Ever since Apple acquired music streaming service Lala in early December of last year, speculation has been flying surrounding exactly how Steve Jobs and company would incorporate the new assets into its wildly popular iTunes music service.

Early signs pointed to the cloud, and how Lala’s unique “upload your own music collection” feature could be leveraged to make users’ tunes centrally located online and available from theoretically anywhere. Recent reports from CNet back up that idea with a few new potential details: Apple is supposedly talking with the top four major labels about offering a free streaming music service to consumers.

According to sources, Apple executives have discussed a cloud-based service where users could upload their music libraries to Apple servers. That music could then be streamed anywhere, to any internet-connected device — potentially at no additional cost to consumers. The streaming service is being positioned as a “value add” that would boost further download sales instead of cannibalizing them.

What’s still up in the air is the legal repercussion of launching such a streaming service without renegotiating terms or reaching specific agreements with the labels. A similar precedent-setting case filed by EMI against streaming-music service MP3tunes won’t be decided until later this year, leaving the legal area very gray should Apple decide to move forward without officially renegotiating licensing agreements.

Still, they’ve apparently approached the labels ostensibly to obtain their blessing. Whether that blessing is given, and whether or not Apple has the clout to go ahead with the service without it, remains to be seen. We may find out more next Wednesday at Apple’s special event, which is shaping up to be truly action-packed.

Would you want to send your music into the cloud?

Tags: apple, cloud computing, itunes, Lala, major labels, music, riaa, streaming

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"One of the most frequently asked questions from our customers is: ‘Why don’t you have free WiFi at Logan?’ said Thomas J. Kinton Jr., CEO & Executive Director of Massport. "Well, we are pleased to be able to now say ‘We do!’ "

A secure WiFi system was installed through out the airport six years ago at a cost of several million dollars. The charge of $7.95 for the service allowed the investment to be recovered. For the next two years, Massport will continue its partnership with service provider, Advanced Wireless Group, and the free WiFi will be supported by advertising and sponsorship programs.

During the two month period when free WiFi was available as part of a Google sponsorship, use of the network increased nearly six-fold. Users who did not subscribe to a roaming service viewed a Google promotional page be fore accessing the Internet. Under the new system, roaming subscribers will get access and those using the free service will view advertising before accessing the Internet.
 

Related Articles:

>Google And Virgin America To Offer Free WiFi During The Holidays

>American Expands In-Flight Internet Service

>Google Offering Free Wi-Fi In Airports During The Holidays

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The social-networking and microblogging site Twitter reported a brief outage early Wednesday. Twitter said the service was “experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales,” or fail error messages.

On its Web site, Twitter said that its “on-call team is working on a fix.”

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Here is a lovely free service which is created by me & Danile Rimille of SSLmatic to minimize downtime.

Uptime Robot is a totally free service which monitors your websites every 5 minutes & alerts you if they go down.

It allows you to monitor up to 50 websites & alerts can be received via e-mail or SMS (Twitter & RSS coming soon).

You can add multiple alert contacts to notify multiple users in case of a downtime.

It is possible to monitor both http & https addresses which is pretty important to check if the SSL certificate installed functions correctly.

The service has a simple & fully Ajaxed interface for a faster usage.

P.S. Uptime Robot will hopefully get mature within a short time. But during that period, if you're looking for a more professional service, you may want to check paid ones like Pingdom, SiteUptime, AreMySitesUp…

Upcoming features

• RSS & Twitter alerts
• keyword checking in websites monitored (testing)
• mobile version
• monitoring from multiple locations (we may need your help, will be sharing more details later)

Follow at Twitter for updates, support..

We'll be updating you via @uptimerobot Twitter user for new features, improvements, etc. Also, feel free to contact us from there for support, feature requests, etc.

A little story of Uptime Robot:

I'm sharing a little office with Daniel Rimille of SSLmatic which we're building a complicated web application for a while.

The application is something totally different from Uptime Robot but it needed to monitor websites/IPs it worked with & we created a module for this which worked awesome.

It was my idea to convert this module into a website uptime monitoring service.

Daniel was a little uncommitted as he thought this would take much time & we would be missing our schedule for the application we're building. I thought this was an opportunity to see how it would scale, help us improve ourselves in means of usability, handling support requests, etc.

And I claimed to build it in only 2 days, had a bet (lost a dinner), but completed in 4 days. It took 8 extra days for us both to polish it & here it is.

We loved what we created & will be updating/improving Uptime Robot frequently as there are so many similarities with what we're already building.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets

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Leading the pack was Snapfish with a healthy 27%. Snapfish is entering its tenth year as an online photo printing service and offers some of the lowest prices in the industry. Following Snapfish was Costco’s online printing service, lagging behind Snapfish but still with a respectable 17%. Close behind Costco was Shutterfly with 16% and then Mpix (14%)—a site geared more towards professional photographers. In last place was AdoramaPix with 8% of the vote. AdoramaPix sported the largest selection of paper and options but didn’t have the bargain basement prices that certainly helped other sites gain an edge.

Have a favorite service that wasn’t listed? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five send us an email at tips at lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line.

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“Skype is taking away would-be market share of international traffic from conventional phone companies,” Paul Brodsky, an analyst for TeleGeography.

The report also shows that international voice traffic is on the rise, despite the availability of alternatives for standard telephone calls. Global international voice traffic will grow approximately 7 to 8 percent annually between 2009 and 2011, the report said.

Skype-to-Skype traffic is growing at an even faster pace. There was over a 60 percent growth in user-to-user traffic last year. Skype users are projected to generate 54 billion minutes in international traffic in 2009 as opposed to only 33 billion minutes in 2008.

But not all of Skype’s traffic comes at the expense of phone carries. Skype’s paid-for SkypeOut service, which allows users to make calls to standard telephones, generated about 12 billion minutes of traffic in 2009. Skype relies on other wholesale carriers to connect this traffic to the telephone network.

Skype’s growth is due to a sharp increase in the number of its users. The internet-calling service has over 500 million registered users as of the third quarter of last year. But “it is safe to assume that a significant percentage of registered Skype users have signed up for the service and either never use it or use it very sparingly,” said Mr. Brodsky. “After all, registering is free.”

Skype calls are free unless they are made to landlines, but even then the calling rates are generally cheaper than those provided by the phone companies.
Despite the growth in volume, international phone-calling revenue has only seen a slight increase. Skype’s cheap international calling rates and its free user-to-user calls and videos are partly to blame for the flattening revenue growth. The steady decline in prices has also been triggered by fierce competition.
Skype, owned by a group of investors, is still the largest long-distance phone company.

Recently, Skype settled a lawsuit filed by some users who accused the company of improperly seizing money on their paid-for SkypeOut accounts after 180 days of inactivity. The company agreed to discontinue its Skype Credit expiration policy and implement a Reactivation Policy by which SkypeOut credit will no longer expire after 180 days of inactivity, but rather be deemed “inactive” and subject to reactivation.

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Chinese mobile providers will monitor text messages in the country for “illegal or unhealthy content” and suspend service when a customer inadvertently sends up a red flag, according to a report in The New York Times.

Companies like China Mobile will turn the potentially offending messages over to the authorities to be reviewed. If the customer is cleared of any wrongdoing, his or her service will be restored, but it doesn’t look like the mobile providers or authorities are going out of their way to clearly define what constitutes an offense.

Police will provide words to scan to catch potential criminals in the name of fighting pornography. We reported a couple of weeks ago that more than 5,000 arrests were made on pornography charges in 2009 to prevent the scourge from “overwhelming the country’s Internet and threatening the emotional health of children.”

We’re not sure which words are on the list, but the Times quotes Beijing University telecommunications professor Kan Kaili who claims that “they are doing wide-ranging checks, checking anything and everything, even if it is between a husband and wife.”

Married couples? That could be a problem for the pornography flags, people. This seems to be par for the course if we’re getting the full story here in the West, though — Google has threatened to leave the country if China doesn’t make an effort to improve freedom of speech.

[img credit: Zawezome]

Tags: china, china mobile, SMS, text messaging

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Read the rest of CLEAR Launching 2 CLEAR WiMax Modems [CLEAR Has Announced 2 New WiMax Modems From Gemtek And Motorola]

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The opening of Twitter’s API transformed the service from an interesting web site into the communications plumbing that serves homepages, newsrooms, and smartphones all over the world.

With the release of its own API, Foursquare is banking that it can do the same. Developers are now able to tap into the location-based service’s rich data supply and build their own applications.

Location-based apps are hot right now. More developers building on Foursquare’s platform only fortifies it in the location-based battle with Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and others.

Several Foursquare apps that were announced alongside the API release are now officially available for use. Here’s a look at the first wave.

1. Foursquare for Palm Pre/Pixi

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A couple of developers (with some help from Palm) whipped up a WebOS version of Foursquare just in time for the new year. Hopefully the Foursquare team can now return to developing features for the service and let eager programmers build apps themselves. If you’re on a Pre or Pixi, you can get Foursquare here.

2. Foursquare for Android

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This one has a similar story to the above, only Android-style. Built by Joe LaPenna, Chris Brummel, Brad Root, Darrel Herbst & Micah Craig, it’s not only slick and lightweight, but it’s also open-source. If you’re reading this on your Android phone, you can grab the app right here. If not, you can grab it from the Market or get the source code here.

3. SocialGreat

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While not an app you download, SocialGreat grabs checkin data from Foursquare, couples it with Twitter & BrightKite geodata, and shows you what places in your neighborhood are hot spots. It’s cool and well-designed, but right now all it shows is that the most popular spots are, unsurprisingly, airports and train terminals –- places where people congregate, but not necessarily for social reasons. However, it’s certain to start filtering out stuff like that, and whereas Foursquare’s app itself now has trending places nearby, SocialGreat could be a good way to find out about that last-minute party or tech meetup.

4. MobZombies

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Mobzombies: The First Wave from wcrtr on Vimeo.

If you’re into mindless gaming (literally), you’ll love MobZombies for the iPhone. Basically it turns real human checkin activity on Foursquare into zombie hordes you have to avoid or defeat by either using your touchscreen, or, as the app puts it, “moving your body as a joystick” to trigger your phone’s movement controls. It costs $2.99 in the app store, and will probably encourage you to exercise more than any other app in your collection, assuming you like cartoon gore and 1980s video game graphics.

5. Yipit

Why not find out about specials at your favorite places? This handy application imports your usual haunts from Foursquare and then keeps tabs on deals at those venues for you. Unfortunately it’s only available in New York right now, but it definitely works — after I signed up, it told me about a great deal at the sushi bar below my apartment. Guess where I’m going tonight.

6. Foursquare WordPress Widget

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Right now it’s pretty simple, but nothing’s stopping you from customizing the look and feel on your own blog. Check out the plugin homepage here and start publishing a feed of your checkins on your blog.

7. ul.timate.info Firefox Add-on

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While only useful if you’re on the move with your computer or on someone else’s desktop, this add-on lets you check in and enjoy all the features of Foursquare without needing a smartphone.

8. Last Night’s Checkins

---

This is an interesting idea. Basically, this app helps you keep a Foursquare diary. Every day it e-mails you a list of your previous night’s checkins, and then you fill in information about each experience. Perfect for those of you with fascinating exploits that you feel you must share with the rest of us (or for those of you that have trouble remembering what you did last night).

9. BlackBook

---

For anyone that already reads BlackBook Magazine’s nightlife guides, this app will sync your BlackBook and Foursquare accounts in perfect harmony, delivering you deals and juicy information based on your location.

10. Where Do You Go

---

Built by NYU student Steven Lehrburger, Where Do You Go generates a snazzy heat map of your Foursquare activity around your city. Try it yourself.

BONUS: Peek Maps

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For all six of you who own a Twitter Peek, Peek Maps can show off your Foursquare activity alongside your tweet locations in an embeddable widget.

Coming Soon

---

Layar Reality Browser: This one is actually in a work-in-progress beta right now, and you can open it on your mobile phone here. It adds a Foursquare layer to the augmented reality browser functionality in the existing Layar app. Basically, you point your camera at a building, and it tells you who’s there, who’s the mayor, and what tips were left behind. Keep an eye out for the official release –- this one should be pretty cool.

FourTap allows you to check into Foursquare using a London subway Oystercard. It’s not done yet, but when it is, it could make Foursquare significantly easier to use. Check out the video.

More Foursquare resources from Mashable:

---

- 6 Foursquare Apps We’d Love to See
– 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare
– Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown
– The Twitter of 2010: Foursquare as Next Year’s Breakout Hit
– Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010

Tags: android, Firefox, foursquare, foursquare api, foursquare apps, iphone, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, palm, trending, twitter

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Here are 5 Free File Sharing Services/Sites that you might want to check out:

1.  Media Fire -  Powerful for tool for  business and yet simple enough to use for everyone.  The easy way to host and share any files including  documents, presentations, videos, and images.

2.  File Factory -  FileFactory is an award-winning online file sharing service.  Share all your files at FileFactory and never have to worry about disk space or  bandwidth again. Share files with your friends, family, customers, or thousands  of people worldwide.

3.  BADONGO -  You get unlimited storage space, Manage your files, and you can also share easily with friends and family through social networking platforms.

4.  File Den -   Free accounts gets you:

• Hotlinking allowed for all allowed file extensions, including videos and music files!
• 1GB of personal storage space.
• A 50mb maximum file size limit
• 5GB of monthly bandwidth

5.  File Box – Filebox is a powerful website designed to store, organize and publish all of your electronic media. Whether it’s important spreadsheets, documents, photos, or movies, Filebox allows you to store all of these files in one central location. Then, with the click of a mouse, share these files with your friends, family, or business partners. You can even generate income when they download this with our Filebox Profit program. So whether you are an individual or business, stop paying to store your files online, and start getting paid to store them.

Included a link where you can browse through 100 more File Sharing sites that would be suitable for your need. 100 Best File Sharing Sites

Main Image Source

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This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Moveidiot.com

Quick Pitch: Free, web-based service that takes the hassle out of moving by allowing users to manage entire moves online.

Genius Idea: Moveidiot.com aims to make moving less painful by letting you track your packages, organize your packing lists and coordinate tasks all from its web-based service.

Moving sucks. It is often expensive, stress-inducing and takes tons of time. Managing the little details of a move, like indexing what’s in certain boxes or keeping track of different appointments, only adds to the stress of packing and physically moving to a new place. That’s what Moveidiot.com wants to help dissipate.

At Moveidiot.com, you can manage the various organizational aspects of your move in one place. If you’re shipping stuff across the country, you can track packages from USPS, UPS and FedEx. You can also create moving labels to put on boxes and lists of what’s inside each box and where it needs to go.

Probably the most enticing feature about Moveidiot.com is the Moving Checklist, which is a to-do list that will alert you of stuff you need to do. You can also manage your moving budget, which is handy if you’re trying to decide between hiring movers or renting a truck yourself.

Moveidiot.com is entirely web-based, so you can use it from any Mac or PC, or access your stuff from your mobile phone. If you’re planning a move and need some organizational help, this free service might be worth a look.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: movieidiot.com, moving, web apps

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Think about the products and services that you buy. Why did you purchase them? One of the reasons I go to the local Firestone auto servicing center to buy my tires and get my oil changed and my car maintained (despite the fact that it’s 30 miles from my house) is because Dale, the customer service manager, told me when I first visited this center, “We take care of you so you don’t have to worry about breaking down on the side of the road.” That sealed the deal for me — no other explanation was necessary.

I’m no different than you are. It’s taken me a long time to begin to write about the benefits of what I offer, because, like you, I always assumed that prospects will understand why they should buy the product or service just because I’ve told them about it. After all, isn’t listing the marvelous features of what I’m offering enough? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

When you try to sell the features of your product or service, you’re making the customer do all the work to figure out why they want the feature. As the seller of your products and services, it’s in your prospect’s best interest to draw the connection for them. In order to do that, however, you have to know the results yourself.

So, then, what’s the difference between benefits and features? A feature is a factual statement about the product or service being promoted. However, it’s not the features that entice customers to buy. That’s where benefits come in. A benefit answers the question “What’s in it for me?”

The best way to understand the true benefit that your product or service offers is to focus instead on the results that your customer will receive when using said product of service. It is the customer’s perception of each feature’s result that will attract a prospect to buy a particular product or service.

So, for example, if you were selling a car, one of the features might be “all wheel drive”. While your advertising might include that information, you’ll fare better in your sale when you focus on the benefits of that feature, such as greater safety when driving on poor surfaces, ability to drive places other vehicles can’t, and minimizing the likelihood of getting stuck in the winter. If the prospect says “so what?” when hearing of an aspect of the product, then that aspect is a feature. The answer to the “so what?” question is a potential benefit.

Let’s play this out:

Car ad says: This car has all wheel drive.

Customer reads and says: So what?

Salesperson responds: This means that you’re much less likely to get stuck in the snow in the winter.

Ideal customer response: I hate when that happens! That’s something I need!

If the response to the answer is another “so what?” or a shrug, then the answer did not nail a benefit for that customer (maybe they live in an area of the country where getting stuck in the winter isn’t an issue). Perhaps they would respond better to the “ability to drive places other vehicles can’t” or something else. The key here is knowing and understanding your customers and what they need.

To help you create your list of benefits for your product or service, create a Features and Benefits Sheet. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left hand side write a list of the features of your product or service. On the right side write the corresponding benefit that goes with that feature. answering the “so what?” question (what problem are you solving) in the process. Once you have completed this exercise, share the sheet with colleagues who will give you honest feedback about your benefits listing.

Remember, success in sales and marketing in your business is all about the benefits to your audience rather than the features you’re going to deliver. It’s all about selling the sizzle, not the steak.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Copywriting Tips: How to Market Benefits vs Features

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AudioTag.info is a free music-recognition service. It allows you to identify almost any unknown piece of music quickly and easily. Its use is very simple: you upload a short audio fragment (even 15 seconds are enough) or an entire song, the robot analyzes it and provides you with the information about the track title, artist name, album title, etc. Your audio fragment can be in almost any file format and of almost any quality (aurally recognizable, of course), it can be an MP3 file downloaded from the Internet or a short recording made with your old tape recorder and stored as a low-quality .WAV-file.

http://www.audiotag.info/

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TwitterCounter is a service for Bloggers, Social networkers and other well connected individuals to communicate and track the amount of followers they have on Twitter. Add the TwitterCounter to your blog or profile to attract more followers. Also check out our top 100 and add your own name too!

http://twittercounter.com/

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From the time people started storing data on computers, there’s always been backup solutions appearing shortly after learning the hard way. Unfortunately online services like Twitter, Flickr, Gmail and others, don’t typically offer easy data backup and what services are available are scattered or difficult to use. Backupify changes that. With a single service you’re able to setup and manage backups for many of the major online services, with many more on the way.

In this review we’ll take a look at Backupify and what it has to offer in preserving our digital existence.

The Purpose

You probably already have a pretty good idea of Backupify’s purpose and why it’s definitely worth considering. However, it’s worth mentioning that there are many reasons one would want to backup services from Gmail and Flickr to Twitter and Youtube.

Backupify

Here’s a few risks our online accounts face, which seem to happen to some of us at one point or another.

• Data loss
• Data corruption
• Account hacked
• Account locked, suspended or closed
• Accidental deletion

There are more risks like these, but you get the idea. Backing up your data is good — we all know that. Backupify can do data restoration as well, for the services that allow it. The team at Backupify are fully aware of the fact that data backups can be of little use if you’re unable to restore or do anything with the data that’s been backed up. They talk about this point via their blog post, Backups aren’t the point; restores are.

In short, Backupify does everything they can to provide restoration options for the services that allow it. Twitter, for instance, doesn’t allow any sort of restoration currently.

Usage

Setting up and using Backupify couldn’t really be much easier. It’s a pretty basic service that doesn’t clutter the user interface with unnecessary or complicated options. Currently signup is free until January 31st too.

Free Signup

Setup

Once signed up, you’re presented with your “My Settings” page, which lists available services for backup, services in beta, and services that are on the way.

My Settings

Backup Settings

At the bottom of the page you have your backup settings for daily or weekly backups and notification options when backups are performed.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more backup options here but for the simplicity of the service, it [probably] isn’t necessary and most people wouldn’t use additional options.

Account Setup

To setup an account, click the “Manage” link next to the desired service. You’ll be presented with a simple gray box, in this case including a link for Twitter authentication.

Twitter Backup Setup

Other services such as Gmail might require that you enter your username and password for setup and authentication. I’ve setup three of my Gmail accounts here.

Gmail Backup Setup

It also appears some service backups offer a few additional options, such as Facebook.

Facebook Backup Setup

As you can see, it’s pretty simple and very straight forward. Select a service, authenticate your account and select any additional options if they’re available — and you’re good to go!

Service Archives

In the event something does happen to one of your accounts or some of your data, you’ll visit the Archives page to download or restore your data. The page initially presents you with a drop-down menu to select the service you would like to see archives for. After selecting the desired service, you’re given a list of files that were previously backed up.

Twitter Archives

The list of links provide downloadable files. For example, Gmail backups allow you to download individual emails but there are no options for automated data restoration at this time. The same problem applies to all the services I had setup, which had all been backed up. However, reading Backupify’s FAQ page explains that data restoration capabilities depends on the service (as previously mentioned).

For example, they can restore a Flickr account but it hasn’t been automated yet so you’ll need to contact them to have their programmers do it manually. They request that you email them for questions pertaining to specific services, as data restoration really just depends on each service.

History

Visiting the history tab displays a list of our backups and the dates they were performed, from most recent onward. As you can see, I entered the incorrect credentials for two of my Gmail accounts. I should’ve recognized this earlier as I hadn’t received successful backup notifications for these accounts and the history lets me verify that.

Backup History

Security

Backupify’s privacy policy, in regards to your data, is that once it is backed up, they don’t do anything with it — no viewing, analyzing, modifying or anything of the like. While this is somewhat reassuring, we should all be aware that while a company may say things like this, they still have access to your data. Facebook is a prime example of privacy abuse. This isn’t to say Backupify is doing anything like that though.

They state that your data is usually backed up in the form it is received, which is usually XML. XML may not be easily readable by people, but the data is none-the-less readable. Many data backup and storage companies encrypt your stored data, and some even state that the user is the only one with the master password and able to view the data. In my opinion, data backed up with Backupify should be no different.

However, having said that, I don’t feel as if Backupify is trying to abuse my data. I do feel as though the service is still in its infancy and has a lot of maturing to do before it would be considered a viable service by mainstream users.

Final Thoughts

Backupify, while a fantastic idea, still has some improvements that need to be made. The overall service is still worth checking out as you’ll still be able to download data should it be needed. I really like the capability of backing up all (or most) of my online services in one location that’s easy to setup and manage.

As much as I would like to keep my online service’s data backed up in the event I should need it, I would much rather loose the data forever than have someone abuse it. This is an area of concern that Backupify will need to improve upon before it will really be ready for heavy usage.

Another area of improvement for Backupify is the overall web app interface. While it is simple, it isn’t very pretty (we all like a little pretty right?) and doesn’t utilize the power of today’s web technology such as JavaScript, in order to create a more seamless and pleasant user experience. Waiting for page reloads in order to view a few service backup settings isn’t acceptable in today’s web application standards.

Overall, the service has a great idea going and although it does need several major improvements, it’s still very new and will take some time to really reach a level of maturity to convince the crowd of more serious digerati.

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Vudu is in “meaningful” acquisition discussions with a potential buyer: superstore retail chain Walmart, according to Peter Kafka at All Things Digital

Vudu is an HD-streaming and DVD movie and TV show rental service that’s a cross between Netflix and iTunes, but is currently mostly reliant on partnerships with TV set manufacturers like LG, Sanyo, Toshiba and Sharp for distribution. The company has failed to attract widespread consumer attention and rumors suggest it’s been looking to sell its service.

While a seemingly unlikely buyer, especially given the nature of Vudu’s TV manufacturer partner relationships, Walmart could be interested in acquiring the company in the hopes of turning around a failed four-year history in the online and DVD rentals space. Walmart could also expose Vudu’s arguably superior HD-streaming experience to a much larger audience.

Kafka writes:

“After trying for two years to compete with Netflix’s DVD-by-mail business, Wal-Mart gave up in 2005 and agreed to send its customers directly to Netflix (NFLX). In 2007, with the backing of all the big studios and tech help from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), the retailer tried to launch a download service, a la Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes. But it abandoned that effort in less than a year.

Meanwhile, sources say Vudu has been seeking a buyer–in the form of either a big-box retailer or an electronics manufacturer–for some time without success. Internet executive Mark Jung ran the company for a year but left in November 2008; founder Alain Rossmann became interim CEO when Jung left and has kept the title since then.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Vudu has raised at least $21 million from Benchmark Capital and Greylock Partners. I’m told that when the company was marketing itself last fall, it was looking for a sale price of $50 million or more. But it may not have much leverage to command a premium.”

Should Walmart live by the adage that the third time is a charge, then we can expect to see it go head-to-head with Apple and Netflix and attempt to become an entertainment conglomerate. Of course, it will also have to mitigate deals with the same movie studios that are putting Netflix new release rentals on pause and appease TV set makers already supporting Vudu.

Tags: business, Film, tv, vudu, WalMart

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Buses, cars, planes and now even Amtrak trains offer Wi-Fi for web work or play during travel. Amtrak has just confirmed that they will be providing free wireless Internet access on trains.

The company is in the process of reviewing free Wi-Fi trials, but they expect to launch the service on all high-speed Acela Express trains — which operate in the Northeast Corridor — by March, according to a report from Wired.

The Wi-Fi service will initially be free, and eventually rolled out to other regions (though no timelines are set), but charges could come at a later date. What those costs are we don’t know, but CEO Joseph Boardman states, “Pricing may change depending on customer response, system performance and costs.”

While the news of free Wi-Fi on Acela Express trains is certainly welcome, we have to wonder whether the quality will be improved from the subpar performance of early trials some travelers reported. Boardman also confirmed that the fleet of cars and locomotives will be upgraded, which could also influence the quality of the Wi-FI experience.

Ultimately Amtrak is making the train and service improvements to boost revenue, which they project to grow by $4.3 million over the next five years.

[img credit: statosphere]

Tags: amtrak, business, free wifi, wifi

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Nexus One is a great phone, and one of the best Android-based handsets on the market. But Google’s strategy of selling it directly through its website brings a couple of unwanted side effects.

First, if that $530 price for the unsubsidized, unlocked Nexus One seems steep to you, maybe you’ll think differently after you see Google’s early termination fee (ETF) for the subsidized version: $350.

Sure, pretty much every subsidized phone comes with an ETF. But this is Google’s termination fee, which may come in addition to the carrier’s own ETF, which, for example, is $200 in the case of T-Mobile.

PC World ran through Google’s Nexus One terms of sale, but here’s the quick rundown, coming directly from big G:

“You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the ‘Equipment Recovery Fee’) equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service.”

…and the ugly part:

“Please note that the Equipment Recovery Fee is imposed by Google and not your chosen carrier and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier in connection with termination of your wireless plan prior to fulfillment of your chosen carrier’s service agreement term.”

This could be some sort of misunderstanding, but a couple of days have passed since the double fee issue was discovered, and Google has remained silent about the matter. As it stands now, it seems that if you terminate your Nexus One contract within the first 120 days of service, you’ll have to pay two different ETFs which is both confusing and expensive.

Furthermore, since the Nexus One is manufactured by HTC, sold by Google, and you have to use it on a mobile network, such as T-Mobile, it can be hard to decide who you should complain to in case of problems. As complaints inevitably mount up, users are often unable to figure out who’s responsible.

None of these are deal breakers, but are definitely issues one should be aware of before purchasing the phone. Google may have offered us the most advanced Android handset on the market, but they haven’t worked out all the details just yet.

Tags: trending

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Originally posted at Rafe’s Radar

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Create your free store and sell digital and physical items!

IndieMart.com is a free service to register on. We have designed or fee structures to try and be some of the most competitive in the industry especially when you consider all the features you receive. We charge fees only when sellers sell their products or list over a certain amount of items at one time. We also have premium memberships which carry a monthly fee in return for reduced selling fees and no fees for listing products as well as other benefits.

http://www.indiemart.com/

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A startup is making sure you can follow all the intimate details of your favorite porn star’s life — you know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

It’s called Pornstar Tweet! [NSFW], and it tracks the tweets of 600 top porn stars all in one place. Its founders also say it will “keep you up to date about their latest movies, galleries and websites.”

“We want to be the de facto source for stalking porn stars — with their permission,” company president Dan Housely tells NewTeeVee. We’ve heard about Twitter porn before, but that was spam; this is a legit service. And given that porn is such a popular search term on the Internet — even for kids— this ad-supported service is probably not a terrible business idea.

This idea was revealed at the Adult Entertainment Expo, which launched a lot of other high-tech concepts. The expo, which occurred in Las Vegas only a few doors down from the Consumer Electronics Show, also featured Lipstream, which provides VoIP conferences with porn stars, 3D porn videos, and Roxxxy, a customizable sex robot that can carry on conversations about football with her owner.

Oh, and there’s also OhMiBod, a vibrator attachment that works with music played on your iPhone or iPod touch. Can’t believe we forgot that one.

Tags: adult entertainment expo, lipstream, ohmibod, roxxxy, social media, tweet, twitter

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Originally posted at Web Crawler

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nsyght is a real time service that pull in events and posts that and your friends make on all the social services that you use. Additionally, you can chose to post cool stuff from here, reply to things you find on other services, and of course forward groovy stuff that you find to your friends.

Suppoted services: Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Last.fm, Vimeo, and Delicious

http://www.nsyght.com/

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An online event registration service that allows you to create, publish and promote your event for free. Set it up on your personalized event page with our easy to use registration system and have your event visible to the world at http://yourevent.doattend.com, within a matter of minutes. Provide your attendees with eTickets for that professional touch, even if its a free event.

You pay us a nominal fee, only if you sell tickets online.

From a corporate conference to a weekend cycling event. No event too small or too large. Tap into a wider, easy-to-reach online audience and promote your event successfully.

http://doattend.com/

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What is JustSpotify?

JustSpotify is a real-time music discovery service where anyone can discover music in real-time and build their music profile on Twitter.

What’s the purpose of JustSpotify?

To let the real music be shown to the world. JustSpotify provides a free, impartial service where you can discover music straight from the fans instantaneously.

How do I use JustSpotify?

JustSpotify works as your personal music friend, so whenever you make votes on our platform via “Import” or our “Revote” feature we will be able to give you real-time music data to your dashboard.

How do I create an account?

You can sign into JustSpotify simply using your Twitter account, so you dont need to signup at all to be able to fully utilize our service.

http://www.justspotify.com/

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Cadmus is a real time filtering service that manages your stream (Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content since the last time you checked in. It helps you get caught up on what you have missed.

http://www.thecadmus.com/

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At the end of the Qualcomm chief executive’s first Consumer Electronics Show keynote, audience members learned that 300 of them would be walking away with a coupon to get a mobile gadget that plays live television from the company’s FLO TV service. The good news was delivered by sports announcer James Brown, who told audience members to look under their seats to find the coupons. Lively applause followed from the lucky winners.

Neither the giveaway nor the reaction were too surprising. Attendees clearly got some value. The device — priced at $250 when it was announced last fall — is being given to them with six months of free service, Brown said.

Qualcomm also has reason to take unusual marketing steps. The company has admitted the service has grown slowly among U.S. users, at least compared to the rapid adoption of mobile TV in countries such as South Korea. Jacobs said another step Qualcomm will take this year is to add more programming to target sports fans (that’s why Brown was on stage — he pronounced it a “must-have” item for real sports fanatics).

If FLO is struggling a bit, other parts of Qualcomm’s business are rocking — at least to judge by the procession of partners that showed new developments based on the company’s chips and other techologies.

For instance, Todd Bradley, an executive vice president at Hewlett-Packard, showed a prototype of a potential “smartbook” that uses Qualcomm chips based on ARM Holdings technology. The potential customer win was announced Wednesday night, but the on-stage demo made a few things clearer about the potential of the product. For one thing, it uses Android software and a touch screen, allowing users to flip through photos in the fluid manner of an iPhone user.

Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing showed its own much-discussed smartbook and another Qualcomm-powered product that is likely to have an even bigger impact on its business: the computer maker’s first smart phone. His on-stage appearance was preceded by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who showed a new phone design it calls HTC Smart. Not only does it use Qualcomm’s chips but also the company’s Brew software platform, despite all the recent focus on Android and apps for that Google operating system.

Jacobs’ speech went on for well over an hour and touched on many topics, and he threw out many facts and stats about how far mobile technology has come. For example, he said that cellphones have now exceeded the reach of TVs, standard wired telephones and just about everything else.

“The cellphone has become the most widespread platform that human beings have ever created,” Jacobs said.

Perhaps the greatest crowd pleaser among Jacobs’ guests — after Brown and the free TV players, at least — was Eric Topol, a cardiologist and genomics professor who has become a kind of Pied Piper for the use of wireless devices in medicine. Topol, who among other things is chief medical officer of the West Wireless Health Institute, showed a series of applications on handheld gadgets that showed his vital signs, ultrasound images of his body and a remote patient, and the vital signs of a patient in an intensive care unit in Texas.

“Consumers have been concerned about the economic crisis” in medicine, Topol said. “But we can innovate out of that.”

Now that’s the kind of optimism people come to CES to hear.

More CES coverage on Digits

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Google is struggling to provide adequate customer service for the Nexus One (aka Google phone), according to reports. The Google Mobile forums are brimming with unanswered queries and problems, as customers turn to Google itself for support.

One recurring issue in the forums is a problem with the phone either not switching to 3G or switching back and forth between 3G and EDGE too frequently — it’s not clear if this is a significant issue or if the complaints are just a symptom of Google’s less-than-stellar customer support.

InfoWorld writes of the concerns:

Google appears to be only accepting e-mail customer queries, to which it pledges to reply in one to two days — far too long, say most people who are complaining online.

Many people are also turning to T-Mobile and HTC, but getting little help there. T-Mobile is often referring people back to either Google or HTC for answers to questions. HTC is often referring people back to T-Mobile, according to complaints online.

Google appears to acknowledge the issue. Google Android lead Andy Rubin admitted in an interview at CES: “We have to get better at customer service.”

Tags: customer service, Google, nexus one, problems, support

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Tell your friends and the world how are you doing.

Feelinq is free service which allows you to get to know how your close friends and family are feeling at the moment, in real-time. It also has been vastly used to measure how the World has been.

http://www.feelinq.com/

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If you haven’t already heard about Seesmic’s recent acquisition of Ping.fm, well then, spoiler alert…they did that. This will inevitably raise the profile of the service provided by Ping.fm, and that got me thinking about this service and any others like it that are out there. Not in a daydreaming of the app sort of way, but actually wondering about its overall usefulness and impact, and whether that impact would end up being a positive or a negative one.

A Little Background

For those of you out there who are not familiar with Ping.fm, don’t feel bad. I had only heard about them, but was never sure of what they were, nor was I interested enough to actually find out what they were all about. It wasn’t until their recent buyout that I discovered what kind of service Ping.fm offers the online community. With a single status update, your info will be shared across 50 different social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook, etc…

The Discussion

If this is the first time you have heard of Ping.fm, some of you just got an excited rush of goose bumps running across the surface of your flesh, and others just felt a sort of nervous sinking feeling in their stomachs. Or at least I am hoping there are others with the pit in their belly like I felt when I first read that. Because while some may be thinking of the huge personal advantage this affords them in their quest to spread the word about them or their work, you see, the pit party on this side of the fence sees this a little bit differently.

For those of us who think that social media should be about interacting with the people who populate your various circles sharing in the numerous streams you send out, this kind of sharing limits the senders ability to actually interact with others. It all becomes a one sided burst of information, not communication. And if these different social media networks were started to introduce new ways to communicate with each other, then these kinds of services are actually going against the idea that established these lines of communication. By decreasing the senders actual connectivity and accesibility from their readers.

So I landed on the side of services like Ping.fm being detrimental to the health and value of the networks that are fed via this kind of app. Currently, Ping.fm has in the neighborhood of half a million users with a couple hundred thousand shares sent out a day. But how effective are these bulk wrapped info-bursts? Is there appeal in this service beyond self-serving ends, with their spam-like infiltration into the numerous data streams it feeds? Or is it less about the community and the interaction between the sender and reader, and just about the information?

Either way, in those instances, be it just about the info or yourself, it is no longer about connecting and growing the community. Which in turn, means that half a million users are already using the social media networks as more of a web based advertising format, so they are being degraded from the communicative role they were initiated to fulfill. With this new wave of public accesibility and awareness of these kinds of services, what does that mean for the future of the social media networks?

Will they be reduced to nothing more than an underaccessed forum for advertising, or will people realize the negative impact of this trend and resist it, maintaining that element of socializing that gives the social media networks’ title relevance? Or will it have a more positive effect on the spread of information, while removing the interactiveness that once drew many of us to these waters? Or will it have no effect whatsoever? I believe if more people see these kinds of shares as beneficial and begin to care less about interacting, then they will have a negative impact on social media and its effectiveness.

What is your two cents?

Now it is your turn to use the comments section below to share your thoughts and ideas on this topic, and the overall impact we are likely to see as a result of this acquisition. Do you feel like we are heading for any of the futures put forth above, or do you believe in an unoffered outcome? Whatever the thoughts kicking around in your head, please share them so that they may be discussed below as well.

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Originally posted at The Social

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Sprint said it is expanding its open location platform with the addition of TechnoCom Corporation to give developers more ways to create new location-based services for Sprint customers. TechnoCom is allocation –based aggregator that provides customization and integration support services tailored to call center and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) based services.

“We are pleased to add TechnoCom to our developer program as a location-based aggregator,” said Len Barlik, vice president of wireless and wireline services for Sprint.

“Because developers can work with a variety of specialized service enablers, they can create and launch richer applications that benefit from the speed and utility of the Sprint network. We look forward to seeing the useful and cost effective applications that developers can create for call center management and for other industries.”

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Originally posted at The Social

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SageSpark is business community which offers business tips, business community, free apps and value added services to help businesses focus on what they do best and outsource the rest.

SageSpark offers a service called KnownLocally which is a online advertising solution to drive local customers to local businesses. It allows a business to quickly register a domain name, create a web page and have the domain name submitted to 20 local business directories such as Google Local and Yahoo! Local. This is an inexpensive service that requires no technical knowledge and is smartly priced to help small businesses get online quickly and be found.

SageSpark offers Live Computer Support which is a live helpdesk service that provides unlimited phone support to users who subscribe to the service. It is inexpensively priced and requires very little technical knowledge on the part of the user..when you have a problem, simply call the 1800 number and the MCSE agent will perform a diagnostic of your computer or if you prefer, they will remote into your computer while you watch.

SageSpark offers free trial versions of Simply Accounting’s First Step as well has blogs, articles and information on running your business and a community for users to interact and send private messages. It offers a free job board and a business directory for small businesses to connect and talk.

http://www.sagespark.com/

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Quantcast, a service that lets anyone check stats and audience information about websites, announced this morning that it has raised $27.5 million in fresh funding from Cisco Systems and others.

The company, whose competitors include services like Compete and Alexa, says it will use the funding primarily to expand its ad platform.

As for why that’s of interest to the increasingly diverse Cisco, the SVP and general manager of the company’s Media Solutions Group Dan Scheinman said in a statement: “Quantcast’s approach and technology for delivering high-value, targeted advertising aligns with the needs of Cisco’s customers, from service providers to media companies and ultimately consumers.”

The round was co-led by Polaris Venture Partners. Founders Fund and Revolution Ventures also participated.

Tags: analytics, compete, money, Quantcast, venture capital

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This round of funding might be particularly significant for the company. "We believe this latest round provides ChaCha the cash required to reach profitability," says CEO Scott A. Jones.

Over the past four years, since its inception, ChaCha has raised about $52 million from prominent tech leaders, venture capitalists, and angel investors. The company says its text service passed Google in mobile text traffic in Q3 2009. According to ChaCha, when the company’s mobile service launched in January 2008, Google SMS had nearly 100% of he mobile text search market, but ChaCha now has more text traffic, coming from users mostly under the age of 25.

That may be why ChaCha is considering itself the "#1 way for advertisers to reach teens and young adults on their mobile phones."

"Given that we started our mobile text service less than 2 years ago, that also makes us the fastest-growing mobile text service that provides advertisers with a way to reach elusive teens and young adults," says Jones. " We have been monetizing from national brands and local businesses who want to be ‘in the conversation.’  We have provided a successful advertising venue for brands, including The CW Network, IKEA, Paramount Pictures, McDonald’s, Palm, Coca Cola, AT&T, J&J, P&G, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and hundreds of other businesses."

"ChaCha acts as a ‘smart friend’ to answer any question via text (or voice, iPhone, or twitter), particularly from college-age and high school-age students," adds Mr. Jones.  "While many headlines frequently report ‘mobile web’ search traffic stats, the reality is that ‘smart phones’ represent less than 20% of phones that are in users’ hands today (iPhones represent about 6%).  For the vast majority of mobile phone users, the common denominator of texting, which works on virtually all phones, is the more universal way to get answers.  Interestingly, our new iPhone app gets MORE engagement from users than our mobile text service, which leads us to believe that ChaCha will be even more successful as smart phones (iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc…) continue to proliferate."

Between its mobile and online services, ChaCha has answered over 300 million questions in the past two years. The company cites data from Quantcast, which indicate it gets over 10 million unique monthly visitors in the US.

Related Articles:

> Need Answers? Text ChaCha!

> ChaCha Gets Extra-Important $10M In Funding

> ChaCha Receives $6 Million To Keep Dancing

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Stribe is a plug and play service to instantly create a social network on any website.

Stribe is the first service that allows any website or blog to create a branded and customized social network in 5 minutes.

http://www.stribe.com/

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Another Cute Url Shortening Service , Recycles your Long Links and re-produces a Cute Short Ones.

http://blu.cc

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Photo by The JoshMeister.

Whether you’ve got an iPhone, a BlackBerry, or any other phone, cellular reception can seem like a kind of voodoo spirit—completely gone in some places, but fine and dandy five feet away. The Bits blog relates some of the rather strange measures people will resort to for a chance at a clear call:

Another colleague, Claire Cain Miller, went so far as to rearrange the furniture in her San Francisco home: “We moved one of our living room couches into the bedroom under the window because that is the only place in the house where we get AT&T coverage.” Before that, she said, she would deal with work conversations by balancing her computer or notebook on the dresser with one hand and holding the phone in the other.

I feel that pain. My in-laws’ house is a complete dead zone for every kind of cellular coverage I’ve had, except for Sprint/Nextel, yet their driveway picks up T-Mobile and Verizon calls just fine.

Do you have similarly strange cellular coverage around your home or office? What lengths have you gone to for better service, better calls, or wireless data? Tell us about your tricks, solutions, and quasi-pagan rituals in the comments.

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