook users will soon have a new way of knocking spammers out of legitimate accounts. The social-networking company is rolling out a new security feature that lets users see which computers and devices are logged into their Facebook accounts, and then removing the ones that they don't want to have access."pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fit.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F09%2F03%2F0618235%2FFacebook-To-Add-Remote-Logout" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Facebook+To+Add+Remote+Logout%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FbHWn4M" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/09/03/0618235/Facebook-To-Add-Remote-Logout?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1775636amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframeimg width='1' height='1' src='http://slashdot.feedsportal.com/c/32909/f/530758/s/d612d5b/mf.gif' border='0'/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H6_h_LcNEhDZd5JTjeMNqwUxkxc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H6_h_LcNEhDZd5JTjeMNqwUxkxc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H6_h_LcNEhDZd5JTjeMNqwUxkxc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/H6_h_LcNEhDZd5JTjeMNqwUxkxc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/AKjpRFgoTI0" height="1" width="1"/

We’ve just gotten an email from Twitter stating that staffers are testing push notifications amongst themselves and the company will be rolling this feature out to all users soon.

Push notifications would enable users to get instant, real-time updates for certain types of tweets — probably DMs and @replies and perhaps other kinds of tweets, as well.

A few lucky users accidentally got the new feature with the Twitter for iPad application which was recently released.

“When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users,” wrote a Twitter spokesperson. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app.”

“We’ve been testing push notifications internally,” the rep continued. “Push isn’t ready yet, but we look forward to rolling this out soon.”

Twitter for iPhone, formerly known as Tweetie, was made available to the public three months ago. Since then, it’s skyrocketed to a top spot as one of the most-used Twitter interfaces. In fact, 8% of all users of Twitter access the app via Twitter for iPhone.

As for Twitter’s official iPad app, which just launched late last night, we don’t yet have any data on how much use that app is getting, but we do know that its interface is exciting and well-designed enough to get geeks around the web pretty excited; stay tuned for our full write-up and review later tonight.

What do you think of push notifications for Twitter mobile apps? Are you looking forward to getting real-time updates from those you follow?

Image courtesy of Flickr, tsevis

Reviews: Flickr, Twitter

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It’s something you’d expect to hear from your mother, not your government, but New York’s newest laws are all about exercising common sense when looking for love online.

Sounding like something between a schoolteacher and a public service announcement, the Internet safety act will require online dating websites to warn their users about the potential perils of web-based romance.

The caveats seem like the kind of best practices any mindful Internet user would have internalized years ago. Things like not giving out your physical address and providing your own transportation on initial dates, for example, are no-brainers.

But the act also includes clauses about not revealing your employer or last name; a simple search engine could be used as a tool for stalking or much worse in the grimmest scenarios.

And another point made in the act is proof of how much dating has changed in the past 20 years: Users are warned against giving out their phone numbers in the first volley of emails back and forth between themselves and any strangers they may meet on a dating site.

Basically, the government is trying to make sure dating websites do everything they can to keep users from releasing identifying information until it’s safe and appropriate.

Although online dating is huge business, we can’t imagine many companies having a problem with this requirement of consumer awareness, depending on how it’s carried out. In fact, such a law might even be beneficial on a national level. One other state — New Jersey — has enacted such a law already.

What do you think of the Internet safety act in New York? Do you think it’s an appropriate, common-sense measure for dating websites to have to take? Or is it a futile reaction to Internet-linked violent crimes, which may have little to do with dating sites specifically?

Let us know your opinions in the comments.

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pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/apple_tv_sep10.jpg" /One of a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/live_blog_apples_fall_event.php"Apple's announcements/a yesterday was a completely redesigned a href="http://www.apple.com/appletv/"Apple TV/a. It's competing in a crowded and still confusing a href="http://newteevee.com/2010/09/01/comparison-apple-tv-vs-roku-vs-boxee-box/"field of products/a that stream video from the Internet to your TV. a href="http://www.boxee.tv/"Boxee/a and a href="http://www.roku.com/"Roku/a are two smaller companies a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boxee_box_comes_out_of_the_box.php"trying to crack it/a; and a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-tv-tv-meets-web-web.html"Google TV/a was a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_introduces_google_tv.php"unveiled in May/a. The ultimate goal of all of these products is to make Web-to-TV very easy for consumers, but the market is still searching for the right formula. /p pWe'd like to poll the ReadWriteWeb community on this topic. Let us knowstrong how you currently get online video (and other media content) onto your TV/strong. Also, which of the emerging products do you think has the best chance to be the consumer offering of choice?/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21626amp;cb=21626' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21626amp;n=21626' border='0' alt='' //a/p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/appletv_remote.jpg" align="right" /The key points of the new Apple TV are: a much lower price (now $99, compared to $229 for the first generation product), streamlined form (80% smaller), streaming functionality, no more local storage, Netflix and YouTube access, and 99c TV show rentals./p pOther ways to access Web content on your TV include: modern Internet-connected TVs; online gaming devices like Sony PlayStation 3 and X-Box 360; P2P software; Set-top boxes like TiVo (specifically, its a href="http://www.tivo.com/what-is-tivo/tivo-is/index.html"Premiere/a offering released in March); streaming software for computers, such as a href="http://www.playon.tv/playon"playon/a; wireless USB display adapter sets; special cables to hook a computer up to a TV. /p pOf course, there's still the matter of accessing good content. All of the online TV players have been busy doing deals with TV and movie distributors, a process which is far from being worked through. Meanwhile, many consumers have used P2P services like a href="http://www.bittorrent.com/"BitTorrent/a to get such content for free./p pThe video below from the Google TV announcement shows the (potential) benefits of streaming Web content to your TV:/p p object width="610" height="367" param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/diTpeYoqAhccolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xd0d0d0hl=en_USfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" / param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" / embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/diTpeYoqAhccolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xd0d0d0hl=en_USfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="610" height="367"/embed /object /p p I myself use a combination of Sony Playstation 3 and the P2P client a href="http://www.vuze.com/"Vuze/a in order to stream the occasional TV show and movie to my TV. Although it converts online video to a PS3 compatible format, it's still not a completely satisfactory solution. Sometimes the sound doesn't work, or the video is choppy, and so on. So I'm looking forward to purchasing one of the upcoming devices from Apple, Boxee, Roku or Google. /p pstrongDo you stream content from the Internet into your TV?/strong If so, tell everyone how you do it in the comments below. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_thread_internet_tv.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/sBt1-DfMzW0" height="1" width="1"/

Last month I wrote the forward to a new book called The Shift: The Evolving Market, Players and Business Models in a 2.0 World and it’s now available – for free! It’s essentially a marketing vehicle for the very large telecommunication infrastructure provider Alcatel-Lucent, but it’s marketing 2.0 of the best kind: the book makes almost zero mention of the company at all. It just talks about how changes in society and mobile internet devices are combining in such a way that network service providers should offer application programming interfaces to a wider developer community. It’s a really good real, actually.

My forward isn’t my best writing, but I was proud to have been given the opportunity. I wrote a better article, one I’m quite proud of in fact, this week about an acquisition the company made: Acquisition Aims to Change History for Mobile Apps & Data.

I recommend reading the book if you’re into thinking about these kinds of topics. You can read selections online and if you want, the company will send you a free paper copy in exchange for your contact info. They may or may not call you, I’m guessing, to discuss whether you’d like to buy a big telephony infrastructure middleware software package. Or they may want to talk to you if you’re a developer. Either way, it’s no big whoop and it’s certainly worth it to do all the learning you’ll get from the book. It’s fun.

You can check out the book and its corresponding online community here.

Trailrunner7 writes "Google has released a new version of its Chrome browser and has included more than a dozen security fixes in the update. The new version, 6.0.472.53, was released two years to the day after the company pushed out the first version of Chrome. Google Chrome 6 includes patches for 14 total security vulnerabilities, including six high-priority flaws, and the company paid out a total of $4,337 in bug bounties to researchers who reported the vulnerabilities. A number of the flaws that didn't qualify for bug bounties were discovered by members of Google's internal security team." (Read on for more, below.)pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F09%2F03%2F0133211%2FGoogle-Releases-Chrome-6-Pays-4337-In-Bounties" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Google+Releases+Chrome+6%2C+Pays+%244337+In+Bounties%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F9F4AhB" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/03/0133211/Google-Releases-Chrome-6-Pays-4337-In-Bounties?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1775456amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframeimg width='1' height='1' src='http://slashdot.feedsportal.com/c/32909/f/530758/s/d5fdb64/mf.gif' border='0'/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6qGfWEMxfzNEOplKybVviVazg-k/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6qGfWEMxfzNEOplKybVviVazg-k/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6qGfWEMxfzNEOplKybVviVazg-k/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/6qGfWEMxfzNEOplKybVviVazg-k/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/A5-V_gGr-nY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="wave_logo_sep09.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/wave_logo_sep09.jpg" width="150" height="122" class="mt-image-none" style="" /Google Wave is far from dead, and developers, early adopters and enterprises will be glad to hear it. Today Google announced it will expand on the code it has already open sourced, building Wave into a functional application that will allow users to run wave servers, host their own waves and build bigger and better applications with the real-time collaboration technology./p p"Since the beginning, it has been our vision that the Google Wave protocols could support a new generation of communication and collaboration tools," engineer Alex North a href="http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2010/09/wave-open-source-next-steps-wave-in-box.html"wrote/a on the Google Wave developer blog. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21625amp;cb=21625' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21625amp;n=21625' border='0' alt='' //a/p pGoogle had a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_wave_google_tries_to_reinvent_email.php"big plans/a for Wave - it was supposed to replace email and the a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/google-wave-graduates-to-googl.php"killer app/a among Google Apps, but the company basically gave up on the project earlier this month (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_wave_is_dead.php"Google Wave Is Dead/a). It still seems possible for the technology to do big things. But it sounds like Google plans to move on after the application is released. The future of the open source project will be defined by developers' contributions, North wrote./p pWave In A Box will not have the "full functionality" of the Gmail-integrated Web app, but it will feature threaded conversations and support importing data from a href="http://wave.google.com"wave.google.com/a./p pThe release of Wave as an application could be a big deal for developers, especially at businesses that want to take advantage of Wave for real-time collaboration and discussion (see our post, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/five-services-that-leverage-go.php"5 Services That Leverage Google Wave/a)./p pWave was always intended for people to run on their own machines, but this release will make the process much easier. Developers and enterprise users that have been eyeing Wave will be more likely to take the technology into their own hands and build things like feature-rich Web forums, productivity tools and apps to facilitate collaborative projects./p pGoogle did not specify a timeline for the release of the new code, but it has a href="http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/08/quick-note-on-next-steps-for-google.html"said/a that a href="http://wave.google.com"wave.google.com/a will be available at least through the end of the year./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_wave_in_a_box.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/gBU3WQG19b8" height="1" width="1"/

itwbennett writes "According to Harvard magazine, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted at its meeting on May 11 to require instructors to officially inform the Registrar 'at the first week of the term' of the intention to end a course with a formal, seated exam, 'the assumption shall be that the instructor will not be giving a three-hour final examination.' Dean of undergraduate education Jay M. Harris 'told the faculty that of 1,137 undergraduate-level courses this spring term, 259 scheduled finals mdash; the lowest number since 2002, when 200 fewer courses were offered. For the more than 500 graduate-level courses offered, just 14 had finals, he reported.'"pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F09%2F02%2F2352203%2FHarvard-Ditching-Final-Exams" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Harvard+Ditching+Final+Exams%3F%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F9jWSaL" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/09/02/2352203/Harvard-Ditching-Final-Exams?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1775386amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframeimg width='1' height='1' src='http://slashdot.feedsportal.com/c/32909/f/530758/s/d5f987e/mf.gif' border='0'/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lh9j3tUm89c8tLsjaY4AgsTyjFM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lh9j3tUm89c8tLsjaY4AgsTyjFM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lh9j3tUm89c8tLsjaY4AgsTyjFM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/lh9j3tUm89c8tLsjaY4AgsTyjFM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/dQdAffqoPDE" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="twitter-for-iphone.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/twitter-for-iphone.jpg" width="150" height="150" class="mt-image-none" style="" /As far as Web services go, Twitter is pretty easy to use. Fill out a brief profile, follow some people and go, right? Well apparently not. Developers at the company have been fretting over the fact that some people still think Twitter is "too hard" to use./p pBut the solution has proved easy. By simply releasing mobile apps named "Twitter," the company has seen a boost in new users./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21624amp;cb=21624' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21624amp;n=21624' border='0' alt='' //a/p pTwitter announced today that the number of total mobile users has jumped 62% since mid-April, thanks to the release of Twitter for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. These apps existed before - Twitter for iPhone is just a a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_acquires_tweetie_offers_free_as_twitter_fo.php"rebranded version/a of the third-party client Tweetie - but they weren't recruiting new users./p p"We did iPhone user tests and confirmed that even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called 'Twitter.' This kept them from using Twitter at all," CEO a href="http://twitter.com/ev"Evan Williams/a wrote in a blog post titled "a href="http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html"The Evolving Ecosystem/a" today./p pNow 16% of new users sign up via mobile, versus 5% before the name changes. Almost half of all active users "make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience," according to Twitter./p pDespite the mobile push and recent speculation that Twitter's clients have a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/twitter-for-ipad"killed/a its Web site, 78% of users still access Twitter at least once a month via the Web./p pimg alt="twitter-clients.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/twitter-clients.jpg" width="400" height="282" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;" /br / a href="http://Twitter.com"Twitter.com/a and Twitter's a href="http://m.Twitter.com"mobile Web site/a are the top ways users access Twitter, followed by SMS and the official iPhone and BlackBerry clients. a href="http://twitpic.com/"TwitPic/a, the photo-uploading service, and a href="http://www.google.com/friendconnect/"Google Friend Connect/a, the widget that lets websites feature content from social networks, are also in the top ten ways users access Twitter. Surprisingly, Twitter for Android was not./p pThe rest of the 300,000 registered Twitter applications have much fewer users, Twitter said. But Williams is encouraged by the growth and variety of apps in Twitter's ecosystem. "These new services help people get the most out of Twitter, contributing to user growth and new business opportunities," he wrote./p pTwitter said it now has more than 145 million registered users, although the number of active users is lower. /p pHow do you access Twitter?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_ten_twitter_apps_why.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/DoJK3A5pjb4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/help_wanted_sept10.jpg"College hiring is projected to rebound in time for the Class of 2011 to feel its effects, according to a new survey conducted by the a href="http://www.naceweb.org/home.aspx"National Association of Colleges and Employers/a (NACE). Employers who took part in NACE's survey say they're anticipating hiring 13.5% more new college grades from the Class of 2011 than they did from the Class of 2010. And in general, just under 48% of those responding said they plan to increase their hiring, while 40% say they expect to maintain the hiring levels. Good news for those stepping into the job market after graduation this spring./p pWe've written before about the things to ask yourself as to whether or not a a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/07/is-a-job-at-a-startup-right-fo.php"job at a startup is right for you/a. But if you think your post-graduate plans involve life with a startup, then there are a number of things you can do, while still in school, to prep. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21623amp;cb=21623' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21623amp;n=21623' border='0' alt='' //a/p h2Preparing Now for the Post-Graduate Job Hunt/h2 pThe first, of course, may be to look for an internship. While the traditional notion of internship conjures images of corporate drudgery (in my head, at least), a href="http://www.youtern.com/"YouTern/a is one organization that works to place college students with entrepreneurial-driven companies. (See our ReadWriteWeb write-up a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/05/online-community-youtern-links-college-interns-and-startups.php"here/a.) Not only are internships important skill-, network-, and resume-building experiences, it's a great way to get a taste for the startup life - something quite different than other post-college jobs./p pIf you're sure the startup world is right for you, then a href="http://www.jasonshen.com"Jason Shen/a and a href="http://www.derekflanzraich.com"Derek Flanzraich/a, both recent college graduates working at startups (Shen works for a href="http://www.isocket.com/"isocket/a and Flanzraich for a href="http://www.clicker.com"Clicker/a) have written a great set of tips on a href="http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/get-a-startup-job-out-of-college/"how to land a startup job out of college/a./p pHere are a few of their tips:br / ullibKnow Your Industry Inside and Out/b: Do your research. a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/07/domain-experience-gives-entrepreneurs-an-unfair-advantage/"Domain experience matters/a./lilibFocus - Only Target a Few Startups/b: You want to find the startup that matches your skills, your knowledge (see above), but also your workstyle and your vision./lilibGet Good at Specific Stuff/b: As Shen and Flanzraich write, startups "need people who can make an immediate impact on their 'bottom line', whether that's users, revenue, traffic, or something else." You need to bring a strong skill-set, but also a diverse skill-set. /lili bProve Your Worth/b: As with any job hunt nowadays, you want to make sure your online presence demonstrates a portfolio of projects and blog posts./lilibGet a Referral - Or Become a Friendly Face/b: Startups rarely have "openings," and even when they do, a reference makes a big difference. Don't know anyone who can recommend you? Shen and Flanzraich suggest volunteering. "Startups love free labor."/lilibSend in a Killer, Personalized and Memorable App/b: "Do something something different," they suggest. "Do something memorable. Something that proves your enthusiasm and dedication to the company."/lilibBe Yourself/b/li/ul/p pSure, it's Fall and college students are just beginning to return to campus. But it's never too early to start preparing for graduation - and the job search - in the spring. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/09/how-to-get-a-job-at-a-startup.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/9pl3QIA8zJ4" height="1" width="1"/

Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. 'While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,' writes Lawler. 'All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.'"pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmobile.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F09%2F02%2F2159237%2FFlash-On-Android-Is-Shockingly-Bad" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Flash+On+Android+Is+'Shockingly+Bad'%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FajwbgR" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/09/02/2159237/Flash-On-Android-Is-Shockingly-Bad?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1775308amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframeimg width='1' height='1' src='http://slashdot.feedsportal.com/c/32909/f/530758/s/d5f0e71/mf.gif' border='0'/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UYUTzWbCiSEWjP4CqUqikAOIxXQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UYUTzWbCiSEWjP4CqUqikAOIxXQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UYUTzWbCiSEWjP4CqUqikAOIxXQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/UYUTzWbCiSEWjP4CqUqikAOIxXQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/oKKHbMg59wY" height="1" width="1"/

cgriffin21 writes "Samsung is making no bones about it: Google Android is its future. And with the revealing of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the company is showing that it's all in when it comes to Android. At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Samsung finally pulled the curtain off the long-rumored and teased Galaxy Tab, the electronics maker's touch-screen tablet and answer to the Apple iPad."pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmobile.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F09%2F02%2F1315228%2FSamsung-Shows-Off-Galaxy-Tab-Android-Allegiance" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Samsung+Shows+Off+Galaxy+Tab%2C+Android+Allegiance%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FaOJqTN" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/09/02/1315228/Samsung-Shows-Off-Galaxy-Tab-Android-Allegiance?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1774794amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframeimg width='1' height='1' src='http://slashdot.feedsportal.com/c/32909/f/530758/s/d5bb562/mf.gif' border='0'/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kZie0hSztguGt6uvZEiELswQL3s/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kZie0hSztguGt6uvZEiELswQL3s/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kZie0hSztguGt6uvZEiELswQL3s/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kZie0hSztguGt6uvZEiELswQL3s/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/mlswMg7guM4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="SEOMoz logo" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/seomoz-logo.png" width="150" /SEOMoz, a site we've a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2010/08/3-must-subscribe-sources-for-seo-tips.php" target="_blank"covered before/a as a top-notch resource for search engine optimization tips, recently relaunched their site and opened their campaign-based Web app as a public beta. /p pThe company is also hoping to drive new sign-ups for its a href="http://www.seomoz.org/pro" target="_blank"Pro account/a, which is being offered at a discounted rate of $79 per month (normally $99), at least until midnight Pacific Time on Friday, September 3, 2010. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21622amp;cb=21622' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21622amp;n=21622' border='0' alt='' //a/p pThe SEOMoz Web app, which manages crawl diagnostics, on-page optimization, and keyword tracking, is now available to all Pro users. Other features like XML sitemaps and integration with Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics are on the horizon, according to SEOMoz Community Manager Jen Sable Lopez. /p pAlthough the site's UI was already pretty snazzy, a href="http://seomoz.org" target="_blank"SEOMoz.org/a is also sporting an brand new design from head to footer. /p pSEOMoz is used by big names like Ebay, Best Buy, The New York Times, Facebook and Yahoo!, among others. In addition to their paid Pro account, they offer an extensive library of free SEO resources, including a href="http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo" target="_blank"The Beginner's Guide to SEO/a and one of the most highly-acclaimed a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog" target="_blank"SEO blogs/a on the planet. /p pInterested in taking SEOMoz Pro for a spin? You can still a href="" target="_blank"sign-up/a at the discounted rate until midnight Pacific Time on Friday September 3./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2010/09/get-pro-seo-insight-for-cheap-with-the-new-seomoz.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/UVEEs-FC7So" height="1" width="1"/

div style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" !-- div style="background-color: #B3B3B3; width: 160px; padding: 1px;"a title="Click here to read Notifo Sends Push Notifications from Popular Services or the Command Line to Your iPhone" href="http://lifehacker.com/tag/downloads/" style="background-color:#888888; color:#FFFFFF; font-size:12px;text-align:right; display:block; height:14px; padding:1px 2px; text-decoration:none; text-transform:uppercase; width:156px;"span style="color: white;" class="hash"#/spanspan style="color: white;"downloads/span/a/div -- diva title="Click here to read Notifo Sends Push Notifications from Popular Services or the Command Line to Your iPhone" href="http://lifehacker.com/5629011/notifo-sends-push-notifications-from-popular-services-or-the-command-line-to-your-iphone" class="pp_image" img style="border-color: #B3B3B3; border-width: 0 1px 1px; border-style: none solid solid;" height="120" width="160" title="Click here to read Notifo Sends Push Notifications from Popular Services or the Command Line to Your iPhone" alt="Click here to read Notifo Sends Push Notifications from Popular Services or the Command Line to Your iPhone" src="http://cache-02.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/09/160x120_notifo-th.jpg"/ span class="play_icon"/span /a/div /div !-- videoId: aW5hp3aoF9M --!-- /videoId: aW5hp3aoF9M -- iOS/Windows/Mac/Linux: Free service Notifo is a kitchen sink of push notifications for your iPhone or desktop, pushing Twitter updates, your favorite RSS feeds, Google Voice alerts, and more straight to your iPhone or desktop notification utility. And it's extremely hackable. a href="http://lifehacker.com/5629011/notifo-sends-push-notifications-from-popular-services-or-the-command-line-to-your-iphone" title="Click here to read more about Notifo Sends Push Notifications from Popular Services or the Command Line to Your iPhone [Downloads]"Morenbsp;raquo;/a br style="clear: both;" /div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?a=pvX37UaannE:3GUEnroHg_I:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?a=pvX37UaannE:3GUEnroHg_I:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?i=pvX37UaannE:3GUEnroHg_I:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?a=pvX37UaannE:3GUEnroHg_I:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?i=pvX37UaannE:3GUEnroHg_I:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?a=pvX37UaannE:3GUEnroHg_I:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/excerpts?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a /div

pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/150799954/" title="Boston University: Marsh Plaza and Chapel by wallyg, on Flickr"img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/150799954_d90666bbeb.jpg" width="150" height="100" alt="Boston University: Marsh Plaza and Chapel" //aThe Virginia Community College system had a problem. The IT department had run out of ways to cool its data center. /p pThey explored going through the expense of transforming the building where the servers were housed or moving to a new building all together./p pVirtualization helped sort things out. They discovered servers that were soaking up power but were doing next to nothing. The results came far faster than expected. The cost savings were almost immediate./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21620amp;cb=21620' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21620amp;n=21620' border='0' alt='' //a/p pbr / a title="Download the Case Study on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28781340/Download-the-Case-Study" onClick="javascript:secondTracker._trackPageview('/PDF/CaseStudies/VirginiaCC');" target="rwcloud_new"Download the Case Study/a object id="doc_696620699441917" name="doc_696620699441917" height="600" width="100%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" style="outline:none;" param name="movie" value="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" param name="wmode" value="opaque" param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" param name="FlashVars" value="document_id=28781340access_key=key-slzu1llslj9ljxwouqnpage=1viewMode=list" embed id="doc_696620699441917" name="doc_696620699441917" src="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=28781340access_key=key-slzu1llslj9ljxwouqnpage=1viewMode=list" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="600" width="100%" wmode="opaque" bgcolor="#ffffff"/embed/object /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/weekly-case-study-virginia-com.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/WnmgkBnaGBI" height="1" width="1"/

Since Twitter acquired Tweetie and rolled out an official iPhone client, the company has focused more and more on improving the mobile experience across all smartphone platforms.

Twitter CEO Ev Williams wrote just now on the company blog that mobile usage of the site is up 62% since in just over four months, and 16% of all new Twitter users are starting out on mobile devices as opposed to web signups (this number is up from just 5% earlier this year).

In the days before Twitter started issuing official apps on a platform-by-platform basis, the company wasn’t seeing the kind of mobile adoption it had hoped for. Williams wrote, “Even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called ‘Twitter.’ This kept them from using Twitter at all.”

The company adopted a new strategy for mobile; rather than leaving all the mobile app development to third parties, Twitter decided to consolidate efforts. In the short term, this caused some consternation for third-party devs; however, looking at Twitter’s stats, it’s clear the company did the right thing for its shareholders and bottom line.

Twitter acquired Tweetie in May this year; this was our first indication that Twitter would be creating and distributing its own mobile apps for a change. Tweetie was revamped and renamed Twitter for iPhone in May. A BlackBerry app was released in April, and the company’s official Android Twitter app was released later the same month.

Twitter is also seeing strong growth in its mobile site and SMS service, and Williams notes that third-party apps such as TweetDeck continue to be valuable and important parts of the Twitter mobile landscape.

And as for the long tail, Williams writes, “There are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets. The number of registered OAuth applications is now at almost 300,000 — this number has nearly tripled since Chirp [Twitter's developer conference, which was held in April in San Francisco].”

While the above chart shows percentages of unique users per app, we’d also love to see a breakdown by volume of tweets.

Has your own mobile usage of Twitter changed or grown at all with Twitter’s releasing several official apps? Do you still use third-party applications for tweeting on the go? Let us know what you think about these stats in the comments.

Reviews: Chirp Blu, Tvider Blackberry App , TweetDeck, Twitter, tweetie

More About: apps, Mobile 2.0, twitter

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• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

pimg alt="facebook-places-logo.JPG" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/facebook-places-logo.JPG" width="150" height="150" class="mt-image-none" style="" /Facebook's goal for its a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gently_now_facebook_introduces_the_masses_to_locat.php"new Places feature/a may be even more ambitious than we realized. Facebook wants to be the central platform for location data across all Web services, a company spokesman a href="http://twitter.com/danielbachhuber/status/22835647204"said/a today at a New York Times developer a href="http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/timesopen/"conference/a. /p pThe statement reinforces the image of a world where the majority of the population is catalogued in Facebook's growing database. The long-term vision for Facebook Places is starting to take shape: Facebook wants to dominate the location-based Web./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21621amp;cb=21621' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21621amp;n=21621' border='0' alt='' //a/p pFacebook demonstrated that it wants your profile to be your identity on the Internet with Facebook Connect (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php"Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login/a). Basically, it now wants you to a href="http://www.quora.com/Where-does-the-location-data-come-from-for-Facebook-Places"add location to that identity/a./p h2Covering the basics/h2 pPlaces is restricted to basic location-confirmed check-ins - who is where, when - shunning mayorships and badges and leaving any sort of advertising up to third-party developers. This minimalist functionality leaves out some of the fun out of checking in, but it makes sense if Facebook's plan is simply to place its 500 million users on a dynamic map./p pAnd Facebook hopes that soon, any app developer who comes up with a new location-based service will a href="http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/403"turn first/a to Facebook's massive trove of data./p h2Early projections/h2 pThe full manifestation of Facebook Places is still five to ten years out. The feature is available to all users in the U.S., but not everyone is using it. /p pFor one thing, Places requires users to check in from a GPS-enabled device, but a href="http://gigaom.com/2010/03/26/1-in-2-americans-will-have-a-smartphone-by-christmas-2011/"less than a third/a of Americans have smartphones, according to Nielson. That's changing rapidly - Nielson estimates that half of Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2011./p h2Trusting Facebook with location data/h2 pAnd all this is contingent on people sharing their location information with Facebook, of course. That's no guarantee given the company's history of privacy slip-ups (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_privacy_explanation_debate.php"The Facebook Privacy Debate: What You Need to Know/a). But whether people use the service will depend on how much utility they get from it, as it did when Facebook introduced the News Feed feature. Users initially rejected the change, it now drives much of the activity on the site because it's useful and fun./p pUsers, developers and advertisers should all be excited for the possibilites for location-based services, from social shopping and rewards programs to real-time travel guides. The question is whether Facebook can persuade its users to trust it with their location data. Users might prefer to give their location data directly to individual applications, or another company might rise up to collect this data./p pWhat do you think? 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