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Showing posts from April 7, 2011

Google’s Gmail Motion Prank Turned Into Reality [VIDEO]

  Remember Gmail Motion, the new feature that lets you use body gestures to compose and send emails in Gmail? It was obviously an April Fools’ joke, but now it’s also real, courtesy of the folks from the Institute of Creative Technologies. The technology is jokingly dubbed SLOOW – Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving – and it uses a Microsoft Kinect camera to control Gmail. The same team used the technology, which is actually called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), to play World of Warcraft using only body motions in December 2010. Amazingly enough, it works pretty much as Google had intended: You can type text into Gmail by using body gestures, and send an email by “licking” the stamp and slapping it onto an imaginary envelope. Check out the video below for a demonstration.

ActiveInbox Turns Gmail Into a Task Manager

email share email share   Maintaining an empty Gmail inbox should be classified as a superpower. It’s just not something that most humans can do. But the day when mere mortals master the task might be getting closer. ActiveInbox , a Gmail plugin five years in the making, launched a product this week that organizes emails into manageable projects and tasks. CEO Andy Mitchell based the product on David Allen’s “ Getting Things Done ” (GTD) productivity philosophy, which aims to “transform personal overwhelm and overload into an integrated system of stress-free productivity.” Its first iterations were hence named GTDGmail and (after a letter from Google’s legal team) GTDEmail. The first ActiveInbox product is a free plugin for Firefox and Chrome that adds a to-do list and project manager to the left sidebar of Gmail. Users can add items to the list using a task bar that appears at the top of each email. They can mark e-mails as “action,” “waiting on,” or “some day” and add

Email Provider Epsilon Responsible For Gigantic Security Breach

  Epsilon, the world’s largest permission-based email marketing services company that serves TiVo users and many more, reported a breach in its security Friday, and the list of companies affected keeps on growing. TiVo users had a rude awakening this morning, finding out the email address they’d given to TiVo as part of their account registration had been compromised. According to SecurityWeek , Epsilon is currently disclosing even more companies whose email marketing lists had been compromised. Noticing the problem first with grocery retailer Kroger, Epsilon continues releasing company names that were affected by the breach. Here’s the list gathered so far: Kroger TiVo US Bank JPMorgan Chase Capital One Citi McKinsey & Company Ritz-Carlton Rewards Marriott Rewards New York & Company Brookstone Walgreens The College Board (added 4/3 @8:20am) Home Shopping Network (HSN)(added 4/3 @10:22am) LL Bean (added 4/3 @1:20pm) Disney Destinations

Massive Email Breach Exposes Data From 50+ Major Retailers, Including Target

  A huge security breach has exposed the names and email addresses of customers of major brands, including Target, Best Buy, Walgreen’s, Capital One, and more. UPDATE: Apparently, a slew of hotel chain rewards programs have also been hit by the Epsilon breach; affected chains include Hilton, Red Roof Inn, Ritz-Carlton and Marriott. While most of these companies are understandably mum on how many customers might be at risk, it’s not inconceivable that millions of users’ information may have been accessed by an unauthorized party. Epsilon, a digital marketing firm that does a fair amount of email marketing, notified its clients Friday that “an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system” had occurred. The firm stated at the time that the compromised data “was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only. A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk.” By yesterday, we knew the names of a h

‘Angry Birds Rio’ a Big Hit: 10 Million Downloads in 10 Days

  Angry Birds fans can’t get enough of the bird-hurling application and game franchise from mobile developer Rovio. Angry Birds Rio , the latest iOS and Android edition of the game, features a theme based on the upcoming FOX animated motion picture Rio . The app saw ten million downloads in its first ten days after release. The milestone metric spans all free and paid versions available in the App Store [iTunes link], Android Marketplace and Amazon Appstore . The stat was first announced on Rovio’s Twitter account. The news is a flashy tidbit of information that demonstrates Rovio’s stronghold in the mobile gaming genre. Everything the company releases in the Angry Birds franchise is an instant hit, plush toys included. The impressive figure also demonstrates why investors were keen on forking over $42 million and could help lay the groundwork for a profitable IPO.

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook and Twitter Promotions

  Alanna Francis is an SEO Strategist at Blue Fountain Media, the website design and marketing company. Her focus is ecommerce websites , including the men’s skin care brand Anthony For Men . You can follow her on Twitter @alannafrancis . Once upon a time, you had to use a phone book to find a business’s contact details. Mercifully, those days are behind us. As social media has worked its way into every aspect of our lives, we as a culture have come to expect that our favorite brands — from “ Big Gay Ice Cream ” trucks to national airlines and fashion houses — are easily accessible on the most popular social networks. However, it’s no longer enough to simply interact. Consumers are increasingly hungry for promotions, exclusive discounts and giveaways. In fact, recent data suggests that most people who follow brands on Facebook and Twitter both expect and want to receive coupons from these brands. According to an Ad Age /Ipsos Observer survey of 1,000 participants regarding d

3 Facebook Mobile Trends to Watch This Year

  The Facebook Marketing Series is supported by Buddy Media , Power Tools for Facebook. Have something new to tell 500 million people? Learn the best way to manage multiple brands on Facebook with this webinar .   Facebook CTO Bret Taylor has said that a lot of the company’s focus this year will be on mobile. When Facebook declares an intention in any direction, people take notice, but for marketers, this may mean that 2011 is the “year of mobile,” a designation that has been tossed around every year since 2006 or so. It’s unthinkable for a marketer to ignore Facebook, but that said, there are a lot of mysteries and frustrations around the platform. Display ads don’t perform very well there, for instance, and a lot of consumer data is kept under wraps. Facebook’s mobile operations are even harder to get a handle on. The company’s mobile app, for instance, doesn’t at the moment provide any opportunities for advertisers through traditional venues, such as display ads. But t

Foursquare Makes Discovering Brands Easier

  Foursquare has launched a new web page to showcase top brands on its network in an effort to make it easier for users to find and follow them. You may not know it, but there are hundreds of brands using Foursquare (1,323 brands to be exact), but most people don’t follow them, mostly because they aren’t easy to discover. Foursquare is trying to address that issue with Pages Gallery. Pages Gallery , as the name suggests, is a gallery filled with the different company Pages on Foursquare. Through it, you can follow everyone from MTV to Zagat (or even Mashable ) to get tips and other content. The feature also includes a simple tool for searching through pages and browsing by popularity, whether they’re trending or whether they’re new. Pages Gallery also suggests pages that are popular with your friends. Lots of brands are hopping onto Foursquare in a big way, but the additional exposure should help boost brands’ follower counts, which could be vital to Foursquare as it

Android Developers Report Issues Updating Their Apps

   A bug in Google’s Android Developer Console has left a large number of Android developers unable to perform basic functions within their developer accounts, leaving them without the ability to upload or update apps and view comments. Frustrated developers have posted messages on Google’s Android help forums , highlighting error messages, file size errors and restrictions when trying to change feature listings and screenshots on their Android Market listing. One developer reports : The Android Developer Console is not working since 18 hours now. The website is shown but the application list is empty. This is what we see: “Failed to load application list. Try again later.” This is since over 18 hours now. We would like to upload new releases as we promised to our customers. We just got the first two complains. Why do we developers don’t get any information about outages??? Many other developers have taken to the forum to report they are suffering from the same problem

The 6 Best YouTube Brand Takeovers

There’s a form of advertising that is pretty much my favourite of all time and that’s the Youtube Takeover, an interactive YouTube experience. We’ve seen some brilliant examples of brands taking over YouTube channels for a day and doing the unexpected. What I like about the YouTube Takeover is you barely notice you’re actually engaging with a brand and it’s where you can really see brilliant technical and creative minds combining. Here I share what I think are some of the best YouTube brand takeovers, some old and new! Samsung’s 3D Game Samsung introduced a first with YouTube, when they used their takeover to develop a 3D game that the user was part of. The ad was part of a giveaway, incentivising the user to stay even longer on the page. The ad also worked to keep people’s attention, as it changed from a usual YouTube clip of their projection, to the screen falling apart, before releasing the game. TippEx This is pretty much the daddy of Youtube takeovers! TippEx too