Темы
Разделы
Интересы
Top 20
 |
| 181 | We all read product reviews before buying anything, but in many cases we decide whether a product is worth our money based not on what a professional reviewer has said, but rather on what our friends and peers tell us. I think it's a very human thing: trusting the opinion of people who are like us, rather than the opinion of someone who is earning his wages. So, a site like Ukritic is one that I bet many of you will find highly appealing. Read more Learn more about Ukritic.com in Dataopedia.com Find out how much Ukritic.com is worth with Stimator.com killerstartups.com » | | 182 | Americans' fascination with their roots overwhelmed Monday's ballyhooed online rollout of the complete 1940 Census when 22.5 million people swarmed the Web site in the first three hours -- paralyzing the system.
Most people couldn't access the free data on the National Archives and Records Administration's Web site. Not even Census Director Robert Groves, who attended the official unveiling at the Archives in Washington, D.C., and looked up his grandfather, who lived in St. Louis in 1940. The site, 1940census.archives.gov, kept loading -- and loading and loading -- but never came up.
The hangup caused frustration for historians and family researchers, embarrassment for the Archives and a chance for private sites such as Ancestry.com, which had some images ready for viewing as early as the wee hours, to gloat.
"I was on for 55 minutes and never got it to display anything," said Mary Ellen Sicard, a retired computer programmer from Estherville, Iowa, who is so passionate about tracing her family tree that she was on the site five minutes after it went live -- or didn't. "For a long time, I couldn't even get the search box to come up."
The National Archives partnered with Inflection, a private Silicon Valley company that owns the family history site Archives.com, to host the 1940 Census site.
"We were assured we could accommodate a large number of people, but I don't think anybody anticipated the absolutely enormous response we got in the first couple of hours," said Susan Cooper, spokeswoman at the National Archives.
By the end of the business day, the site had received 37 million hits.
Ancestry.com and other companies purchased the digitized 1940 Census and picked it up as soon as it became available. The first images were available on www.Ancestry.com/1940 within two hours, and more than 100,000 were expected by day's end, including the records... newsfactor.com » | | 183 | Not long ago, Research In Motion was sitting pretty on the smartphone throne. Now the BlackBerry maker's ranks are thinner and RIM is refocusing on its core business customer base, while largely ceding the consumer kingdom to rivals Google and Apple.
Nokia hopes for a more favorable outcome as it competes for the affections of the U.S. smartphone buyer with the Lumia 900, which reaches AT&T and other retailers Sunday. The struggling Finnish handset maker is trying to buff its faded image. Nokia has never been much of a factor when it comes to smartphones sold in the U.S.
Its latest efforts are indelibly linked to Microsoft and the fortunes of the well-reviewed Windows Phone mobile operating system. (Devices based on the OS are not quite leaping off store shelves.)
The Lumia 900 I've tested runs Windows Phone version 7.5, or Mango. I like the hardware, and I like the operating system. Windows Phone is fresh and different from iOS and Android and offers a strong alternative to the status quo.
Windows Phone is built around a people-first interface of colorful, customizable tiles that are dynamically updated with pictures, or to show, say, the number of e-mails in your inbox. Tap the People hub tile to see folks you recently called, or to see updated posts and activities from pals or those you follow on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Windows Live, all conveniently collected in one place. You can "pin" other tiles representing people or apps to the Start screen.
Nokia, Microsoft and exclusive U.S. carrier AT&T are betting big on Lumia 900. It initially arrives in black or blue versions; two weeks later, a white model becomes available.
The launch will be backed by enormous TV and in-store marketing. And the phone's alluring $99.99 price (with the requisite two-year AT&T data plan) is a disruptive... newsfactor.com » | | 184 | Poor Instagram users. First, their beloved photo-sharing application moves from iPhone-only exclusivity to the Android phone masses. A week later, Facebook swallows up the tiny startup behind the app for $1 billion. The purchase sparked worries that Facebook might shutter Instagram or change it for the worse by harvesting their personal information or shoving ads into their carefully curated photo streams.
"I've tried very hard not to be part of the Facebook ecosystem," says Darwin Poblete, a Brooklyn, New York-based architect who has used Instagram since its early days. "Now I feel like the purchase has sucked me in. I'll have to see how the privacy settings change to decide if I will leave it."
Instagram has attracted more than 31 million users in less than two years. Its near-cult-like early followers were loyal iPhone users who flocked to the app for its ease-of-use, its playful filters that can make even boring photos look artistic, and its lack of ads, status updates and other clutter. Apple named Instagram the iPhone App of the Year in 2011.
To be fair, both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Kevin Systorm sought to reassure people that the app is here to stay. Unlike all the other startups Facebook has bought, Instagram will remain available to people who don't use Facebook or don't want to connect it to their accounts on the world's most populous online social network, the CEOs said.
"Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page announcing the purchase on Monday.
It's hard to say, though, what Facebook might do a year or two from now. After all, its site's constant evolution has been a big... newsfactor.com » | | 185 | Facebook users who like using social media for a higher purpose, take heart.
Or at least a kidney.
The networking giant's founder this week announced that users will now be able to use a tool that announces whether they are organ donors and could perhaps match up donors and recipients.
At the very least, CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes it will promote awareness of organ donation.
18 Deaths Each Day
"Today, more than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives," wrote Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg in their announcement on Facebook's Newsroom page, titled Friends Saving Lives.
"Many of those people -- an average of 18 people per day -- will die waiting, because there simply aren't enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis. And we believe that by simply telling people that you're an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role."
Users can now note in the new timeline feature that they are donors and share when and why they made the decision. They can also use privacy settings to control who sees that information, which appears in Timeline as well as the news feed.
The new feature comes as Facebook is about to launch its initial public offering for the stock market, and the timing is not likely coincidental.
"One of the problems with Facebook is that it kind of has the feel of a trend," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. "It's great for sharing the pictures of piano-playing cats but some folks will tire of this. A more practical application, like driving more people to donate organs, create cash... newsfactor.com » | | 186 | More than a third of the malaria-fighting drugs tested over the past decade in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa were either fake or bad quality, seriously undermining efforts to fight the disease, a study said Tuesday.
With up to 1 million people -- mostly children in Africa -- already dying every year from malaria, bogus drugs and those containing the wrong chemical makeup could upend a decade of progress fighting the mosquito-transmitted disease, the U.S.-funded review said.
International efforts to combat drug counterfeiting -- much of it believed to take place in China -- are urgently needed.
Fake drugs with no malaria-fighting agents can lead to deaths when patients rely on them, and those containing some active ingredients -- but not enough to fully kill all parasites -- are also problematic because they promote resistance that can eventually outsmart medicines and render them useless.
Alarm bells have sounded in recent years over signs of increasing resistance in western Cambodia on Thailand's border with Myanmar among artemisinin-based drugs, the only effective medicine now widely used to cure the disease.
Studies show the drugs are taking longer to work there, and experts fear the emerging resistance could eventually spread to Africa as has occurred previously with other malaria treatments that now are worthless against the disease.
If artemisinin-based drugs stop working, there is no good replacement and many people would ultimately die. Currently, malaria kills an estimated 2,000 children every day in Africa. Some 3.3 billion people worldwide are at risk of getting infected.
"We feel a sense of emergency considering the impact these medicines can have," lead author Gaurvika Nayyar, of the Fogarty International Center at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said in an email.
The study says more labs are needed worldwide to test for fake drugs -- only three out of 47 malaria-plagued countries in Africa... newsfactor.com » | | 187 |  (Reuters) - Online streaming music service Pandora Media Inc reported better-than-expected revenue and raised its full-year guidance as more people tuned in.
Reuters: Internet News » |
|
| |
|