Topicfire Web 2.0 News

Why Do People Want The Kindle To Be The iPad? They’re Two Different Products For A Reason.

2010-07-29T16:36:42+00:00

Amazon announced the Kindle 3 last night, and it doesn’t look too shabby at all. The most important part is the inclusion of the next-generation E-Ink display, previously only found in the too-big-for-casual-use Kindle DX. (The low price, $139 for the Wi-Fi version, certainly doesn’t hurt.) Immediately following the...

Google’s Mobile Search Market Share: An Estimated, Whopping 98.29%

2010-07-29T16:34:23+00:00

How’s this for absolutely dominating an increasingly lucrative and fast-growing segment? Google currently boasts a mobile search market share of 98.29%, with it closest competitor Yahoo taking up just over 0.8% of market share and Microsoft’s Bing barely touching even half that, according to recent data from StatCounter as relayed by...

Navigate the American Museum of Natural History with New iPhone and iPad Apps

2010-07-29T16:30:47+00:00

The American Museum of Natural History today unveiled the American Museum of Natural History Explorer app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, designed to help users better navigate through the Museum’s various exhibitions.The Museum has been newly outfitted with indoor Wi-Fi, and users can use the app [iTunes link]...

Groupon Eyes Further Growth with Personalized Deals

2010-07-29T16:12:26+00:00

Groupon’s model has always been to serve to up a single daily deal per city, per day. Yesterday, the company nearly reinvented itself when it kicked off its Personalized Deals initiative.With Personalized Deals, Groupon subscribers in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle and New York City will receive...

Kanye West Cares About Twitter People

2010-07-29T15:55:42+00:00

One of the most notorious holdouts against the Twitter short messaging network, Kanye West is now onboard, celebrating his new Twitter account with a live appearance at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday where he rapped for Twitter staff, as the above video shows. The move represents a major about-face for...

Why You Need to Monitor and Measure Your Brand on Social Media

2010-07-29T15:47:44+00:00

Maria Ogneva is the Director of Social Media at Attensity, a social media engagement and voice-of-customer platform that helps the social enterprise serve and collaborate with the social customer. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @attensity360, or find her musings on her personal blog and her company’s...

10% Of Applications In The App Store For iPad Boast In-App Purchases

2010-07-29T15:45:33+00:00

App store analytics provider Distimo in its latest report once again focuses on in-app purchases across a variety of mobile application stores, Apple’s App Store in particular. According to Distimo, the percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the App Store for iPad (10%) compared to that for...

So-Called "Digital Natives" Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows

2010-07-29T15:43:37+00:00

"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy. Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other...

RIM Buys BlackPad.com, Readies New BlackBerry Slider - But Can It Still Compete?

2010-07-29T15:36:00+00:00

MobileCrunch reports that Research in Motion has purchased the domain name blackpad.com, fueling speculation that RIM's long rumored enterprise tablet will be called the BlackPad. Others suggest it is merely a codename. One commenter at MobileCrunch notes the domain name was on sale at BuyDomains for $1,788. The domain blackpad.com...

Amazon: E-books Will Overtake Paperbacks by the End of 2011

2010-07-29T15:26:21+00:00

Amazon predicts that it will sell more e-books than paperbacks by the end of next year, and that they will eclipse both paperback and hardcover sales combined shortly thereafter.“I predict we will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to 12 months. Sometime after that, we’ll surpass the combination...

Motorola Earnings Point to Strong Smartphone Sales Ahead

2010-07-29T15:02:03+00:00

Motorola posted its financial results for the second quarter of 2010, reporting solid overall results and smartphone sales that hint at better times ahead. Motorola’s sales in Q2 were $5.4 billion, while earnings were $162 million, up from $26 million in the second quarter of 2009.Motorola’s Mobile Devices segment sales...

Kanye West Raps At Twitter HQ

2010-07-29T14:51:49+00:00

On the same day he joined Twitter, Kanye West went over to Twitter HQ and rapped a cappella. His performance follows another a cappella performance over at Facebook HQ from the day before. Kanye's first ever tweet read as such – @kanyewest: Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone...

Low-Tech Shatner Eyes Twitter, Says What The “$#*!”

2010-07-29T14:44:47+00:00

William Shatner talks about his show '$#*! My Dad Says' during the CBS, Showtime and the CW Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, California, July 28, 2010. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – William Shatner confesses he has problems with the digital age. At 79 years old, he...

U.S. Congress Comes to Android

2010-07-29T14:43:57+00:00

A mobile application which connects Android phone owners to their representatives in the U.S. Congress has just been released by the non-profit, non-partisan organization Sunlight Labs, a group dedicated to government transparency. After months of public beta testing, the newly finished application is now a comprehensive toolset that helps you...

The Inside Story: Flipboard's Crazy Launch And Its Plan To Save Media

2010-07-29T14:37:42+00:00

Flipboard is an objectively beautiful iPad app that looks at the content your friends are sharing on Twitter and Facebook and reformats it into a digital, interactive magazine. The consumer reaction to the app since it's launch last week has been nothing short of completely nuts. Click here for a quick...

Morning Brief: Russia Bans YouTube, Amazon’s New Kindle, Motorola Earnings

2010-07-29T13:51:14+00:00

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in...

5 Ways Facebook Questions Can Be Improved

2010-07-29T13:26:35+00:00

Facebook’s newest feature, Questions, has the potential to bring social Q&A into the mainstream. But like most beta features and apps, Questions is somewhat fragmented, and suffers from usability issues and apparent bugs. It could also benefit from a more seamless and connected integration across the social platform.Perhaps most notably,...

Motorola Shipped 2.7 Million Smartphones Last Quarter, Sales Down 6% YoY

2010-07-29T12:21:19+00:00

Motorola has just announced its financial results for Q2 2010, reporting total sales of $5.4 billion, which is slightly below what it recorded in the same period last year. Earnings came in at $162 million or $0.07 per share, compared to GAAP earnings of $26 million or $0.01 per share...

Four short links: 29 July 2010

2010-07-29T12:01:08+00:00

How to Raise Funds for Non-Profits (Joi Ichi) -- One organization sent a message to all of their donors during the Haiti crisis asking them to give to an NGO that they had vetted. They didn't ask for any money for themselves. This had a hugely positive effect and the...

Opera Mini Serves One Billion Daily Page Views

2010-07-29T10:35:40+00:00

Despite the fact that popular smartphones such as the iPhone and Android already have great web browsers, Opera’s Java ME-based mobile browser Opera Mini is constantly growing. According to Opera, on July 25th it served one billion page views.The mobile browser, which recently dropped the beta tag from the already...

Lost In Val Sinestra: A Mesmerizing Movie Trailer Featuring Your Facebook Friends

2010-07-29T10:22:06+00:00

Double rainbow awesome. There’s no other modern way to describe this. I won’t spoil it too much, but whatever you do today, visit that website and select some of your closest friends from your Facebook graph when prompted. You won’t be disappointed. From the looks of it, this was put together...

5 Critical Web Metrics To Keep a Close Eye On

2010-07-29T10:11:16+00:00

You probably have a good idea of how many page views and unique visitors your company's website gets, but how many people are truly interacting with your brand? How successful are your digital marketing efforts? Traditional Web analytics metrics can provide a ton of actionable intelligence about your...

Fake Chinese iPads No Longer Hot Sellers

2010-07-29T09:40:28+00:00

China's vibrant "shanzhai" (also "shanzai") industry, which modifies or knocks off existing electronic products, quickly pounced on the iPad as it did many other phones and devices. Shanzai.com, a site that reviews these ersatz gadgets, reported the first iPad clone in March. Since then the faux iPads have reportedly been...

Slashdot Struggles to Remain Relevant in The Social Web

2010-07-29T09:10:27+00:00

Earlier today we published an analysis of the top traffic drivers in social media, based on data from Web analytics company Woopra. The biggest traffic driver was StumbleUpon (51%), followed by Digg (30%), Hacker News (12%) and Reddit (5%). Surprisingly, tech news community Slashdot was not in the list of...

HTC Beefs Up Management Team But Loses A Top Executive

2010-07-29T08:35:21+00:00

Mobile phone maker HTC this morning announced a series of executive promotions and newly created management positions. The Taiwanese company said it had poached two senior execs from rival Sony Ericsson and that it had promoted three others to its management team. Buried in the press release, however, is that...