Technology Effect

  Facebook lesson of the day: If you’re creating a party invitation, make sure you keep it closed to the public. A girl in Australia learned this lesson the hard way, and had to cancel her 16th birthday party after almost 200,000 people reportedly accepted an invitation to her birthday bash, according to  AFP . The girl initially just wanted her friends at school to come to her party, and figuring it could be a time saver, created a quick invite on Facebook saying anyone could attend — they could even bring friends if they let her know about it ahead of time. It’s an “open house party as long as it doesn’t get out of hand,” she wrote in the invite, according to AFP. Well, her party got out of hand all right — it went crazy before the festivities got a chance to start. The police said the party invitation went viral after it was reposted by another person, and soon the teen was bombarded with calls and text messages from complete strangers. The girl ...

http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2Ffinra-warns-about-facebook-pre-ipo-investments-2011-03 Finra+Warns+About+Facebook+Pre-IPO+Investments++ 2011-03-15+18%3A23%3A24 Jackie+Cohen http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2F%3Fp%3D35716   Private market trading of Facebook stock has garnered so much attention lately that the social network is cited as an example in a warning by a financial industry regulator. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has posted a well-intentioned warning against schemes promising access to shares of companies that haven’t gone public yet. Alas, Facebook stakes have become nearly synonymous with the so-called pre-intial public offering market, which explains why the company is listed as an example. Finra’s press release doesn’t qualify the warning until two paragraphs after the unfortunate use of Facebook as an example: While most pre-IPO offerings are legitimate, some are frauds in which con artists sell shares they do not ac...

  MXP4 claims that the more than 1.3 million active monthly users of the vendor’s Pump It application put it well on the way toward becoming the number one music-focused game on Facebook. That’s certainly a convenient claim to make as the company tries to rally attendees for this Friday’s appearance at South by Southwest by MXP4 Vice President of Business Development and Content Mark Collins, who’s speaking on the “ Marketing Your Music in an Overloaded World ” panel at 2pm. Over 30 popular artists with a combined fan base of 65 million have already installed the application. These musical acts include Enrique Iglesias, Cheryl Cole, David Guetta, Nelly Furtado, Hollywood Undead, UnderOath, Lloyd Banks, Ingrid Michaelson, Neon Trees, Taio Cruz, John Legend, Far East Movement, Ellie Goulding, Matisyahu and Anarbor. These artists enjoy what MPX4 claims is  30 percent sharing rate and an average of 12 minutes spent per session. It’s easy to see why...

35770 http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2Fandroid-update-might-include-more-secure-facebook-2011-03 Android+Update+Might+Include+More+Secure+Facebook 2011-03-15+21%3A50%3A06 Jackie+Cohen http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2F%3Fp%3D35770   The newest upgrade for the Android mobile phone includes secure socket layer security, which might mean greater security for Facebook users. We’re trying to determine whether this addition of SSL suffices as a way to prevent hackers from snooping activity on the device, including Facebook usage, via readily available freeware. Meanwhile the Android update for Facebook also includes the ability share photos on friends’ walls and in groups. The uploading process for images also automatically orients the images in the right direction so you don’t have to rotate them yourself. Android’s official blog also says that the update includes bug fixes, without elaborating on what they are. And Facebook Deals are available...

Facebook appears to have removed the blue button for posting comments on items in the news feed and elsewhere on the site, prompting people to hit the enter key instead. Now, if you click on the linked word comment, a window appears with grey text underneath indicating that hitting enter will post a comment. We don’t know yet whether this is a test or a full rollout, but suspect it could be the latter based on what we’re seeing and hearing from readers. It’s possible to cause some confusion for people who want to post comments broken into multiple paragraphs — however, that can be achieved by holding down the shift key when hitting enter. Have you seen this new comment window?

  Displaying your Twitter feed on your website is a wonderful way to show visitors real-time news and events. An attractive Twitter widget can encourage your website’s audience to follow you on Twitter, serving as an additional method for expanding your network. Furthermore, when designed right, a Twitter feed can improve the aesthetics of a website’s layout. For your inspiration, here are 15 websites that have beautifully and creatively integrated their Twitter feeds, along with five resources on how you can display your own Twitter feed on your site. Examples That INDIE Dude – Freelance graphic and web designer, Alex Linebrink, integrates his most recent Twitter update as a main design element of his portfolio site, manifested as a speech bubble beside an illustration of himself. Justin Delabar – A simple “About me” section followed by your most recent status update gives you the ability to let your audience find fresher, real-time things about yourself, as shown ...

It’s officially been five years since the very first tweet was sent by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The message, which read simply “just setting up my twttr,” has since been followed by some 30 billion 140-character-or-less musings as Twitter has catapulted into the upper echelon of consumer web companies. With a valuation said to be approaching $10 billion, the Twitter of today is very different than the Twitter of five years ago (or even one year ago for that matter). Once often criticized by the mainstream media for being mundane and trivial, the service often plays a major role in world events (and serves as a source for said media). It’s also gotten more than a few people fired. Once questioned relentlessly about how it would make money, some estimates peg the company’s 2011 revenue at $150 million as its advertising platform continues to evolve. And once the center of an ecosystem of hundreds of different clients and third-party applications, Twitter now finds itself at...

Verizon detailed today the launch of their next generation 4G network. 4G has been talked about this year heavily as Sprint has been heavily promoting the fact that they were the first carrier to launch a 4G network in the United States. Sprints 4G network is based on a technology called WiMax where Verizon’s launch is on a technology called LTE. So the real question is why should anyone care about 4G and what does it mean for the broader consumer technology industry. Let’s explore. The reality is every major carrier in the country is going to move to 4G at some point in time. While the mobile phone market was maturing it was all about the voice network. Carriers competed on coverage, voice quality, network reliability etc. Those battles will still exist however the value is moving from the voice network to the data network. This is because of the rise of smart phones and smart devices where data becomes a more central part of the device experience. The bat...

Motorola was on my short list at the 2011 CES. We anticipated tablets, and 4G super phones with their dual core processors and we were not disappointed. All though the show is just starting Motorola has already impressed me with an un-anticipated innovation. This has been an interesting week for Motorola. It started with the official launch of Motorola Mobility as its own publically traded company. With this new start Motorola emphasized a new beginning and an increased emphasis on innovation. They even created a new tagline to emphasis this called “Life. MPowered.” Of course the anticipation of innovation from Motorola was with the Xoom tablet running Android Honeycomb. The Xoom was impressive and Honeycomb was equally impressive but the real winner from Motorola for me was the accessory ecosystem around the Atrix 4G. The device itself was impressive with a 4-inch qHD display and dual core Tegra 2 super chip powering the device. What really impressed me howev...

In advance of Google’s Honeycomb deep dive scheduled for this Wednesday February 2, I wanted to do a quick analysis of what Honeycomb means for the tablet market. I’ve been working with a number of the current Android tablets in the 7-inch range and have reached several conclusions about the form factor which I will provide more insight to in a later analysis. One conclusion, however, that may seem completely obvious but which, from a software standpoint, has not historically been obvious for makers of hardware, is that some form-factors require software created specifically for that form-factor. This was, to a degree, the observation made by Jeff Hawkins when he started Palm and brought to market the first Palm Pilot. Many of the products competing for handheld computers at the time were mini clamshell devices running either Windows CE or some proprietary OS. Many of these devices were attempting to be very small versions of their notebook counterparts. Jeff Haw...

It’s no secret that mobile, namely smart phones and tablets, is the hottest topic in the tech industry today. It’s almost as if companies who don’t have products in these categories are not even in the conversations dominating industry trade shows and conferences. Had HP not purchased Palm this would still be the case. However they did purchase Palm and now HP finds themselves right back in the middle of this fascinating mobile conversation, this time with a fresh suite of mobile products. During the era where traditional clamshell mouse and keyboard PC’s were the hottest topics, companies like Dell and HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony, etc were the focus of many analysts like myself and media.  I still track all those companies extensively however the growth sectors for tech are now smartphones and tablets. Halo Products Drive Mind Share The bottom line is if you don’t have an object of desire somewhere in your product portfolio it is very hard to capture attent...

Let’s start off by remembering that the smartphone market is still relatively early. Even though it is one of the hottest topics around, smartphones as a whole still only represent less than 30% of the total global mobile phone market. That being said the smart phone market grew 75% last quarter alone and is expected to grow at that pace each quarter for the next few years. Right now RIM, Apple and their iOS and a host of Android vendors dominate the smart phone sector. Windows Phone 7 is on the far fringe of this market and HP’s webOS devices still farther yet. So the real question is in a market dominated right now by three companies is there room for more? The short answer is yes and here is why. There is Always Room For Innovation Too often companies are so afraid of competition that they are immobilized to even attempt to compete. To these companies I remind them that there is always room for innovation. People told Larry Page and Sergey Brin they were...

   Social analyst David Chalke says a person's mobile phone can tell you what “type” of person he is. Do such studies really make sense? NEETI SARKAR tries to get a vox populi In what now seems like a hundred years ago, we used to have people who deciphered our personality based on whether we minded our “P”s and “Q”s, dotted our “i”s and crossed our “t”s. Then there were studies that said one's personality could be decoded by the car he drove, the bag he carried or the genre of music he listened to. Quite interestingly, a recent research suggests that the phones we use say what kind of people we are. Social analyst David Chalke said a person's mobile phone could give outsiders insight into their attitudes towards work, rest and play. A research by Roy Morgan revealed most attributes differed between the owners of mobile phone brands. The typical iPhone user thinks computers give them control over their lives. “iPhone is the Alfa Romeo,” Chalke sai...