Since August, Bing has completely integrated shopping results directly into main the main experience. Now, as of yesterday, Bing has retired the notion of a "dedicated shopping" experience when you search for products.
"Place Pins" offers a new way for local businesses to market themselves on Pinterest. The interactive map allows pinners to pin places they want to visit someday. These pins include local establishments with addresses and phone numbers.
Storytelling always has been an art, and really is simple. Here are some tried and true tips to get your stories found (e.g., in Google search), friended (e.g., liked on Facebook), followed (e.g., followed on Twitter), and forwarded (e.g., shared).
The Google Analytics mobile reports will help you understand which devices people are using to view your website, let you compare conversions completed across devices, and view important data such as operating systems and screen resolution.
It's time to change how you think about planning paid search campaigns. The best paid search managers will understand (and can explain to others) the core concepts of how to target people above and beyond keyword groups by targeting audiences.
Dove Beauty Sketches, created by agency Ogilvy Mather for the Unilever personal care brand, tops the 2013 Top 20 Global Social Video Ads Chart – an annual ranking of the year's most socially-shared video ads – which was released today by Unruly.
The shopping forecast for the 2013 holiday season shows no signs of slowing, even in a sometimes-uncertain economy. Data predicts people will shop earlier this year, spend the most on Cyber Monday and undoubtedly be shopping on their mobile devices.
"The way I think of it is you can either have a unique meta tag description, or you can choose to have no meta tag description, but I wouldn't have duplicate meta tag descriptions," according to Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts.
The digital video market has entered its adolescence. But even though it’s bigger and stronger, it’s still in its awkward teens. It must grow up as an industry and prove that digital video is just as safe and transparent as its television parent.
Data coming from social analytics company Piqora said a single pin pays dividends to brands over time - up to several months after it was originally pinned - with the average pin being worth 78 cents in sales for all types of publishers.
Google has made the process of applying for reconsideration of a site very difficult. If you're one of the unlucky ones struggling to get a penalty removed, here are eight common mistakes to avoid to ensure your reconsideration request succeeds.
With so many different ways to incorporate video into your content marketing, there's no excuse not to. Here are eight video production types and how they can be used to increase awareness, build lead generation, and establish trust with customers.
There are fewer SEO drawbacks when using responsive design versus a lightweight mobile version, but a mobile site can work just as well as responsive design, as long as you avoid dividing your PageRank and duplicate content issues.
LinkedIn has unveiled Showcase Pages, a complement to its now well-known Company Pages, with the important difference that now followers of the brand can interact directly with the specific branch, unit or business they are interested in.
Here's what webmasters should do to ensure that if they have a site with pages that could be considered a YMYL page (web pages that can directly influence your money or your life), so that they will be rated highly and follow best SEO practices.
Google has agreed to pay a settlement of $17 million to 38 U.S. states in order to end a probe into claims that it deliberately bypassed user privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser. Google also agreed to never deploy similar tracking code again.
Bing has introduced Connected Pages, a feature that lets you claim your owned content properties (e.g., your Facebook business page, LinkedIn profile, app store pages and other social properties), and see how they're discovered in search.
Chitika released findings today that showed the click-through rates of ads on websites were highest when visitorscame to that website from the Ask.com engine, with Google trailing behind Bing and Yahoo in fourth position.
With 100 hours of content uploaded every minute to YouTube, gaining a high number of video views isn't easy. But it's not impossible with the right plan. Here are a few optimization steps you can take to help your video get found, viewed and shared.
Executives are unhappy with the skills of digital and social media team talent. A large talent gap is hurting sales, employee retention, and marketing ROI. But all hope isn't gone. Check out these tips on hiring and keeping digital marketing talent.
Intel will release new Atom chips for smartphones and tablets next year as it chases a goal of boosting mobile chip graphics performance by 15 times and CPU performance by five times by 2016. The 64-bit Atom chips are based on new CPU and graphics cores and will likely appear in smartphones and devices starting in 2015. The new lineup boasts two high-performance mobile chips and the first Atom chip with an integrated modem, which will be for low-priced entry-level devices. Intel wants to obtain performance leadership with the chips as it continues to improve battery life on devices, said Hermann Eul, vice president and general manager of Mobile and Communications Group at Intel, during a speech at the annual investor day meeting Thursday. Intel’s chips are used in only a handful of smartphones as it chases market leader ARM, whose processors are used in a majority of smartphones and tablets. Intel’s upcoming mobile chips will be made using its 14-nanometer process, which could bring performance and power benefits.
A jury has ordered Samsung to pay $290 million to Apple for infringement of several of its patents in multiple Samsung smartphones and tablets. The verdict, reached on the third day of deliberation by the eight-person jury, is less than the , but it's much more than the $52 million that Samsung had been arguing it should pay. The verdict represents a second victory for Apple in its multiyear patent fight against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Last year a jury in the same San Jose courtroom ruled for infringement of five Apple patents in multiple Samsung phones and tablets. But afterward, Judge Lucy Koh ordered a new trial to reconsider $450 million of the damages after finding the previous jury had applied an "impermissible legal theory" to its calculations. Thursday's verdict is the result of that new trial.
It’s inevitable that upgrading to a new version of an operating system or application comes with a bit of a learning curve. With Windows 8.1, though—and its predecessor Windows 8—the curve is steep, and just finding simple tools and features can be a challenge. . When Microsoft launched Windows 8.1, it solved much of the dilemma by bringing back the concept of the Start button. It is not identical in either form or function its predecessor, but it does provide simple access to a wide variety of common tools and functions. .
Apple says a request by Samsung to halt a damages retrial, in which the jury is currently deliberating, “crossed the bounds of reason.” Lawyers for Samsung Wednesday asking U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh to halt the retrial in anticipation that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would nullify one of the patents at the center of the case. The patent, , covers a single and multitouch zooming method for smartphones and is being reexamined by the patent office to determine if it should have been issued in the first place. Samsung said the USPTO advised it on Wednesday that it intends to find all claims of the patent are invalid.
The BMW i3 drives like a sports car, brakes for you, and tells you when to re-charge.
A network researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has found a potential new use for graphics processing units—capturing data about network traffic in real time. GPU-based network monitors could be uniquely qualified to keep pace with all the traffic flowing through networks running at 10Gbps (gigabits per second) or more, said Fermilab’s Wenji Wu. Wenji presented his work as part of a poster series of new research at the SC 2013 supercomputing conference this week in Denver. Network analysis tools face an extreme challenge in keeping up with all of the traffic of today’s larger networks, he said. Adding to the strain, network administrators increasingly expect to inspect operational data in real-time, as it is happening.
Continuing its practice of sharing internally developed software, Facebook has released as open source , the embedded data store the company developed to serve content to its 1.2 billion users. The company on Github, in hopes that others, both in industry and the academic community, will refine the software. With Facebook’s emphasis on scalability, RocksDB may be of interest to other Internet services and enterprises that are building high-traffic apps for customers and employees. In its newfound liberation, RocksDB joins other software that Facebook has released as open source. Facebook has posted the source code this year for the , all of which were developed in-house.
Intel is offering contract manufacturing to any company that wants advanced silicon. Intel had previously offered contract manufacturing to only select customers such as Altera, Achronix, and Netronome, which design high-margin FPGA (field-programmable gate arrays) products, but is expanding that part of its business, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, said Thursday, during an Intel investor meeting in Santa Clara, California, which was webcast. “If we can use our silicon to provide the best computing, we’ll do it,” Krzanich said. “You will see us focusing on a much broader set of customers.” Intel’s manufacturing facilities are considered the most advanced in the industry, so the company believes that gives it an advantage as it makes its way into the market for smartphone and tablet chips. Intel competes with ARM in the mobile device, PC, server, and embedded markets.
One of the hottest jumbo-sized cell phones on the market has come to on the network at a price of $299.99 with a new two-year contract. A variety of purchase plans are available on Verizon for the new handset. If you don't want to pay anything up front, the Verizon EDGE plan is available for the One max at a price of $25.22 per month. It also requires a two-year commitment but also gives you access to free upgrades every year. Alternatively, you can pay $599.99 up front for the phone with no contract required (and instead pay for service on a month to month basis). Sprint added the HTC One max to its lineup last week at a reported price of $249.99, $50 cheaper than Verizon. (The phone is currently unavailable to purchase from Sprint but the phone is available for ".") This has Android fanatics abuzz about which network's version of the phone to go with. From a 600 processor with 1.7GHz quad-core CPUs and offers 2GB of RAM and 32GB of total storage. A microSD card expansion slot lets you add additional storage of up to 64GB when you add your own card.
A new financial malware program that communicates with attackers over the I2P (Invisible Internet Project) anonymity network is for sale on a Russian cybercrime forum. , who claim to have seen the announcement. I2P is a distributed peer-to-peer network that uses several layers of encryption to allow secure and anonymous communication, establishing what is known as a darknet, a separate network within the Internet. Like Tor, a similar but more popular darknet, I2P was designed to allow various services to run and be accessible only from within the network itself. Anonymous websites running on .i2p pseudo-domains can only be accessed through EepProxy, a proxy program that connects a browser to the I2P network.
Tablets with 64-bit versions of the Android OS and Intel Atom chips code-named Bay Trail will become available next year, Intel said on Thursday. Intel is developing a 64-bit version of the Android OS to work with Bay Trail chips, said Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, during an investor meeting in Santa Clara, California, which was webcast. The 64-bit Android tablets will be released after Bay Trail tablets with a 64-bit version of Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 are released in the first quarter next year, Krzanich said. Intel has said Android tablets with Bay Trail could be available starting at $150. The Bay Trail chips already support 64-bit addressing. Right now tablets running on ARM and Intel processors are equipped with 32-bit versions of Android. It is not clear what version of Android will be used in the 64-bit Intel-based tablets. Intel is currently developing an image of the Android 4.4 OS code-named KitKat.
, the beautiful and highly functional keyboard for Android. I swore to myself that never again would I be late to discover the vanguard of Android keyboard apps! . , which gave the alphabetic keyboard the four-key treatment. Q4 shares a lot of the same function and design with its alphabetic predecessor, but to its credit, has a slightly more polished design. While Q4 does come with a full keyboard option, the app's raison d'etre is its unique approach to type-input. The app utilizes a beefy predictive functionality to whittle the keyboard down to only four keys—or rather, four keys plus one bonus invisible key, as we'll explain below.
about how Google's "Scroogling" you, the search giant's chairman is busy tackling a much bigger problem: How to keep your information secure in a world full of prying eyes and governments willing to drag in data by the bucket load. And according to Google's Eric Schmidt, the answer is fairly straightforward. . “The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything.” " scorecard released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this month, Google was one of the few Internet giants to receive a perfect five out of five score for its encryption efforts. Even basic Google.com searches default to HTTPS encryption these days, and Google goes so far as to encrypt data traveling in-network between its data centers. taps the links flowing between Google and Yahoo's internal data centers.
According to Microsoft, “many millions” of iOS users upload data to SkyDrive. Those that do should be happy to hear that their iPhones and iPads now back up their photos automatically to Microsoft’s cloud service. Microsoft also announced improvements to the way in which photos are shared from SkyDrive to Facebook, as well as a tweak to how Office documents are handled by the Office Mobile suite for iOS. “It’s really a significant update for the iOS app,” said Angus Logan, head of product marketing for Microsoft’s SkyDrive business. “We feel this is a significant update, which kind of completes the SkyDrive story.” Auto-uploading of photos to various cloud services is almost a given at this point, and Microsoft is no exception.
The owners of an Atlanta company have agreed to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission charges that they crammed $10 million worth of charges onto mobile phone users’ bills without their permission. The two settlements, one with Wise Media and its CEO Brian Buckley, and one with owner Winston Deloney, permanently ban them from placing any charges on consumers’ telephone bills or helping anyone else do so, the FTC said in a press release. The settlements also prohibit them from using any other method to charge consumers for goods or services without ensuring that they are aware of the terms of the purchase and have agreed to be charged, the agency said. Wise Media’s Georgia phone number has been disconnected, making the company unavailable for comment. The case is part of the FTC’s efforts to apply consumer protections to developing mobile technologies, the agency said. “This case involved a new delivery system for an old-fashioned scam,” Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “Getting consumers’ consent before charging them is as basic a consumer protection as you’ll find, whether you’re dealing with a brick-and-mortar store or with a mobile-payment provider.”
” lets you wander across important locales from Tolkien's "The Hobbit," including Trollshaw Forest, Rivendell, and Dol Guldur. . But if all you have is a lowly keyboard-and-mouse PC, you'll be able to join in the fun too—in fact, you might have a slightly better experience in some respects. As with other Chrome experiments, this tour through Middle-earth is most effective in full screen with the sound turned up. The journey mixes brief elements from the movies, soundtrack clips, and computer graphics. You start off looking at a map of Middle-earth complete with clouds drifting over the 3D terrain. Google says the initial map was built entirely with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript—the three primary building blocks of the modern Web.
I'm going to concentrate here on recovering disc space in Windows and your applications, but not in your libraries. If you keep separate Windows and data partitions (which I heartily recommend), following the advice below could significantly improve space on drive C: (the Windows partition). If you keep everything on one big partition, it will still help, but not as dramatically. Before you do anything else, create a restore point. In Windows 7, click then follow the prompts.
Pinterest is tweaking its service to make it easier for users to plan trips and locate content with location-based pins
A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved legislation aimed at making it more difficult for so-called patent trolls to use infringement lawsuits against other businesses. to the full House for action there. The bill attempts to discourage some controversial litigation techniques used by patent assertion entities (PAEs), those firms with patent licensing and lawsuits as their primary business model. to identify the patents and claims infringed in initial court filings, in an effort to reduce complaints about PAEs filing lawsuits with vague patent claims. The bill would also allow judges to require that losing plaintiffs pay defendants’ court fees. The bill would also allow courts to delay massive discovery requests from patent infringement plaintiffs until the patent claims have been interpreted by the court, and it would allow manufacturers and suppliers to intervene in patent litigation against their customers. In recent years, some PAEs have targeted end users of technologies that allegedly infringe their patents in an effort to collect more patent license fees or court awards.
Mobile carriers are opposed to the plan for a smartphone 'kill switch' that would render smartphones inoperable after they are stolen, claiming that it could be misused by hackers to block critical services. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón have been pushing for the switch to be installed in smartphones, and on Wednesday criticized mobile operators following reports that they were rejecting the proposal. "It is highly disturbing that these corporations rejected a proposal that would have helped keep millions of consumers safe," the officials said in a joint statement. Even if technically feasible to develop, a permanent 'kill switch' has very serious risks, mobile industry group CTIA said in a filing to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, titled "Why a 'Kill Switch' isn't the answer." CTIA said the kill message, which will be in some format such as a special SMS, could be misused to disable a phone forever as it would be known to every operator and hence cannot be kept a secret. Hackers could take control to disable phones of customers, including those of defense and law enforcement officials.
" policy? Good news! Microsoft's got you covered with a new Scroogled store stocked with mean-spirited gems like the coffee mug above. . (You know, like the ones Bing has, too.) of the search market). " report gave Google a perfect score for trying to keep your data safe from prying eyes. Microsoft, meanwhile, scored 1 out of 5 on the testing criteria—just like MySpace.
A recently discovered malicious program steals log-in passwords and other sensitive information from SAP client applications and allows cybercriminals to access SAP servers from infected workstations. , possibly in preparation for future attacks. Researchers from Microsoft recently analyzed the same malware, which they named TrojanSpy:Win32/Gamker.A, and found that it does more than just basic reconnaissance. . “The attackers are using the execution of the SAP component ‘saplogon.exe’ to trigger recording of the command-line arguments passed into it, combined with a series of 10 screenshots to the C&C server.”
Just in time for the holiday rush, Southwest Airlines is ready for everyone to surf the friendly skies with gate-to-gate Wi-Fi on flights from the budget air carrier. On Wednesday, the company said passengers on Southwest flights could now stay connected with a tablet-sized device or smaller from takeoff to landing. The new Southwest policy follows the . Even though the FAA is cool with letting you play Words with Friends for your entire flight, individual airlines still have to pass a few regulatory hurdles to get the go-ahead for gate-to-gate Wi-Fi. Southwest appears to be the first airline cleared for all-flight Wi-Fi, but the eased restrictions aren't entirely permissive. Bulky laptops and any other device larger than a tablet (we're guessing ) must be stowed during taxi, takeoff, and landing. These larger items may pose a hazard during contact with terra firma due to their size and weight, Southwest says. But as long as you're working with an iPad, Nexus 7, or a Nokia 1520, you should be good to go for the duration of most flights—battery life permitting.
Acer's upcoming CEO has abruptly resigned from the troubled PC maker, in a surprise move that will result in founder Stan Shih temporarily taking over leadership. Two weeks after Acer named Jim Wong to be its next CEO, the PC maker on Thursday announced he was stepping down "in light of the company's recent performance." J.T. Wang as its CEO next year. Now, however, the two executives are both resigning as the CEO position is being eliminated, according to a company statement. In the interim, Shih will take over as chairman and corporate president. "Former CEO duties will be charged to the Chairman or President and this is expected to boost the companys decision making efficiency," Acer said.
pivoting screen. Five months after the R7 first launched, Acer is refreshing the funky-looking laptop with an Intel “Haswell” processor, active stylus support, beefier specs and a lower starting price tag. . technology, though the stylus itself won't be included. Acer will sell its own stylus for $50, with interchangeable tips and configurable side buttons.
Canadian wireless modem maker Sierra Wireless has filed complaints with the European Commission (EC) and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming that Nokia is behaving unfairly in patent licensing. For its part, Nokia claims that Sierra Wireless has been in breach of its existing license terms for years. . Standard essential patents are patents that are deemed essential to implementations of industry standards. Companies are usually required by standards bodies to license those patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. What exactly is a fair and reasonable licensing price is often a point of dispute between companies.
A public Wi-Fi access point is like a public restroom. All kinds of businesses along travel routes offer restrooms to bring in customers. They offer free Wi-Fi for the same reason. The fact is, finding Wi-Fi on the road has become a lot easier over the past ten years. You just have to know where to look for it. at the end of an interstate off-ramp might be your best chance for connecting to the Internet. The chain offers free Wi-Fi in more than 11,500 of its restaurants. In some cases, you need only pull into the parking lot to get in range of the network. In most cases you’ll reach a McDonald’s splash page, and just have to click through to connect. It’s no surprise to find a McDonald’s within the cluster of gas stations, hotels, and truck stops at many interstate off-ramps. But over the past five years, I’ve noticed a lot more or AT&T. McDonald’s and Starbucks might be your best bet on the road, but there are other choices. You can also find free Wi-Fi at KFC, Taco Bell, Denny’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King.