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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There are still a lot of details to be worked out from the sound of it, and since the change won’t go into effect for a year, maybe they will have enough time to get it right. However, publishers have been trying to get this right for years already, and are still struggling to find that true answer. You have to wonder, what makes them think they can get the details ironed out by then?

It would be one thing to announce it and start doing it. Other publications do this, but a year is an incredibly long time in the online world. There are so many things that could happen and questions that may still remain unanswered in the online news industry. News Corp. for example, has set off a firestorm over whether or not people should be able to freely link to free content on the web. There are just so many things that come into play that it seems rather strange to assume everything will fall into place a year from now. Who knows what condition the industry will be in by then? Publications that are using paid models right now may decide it’s not working and switch to a different plan. To reiterate, a year is a long time, particularly in an industry with so many question marks.

"This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper is quoted as saying. "We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right."

I would say the thought process has been in motion for some time, and it’s hard to imagine setting a deadline for the discussion to wrap up in such a timeframe. Does setting such a deadline suggest a hint of desperation? The Times says that any changes will be closely watched by other publishers of online content, and there is no doubt that this will indeed be the case.

The publication refers to Nielsen Online and analysts’ data indicating that NYTimes.com is "by far" the most popular newspaper site in the country with over 17 million readers a month in the U.S. alone.

Do you read the New York Times? Would you pay for frequent access or get your news from other sources? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> New York Time’s Could Announce Paid Model This Week

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Is This the Answer for Online News Revenue?

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Last year at The Future of Web Apps (FOWA) London we invited Paul Boag, host of Boagworld and author of the Website Owners Manual, along to conduct a series of interviews with speakers from the event. Over the next few weeks we will be publishing some of these here on the blog.

First up is Kevin Rose. Following on from his FOWA keynote “9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users” Paul and his co-host Paul Stanton asked Kevin a few questions on community, user testing and advisory roles.

This interview lasts for 19 minutes.

Read the full transcript by Simon Hamp.

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Even if you don’t have a Valentine (stop crying, please), you have to admit that the arrival of Sweethearts candies makes February bearable. And this year, the 145-year-old confection is embracing the 21st century with a brand new message: “Tweet Me.”

According to USA Today, Twitter and Sweethearts candy plan to unveil the brand partnership today, which was prompted by an online survey last year that asked customers to weigh in on the next Sweetheart saying. “Tweet Me” reigned supreme — after the more archaic “Text Me.”

No money is changing hands in this sugary media marriage, but the two are working together on the campaign — the candy company is also launching an iPhone app that will let you send your lover boy or girl a personalized digital Sweethearts box to be displayed on his or her Twitter page. (Oh man, if I don’t get one of these it’s going to be like the eighth grade carnation drop all over again…)

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told USA Today: “It’s even more proof that people can say anything in short messages. A 140-character message may seem short. Sweethearts are even smaller.”

Twitter seems to be all over the retail sphere as of late, with a line of “Follow Me” tights on Etsy and hashtag necklaces popping up all over. Will you be giving your sweetheart one of these techie gifts come February 14? Or, alternately, shoving these candies blindly into your mouth whilst tweeting about your wasted romantic existence?

[img credit: terren in Virginia]

Tags: biz stone, business, money, sweethearts, trending, twitter

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It appears that we have the year’s first mega viral hit. “Pants on the Ground,” an original medley performed during American Idol auditions by Larry Platt, is seemingly everywhere this the past week, from Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show to the Minnesota Vikings locker room.

The phenomenon has also joined the rarefied air of one million fans on Facebook, where Platt’s activities are being documented (he’s already been on The View), and users are uploading their own “pants”-inspired creations to the fan-created Page.

Like any huge viral sensation, “pants” is also getting the remix treatment on YouTube, with some spinoffs of the original receiving hundreds of thousands of views. Popeater put together a list of some of the best.

American Idol has to be counting its blessings that it’s found the year’s first hit in the show’s first week. With Paula gone and Simon on the way out, the show is going to be more dependent than ever on viral moments to drive interest — manufactured as they may be.

In case you’re still out of the loop, here’s the original:

Tags: american idol, larry platt, pants on the ground, tv, video

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The physical act of removing clutter from my workspace left me free to focus on what remained. Much of what’s left is not physical, however. Like me, many online business owners have more electronic items in their business than physical ones. This is the point where many independent service professionals get stuck — trying to organize and take inventory of all those electronic assets and determine how to best utilize them in the coming year.

How can you track these electronic pieces of your business? By taking an inventory. You can take this inventory on paper, on a white board, on your computer, or wherever works for you.

Here are 17 points to include in your online business inventory:

1. Target Market. Describe the market(s) you serve and how you serve it/them. This will help you streamline other assets you find in your business to help you evaluate whether certain projects are right for your business.
2. Domains and hosting. Track down all the domains you own and where they are registered and where they are hosted. Note which domains are attached to web sites or are in use some way (even those that are forwarded to other sites). Which ones are not being used at all? What fees are you paying annually to renew these domains and hosting accounts?
3. Web sites. List all the web sites that you are currently using, including where they are hosted, the username and password to access the hosting control panel, FTP information, and emails associated with the site. Note how much traffic each web site has received over the past few months and estimate how much revenue the site is producing. Then, make a second list of all the web sites you own that are currently under development or are currently working on.
4. Blogs. List all the blogs you use, separating those that are inactive from the ones that are active. Note where they are hosted or the service hosting them, the username and password to access the hosting control panel, and login information. Note how much traffic each blog has received over the past few months, the number of subscribers you have to the blog, and estimate how much revenue the blog is producing, if you can.
5. Email marketing. List every mailing list, including your newsletters, autoresponders, customer lists, affiliate lists, prospect lists, etc. Note the purpose of the list, number of subscribers for each, and estimate how much revenue that list is producing.
6. Products. If you sell information products, make a note of both those that have been completed and are for sale and those in development. Also note any products that you give away for bonuses or give away on your site. If you sell physical products for which you keep an inventory, write them all down. Record how many you’ve sold of each product in the past year.
7. Paid Memberships. Inventory all the paid memberships you have in paid forums, PLR sites, professional associations, membership sites, and other memberships you pay for that are directly related to your business, along with their URLs, usernames and passwords. Take note of how much you pay for this membership and how often and how you use it.
8. Free Memberships. Note all the free memberships you have in various groups, forums, social networks, etc. Outline why these memberships are valuable to you and how much time you spend on each of them on a daily/weekly basis.
9. Software. Record all the software you have on your computer that is related to your business, including license/registration info, purchase price, and date purchased. Make a note of how frequently you use this software.
10. Outsourcing Team. Write down who works with you, what they do, how much you pay them per hour or per job, and their average monthly payment.
11. Affiliate links. Regularly recommending products and services for which you are an affiliate is a great way to add another stream of income in your business. Make a list of the products and services for which you are an affiliate, including your affiliate URL, affiliate account URL and username and password, and how much you have made in sales from each affiliate relationship.
12. Master password list. Incorporate all the passwords you have collected thus far into a master list, along with others you use regularly.
13. Speaking topics. Note the title, description, learning points, and interview questions of talks that you give regularly both face-to-face or virtually as a presentation or an interview.
14. Articles. Note the titles of all of the articles you have authored, along with a summary description of each. If you use an article distribution service, you may find your article index there. Move all of your articles under one folder on your computer so that you can easily access them in the future.
15. Recordings. Note the titles of all of the audio and video recordings you have made, including those where you were someone else’s guest, along with a summary description of each. Write down how the recordings are being used — for sale as an info product, as a bonus for one of your products or someone else’s product, or as a free giveaway.
16. Services. Note the nature of all services you currently provide, and those you plan to offer in the coming year, as well as your current pricing plans, future pricing plans, and how much money you made from each service in the past year.
17. Clean it up. Now it’s time for serious evaluation and to make some difficult choices. Remember, these will be some of the most important business decisions you’ll make to help you refocus for a highly productive and profitable business. There are just two rules to follow here: — If it doesn’t fit in with your chosen target market and business plan – GET RID OF IT! — If you still decide to hang on to it anyway, but it weighs on you in any way – GET RID OF IT!

This business inventory and cleanup may take a week or more, but once it’s completed, you’ll have a visual accounting of all of your business assets, which will help you plan for a profitable year in your business.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Business Planning: Your 17-Point New Year’s Business Inventory and Cleanup

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The Xperia X10 will be powered by Android, and the interface uses Timescape and Mediascape. Timescape is a comprehensive way to keep all your forms of communication in one place. Emails, texts, calls, social networking – all of them will be easily organized in one group using Timescape. Then Mediascape will be your one stop for videos, photos, and music.

A release date has not been announced for the U.S., but the Xperia X10 will drop in Canada Q1 or Q2 of this year.

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An new year new sponsors our first new year edition of our monthly thank you post to our sponsors for their support throughout January, who have helped and supported Creative Nerds immensely to help increase the growth of our site.

Become one of our sponsors and get your site noticed by our readers

Creative Nerds has thousands of visitors each day and one of the main perks of becoming one of our sponsors is that your company or product will be noticed by thousands of people each month. Each Month we write a post dedicated to our sponsors thanking them for their support, making our readers aware of our sponsors and chance for our readers to learn a bit more about sponsors.

Heart Internet

Heart Internet’s Reseller Professional account is every Internet professional’s dream. Specially tailored for web designers, Internet integrators, web hosting resellers and developers, our Reseller package includes unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth and the ability to host unlimited domains at no extra charge!

ForeUI

ForeUI is a handy UI prototyping tool. It can rapidly create static or interactive, skinnable UI prototypes of your website or software. You can use ForeUI to:

Create mock-up for the GUI in your mind and make others understand quickly. Make working prototype of website or software to collect feedback from potential users. Perform usability testing before releasing the beta version. Generate the schematics that can be inserted in the design documents.

PSD To Html

RapidxHTML is a small team of designers and developers, with a wide range of skills and experience. Each of us know our strengths and weaknesses and how these fit into the big picture.

They came together with one simple objective to offer professional XHTML / CSS markup services at affordable price. We combine expertise in eye-catching graphic layout with modern web design standards built into one of the most powerful systems in the world.

Premium WordPress Themes

Premium WordPress Themes Club! Are developing professional wordpress themes and provide efficient support of our templates. Join the club and choose the membership that suits your needs. We are proud to invite you to the best wordpress themes club and provide you with the full access to all our themes, as well as tutorials, support and the community forum.

Viva Themes

They create quality and professionally designed wordpress themes. They offer themes for your business, blog or personal sites. All of that comes with their excellent free support.

PSD Mall

Psdmall is a web design shop that sells unique photoshop designs. All designs are created from scratch in photoshop and are delivered in a .psd format. Psdmall is the perfect solution for newbie designers, developers, domainers, or anyone in need of a high quality design at an affordable price.

Digital Product Delivery

Each day, thousands of vendors use DPD to automatically sell downloads and deliver their digital products to customers. Integrating with PayPal and other popular payment processors, DPD is the quick and easy way to set up your products for automated selling.

Stockvault

Stockvault.net is a stock photo sharing website where designers and photographers can meet to share their images. You don’t have to sign up to be able to download our images, but we’d like you to do so anyway, just so you can gain access to our special features. All images on this site are free for personal and non-commercial usage.

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David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, announced on its official blog last week, there is to be “a new approach to China”, which means, we want out. What the ultimate outcome of this furore will be is not yet clear, but according to sources China is said to have persuaded Google to stay on and announced that: “Beijing is trying to persuade Google to stay and give up plans to pull out its Chinese version from the country.”

On the same blog, Google said: “Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.” Therefore, we quit? That simple? Not quite.

China’s foreign ministry said last Thursday that: “China welcomed international internet companies to conduct business within the country according to the law”. Well, that’s all well and good if the Chinese authorities are protecting users from viewing porn and overt sedition but the assumption of the foreign Press has been that the hacker attacks were orchestrated by the Chinese government to carry out investigations against human rights activists.

That sort of practice is, of course, unacceptable to us in the West, but doesn’t it smack of hypocrisy? There’s something awkwardly deceiving about Google’s moral stance on China when its corporate motto “do no evil”, an anachronism now but perhaps a catchy shibboleth in its time, is an almost obscene declaration of double standards while it retains data mining to service ad revenues, coupled with surveillance, digital profiling and personal intrusion.

Getting ever more involved, the issue has now become politicised, with the US government saying it will lodge a formal complaint with Chinese officials to express its concern about cyber attacks on Google’s Gmail service in China after Google announced it will no longer censor its content.

In the spirit of appeasement, China Internet Network Information Center, another official agency, said on Saturday that the number of internet users had reached 384 million by the end of 2009, a 28% jump in one year. In January last year, China also issued 3G licenses to major telecom operators, resulting in a massive hike in internet users. Now, around 8% of all internet access in China is through mobile phones, and growing exponentially.

Google is also apparently in trouble for copyright theft of Chinese writers without obtaining permission. Add to this the valid criticism by censors for allowing its site to be used for the distribution of pornography: Google should know better than to let that type of content through in China.

According to Techcrunch last week, “Google has had more success in China than a lot of other big Valley names, but [it] isn’t and will likely never be the market leader…Valley elites erupted into applause on Twitter and blogs saying Google was showing more backbone than the US government and was a model of integrity for the world.” Moral integrity and Google? A non-sequitur if there ever was one, surely?

But perhaps there are other factors at play: Google was not making a lot of money in China and played second fiddle to Baidu; and it was never going to make any substantially increase in its market share. Maybe economics was at the forefront of its decision, as last year China accounted for just under 1-2% of Google’s US$21.8 billion revenue.

This is not just a Google issue though: all foreign media companies have found it very difficult to penetrate the Chinese internet market; they make only modest returns. What the backlash may be within the country and without is yet to be revealed, but media censorship is deeply unpopular, even with the Chinese people themselves, and some have suggested  that if Google goes ahead and pulls google.cn, the Chinese may yet stage protests against the government, citing Google as the catalyst.

One statement I read that came out of Google’s statement of intent was from Warren Cowan, CEO at Greenlight, a UK-based search engine marketing agency, who told TechNewsWorld: “China doesn’t need Google as much as Google needs China . China’s got the sophistication, the strength and the will to do whatever it wants.” Not so, methinks, or China would not have held out the olive branch this weekend; the “need” is perhaps better described as mutual.

But surely there must first be some resolution between Google and the Chinese authorities, as blocking access to sites such as Blogger, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and millions of other “undesirable” websites, is excessive use of their censorship “laws”. It was perhaps the hacking attack on Gmail that was the last straw.

The Chinese are still very sensitive about images of Tiananmen Square, the footage of Chinese police beating up Tibetan monks and the social unrest in Qinghai. It was these scenes that prompted the shutdown of foreign social-networking sites. Also, the scare of the footage on Twitter about the Iranian election protests saw them further retreat into their protective shells.

All this, together with the political overtures of President Barack Obama’s sharp slap on the wrist in his thinly-veiled criticism of Chinese internet censorship during his recent visit, and that the US is to receive the Dalai Lama and to sell arms to Taiwan, doesn’t exactly aid Google’s cause.

Of course, there is also the argument that whether or not Google leaves China, the Chinese have become adept at circumventing these Orwellian blocks to foreign websites with the installation of “virtual private network” software.

But let’s look at some social and economic perceptions of the international press: it has recently taken up the mantle of China’s economic ascendancy on the world stage and of its future dominance. But there are negatives in this narrative. First, intransigence was China’s hallmark during the recent climate change talks in Copenhagen which turned to condemnation; and there has been an international outcry about the jailing of a human-rights activist and the execution of a mentally disturbed British drug-smuggler.

China’s strongest asset, its booming economy, has also been damned by many a reliable source, with one describing it as “Dubai times 1,000, or worse”. According to the Economist, “China’s smooth ascent is exploding because its economic miracle has proved partly illusory. In fact, China’s government may be right to see the economic gloom as in part wishful thinking from outsiders repelled by its repressive political system… China is no Goldilocks economy. Bank lending is growing too fast, which may be fine if it is flowing into useful investments, but not if it is fuelling asset prices. The risk of bubbles and excess capacity will grow unless policy is tightened soon.”

Analyses have drawn a mixed crowd: there are those that think Google is morally right to withdraw from repression; others view it as financial suicide; others still see China’s ascendancy on the world stage as an entity it simply must engage with at whatever cost.

But let’s look at a few excerpts of Will Hutton’s “China, the West and the Credit Crunch”, regarding this new utopia: His lecture reversed some common expectations that the 21st century belongs to China and asserted that its extraordinary growth has been taken out of context. He contends that China’s growth offers no new paradigm for development, and its success is based solely on high savings and low-tech manufacture, having come about as a consequence of its One Child Policy, which effected a phenomenally high savings rate of around 40% as means to ensure old age financial support.

The other point to mention here is Chinese businesses mask pervasive state control. According to Mr Hutton: “Of the 1,105 enterprises floated on the stock exchange, 81% are actually state controlled; of the 6,000 restructured state-owned enterprises, the members of communist party committees have become non-executive directors in 70%.” These figures go a long way to explain Google’s and other multinationals’ treatment by the state.

And talking of economic growth and what the board of google.cn might have realised is, as Mr Hutton states: “…economic growth requires an educated and productive workforce, discerning consumers, property rights and the capacity to innovate. A telling statistic is that China currently accounts for only 0.1% of international patents.”

To conclude, this appears to be a Mexican standoff, with reports that Google’s China operations may be “officially terminated” in February, leading the Chinese government to block the company’s main site, according to Credit Suisse Group. But their decision to withdraw should rather be a precursor in raising a meaningful dialogue with the Chinese authorities. If not, who else is to contribute in becoming a “key enabler of a better-informed world” in China?

The West has a lot to learn from the Chinese and vice-versa, but it will not be an easy task while the Right continue to hold political and economic sway in the country. Although Google will hold more talks with Chinese authorities “in the coming days”, it would also do well to remember its own fuzzy logic: don’t be evil; in other words, be up-front about what personal data you collect. People in glass houses, and all that…

If it does eventually go sour, the biggest losers in this fiasco will be Google and China; both would lose face if the withdrawal proves to be true, with China deprived of Google’s innovation, international visibility and respect and Google’s visible global hand will be impaired.

————————–

John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) and an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

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Google squirts water-pistol at China’s Great Firewall amidst hypocrisy

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The Apple tablet is the most discussed piece of technology at the beginning of this year. Sure other hot gadgets like the Google Nexus One or the iPhone 4G get sufficient attention from the media but the tablet is everyone’s Unicorn for now.
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Last year Samsung made public a plethora of phones before and after MWC 2009. Should we imagine that the company will take a similar approach to MWC 2010? Today the company officially announced three new phones ready to meet your social networking needs on the go. These are all part of the Shark series, the Shark S5350, Shark 2 S5550 and the Shark 3 S3550.
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Just take a look at this “Avatar” inspired computer display. It’s, for now, attached to a laptop for prototype purposes but imagine having one of those screens in your office or in your car. It could even be incorporated into your shower glass door for you to be able to browse the latest news in the morning for example. The technology, again from Samsung, has huge potential and right now it’s only in R&D (Research & Development) but I am sure Samsung won’t hold it for long when they could really revolutionize the display industry in just one move.

There seems to be no end to the cool things now coming from Samsung and I wonder if they are on the verge of becoming the next heavyweight champion when it comes to new technologies. I guess we’ll just have to see but if I had to choose I would say Samsung is off to a very good start this 2010.

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We thought Zillow’s 2011 IPO was a good sign for the tech and Internet market. Intel has not only just confirmed that notion, but blown everybody’s expectations right out of the water.

The world’s largest chipmaker just wowed Wall Street and the tech world with its latest earnings report. The publicly-traded company reported a net income of $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, up an amazing 875% from its $234 million earnings in the fourth quarter of 2008. This more than beat Wall Street expectations.

While we won’t go into detail over the financial numbers (you can do that here [PDF]), we do want to highlight some of the key stats:

- Revenues in Q4 2009 rose to $10.6 billion, a climb of 28% from $8.3 billion last year.

- However, if you look at the big picture, Intel had a better 2008 than 2009. 2009 revenues were $35.1 billion, while 2008 revenues reached $37.6 billion. That’s a 7% difference.

- Intel predicts revenues of approximately $9.7 billion in Q1 2010, above Wall Street estimates.

- Around a year ago, at the heart of the economic collapse, Intel decided to invest $7 billion into new chip plants. It looks to be paying off.

Intel’s Q4 report is one of the first to come out this year, but it won’t be the last. If Intel’s numbers are any indication though, we’re nearing the light at the end of the tunnel.

[img credit: Thomas Hawk via Flickr]

Tags: business, business news, finance, intel, trending

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Lifehacker reader Snecx calls Malaysia home and has a spacious living room there which serves as his home office. Over the last year he has been steadily revising and tinkering with the layout to meet his needs, starting with the scenic and simple workspace above and expanding towards converting the corner into a small office complete with multiple monitors and whiteboard. Check out his entire Flickr set to see all the steps in between.

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.

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IBM Corp. topped the list of corporate patent issuers in 2009 for the 17th year in a row and says it will use its prowess to help other companies file and manage patents.

The Armonk, NY, based technology giant received 4,914 new patents in 2009, according to IFI Patent Intelligence in Wilmington, Delaware. Korea’s Samsung Electronics was second with 3,611 patents and Microsoft Corp. was third with 2,906.

IBM, which has moved away from making personal computers and other hardware in recent years, is focusing heavily on developing computer software and services, patenting new technologies in a variety of applications. In the past year, the company has added patents related to massive, parallel super-computing and has patented technologies to improve technologies for traffic management systems and electricity grids.

Roughly, “a third of our patents typically are incorporated into our products and services,” said Manny Schecter, IBM’s Chief Patent Counsel. “Clearly, not everything we do is incorporated into our products and services.” The company makes money licensing its 30,000 patents as well.

“Innovation in American firms is far from declining, in fact, many had impressive gains and several posted record numbers of total new patents,” said Darlene Slaughter, general manger of IFI Patent Intelligence. The group found that American companies captured only 49% of U.S. patents granted to companies in 2008 and 2009, compared to 50% in 2007. U.S. companies held four of the top 10 slots of issuers, down from five the previous year. Japanese companies were the closest competitors with five of the top 10 slots and 23% of total patents. South Korea, Germany and Taiwan were distant third, fourth and fifth place-finishers.

On that score, IBM is now offering to formally expand its software and consulting services to patent management for other companies or individuals. It says it already has roughly 10 clients and hopes to gain more. IBM would help companies select inventions to patent and would help manage patent fees and filings.

“It’s just getting the know how to someone who wants to figure out how to patent at a basic level,” said Chris Andrews, a spokesman for IBM Research. IBM would help them “hit the ground running more efficiently and avoid some bumps in the road.”

The economic downturn in 2009, however, did not slow overall patent activity. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued 167,350 utility patents in calendar year 2009, slightly up 6.1% from 2008 according to the group’s data.

IBM has even patented its prowess at patenting: U.S. patent #7,630,915 “Intellectual property management method and apparatus” on December 8, 2009.

List of Top 10 Corporate Patent Issuers in 2009

1 IBM 4,914

—– ————————– ———–

2 Samsung 3,611

—– ————————– ———–

3 Microsoft 2,906

—– ————————– ———–

4 Canon 2,206

—– ————————– ———–

5 Panasonic 1,829

—– ————————– ———–

6 Toshiba 1,696

—– ————————– ———–

7 Sony 1,680

—– ————————– ———–

8 Intel 1,537

—– ————————– ———–

9 Seiko Epson 1,330

—– ————————– ———–

10 HP 1,273

—– ————————– ———–

* Data provided by IFI Patent Intelligence

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Last year in December we caught wind that Vodafone UK is going to ditch the WinMO 6.5 HTC HD2 for “general” customers (only available to business customers) and will trade it with Apple’s sleek iPhone. So here we are just a month later, trying to bring a good word to those bittered that they can’t get their hands on the popular HD2, the good folks from Virgin Media have actually started selling the device, today.

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It also has its own Popapps which will enable even more functions to your box and TV. How about Twittering right from the comfort of your sofa in front of the TV. Yup, it will be possible once you get the Pop Box. It will cost around $129 if you go with the LAN version or $149 if you go with the WiFi version of it. It will be released later this year but boy am I getting one.

I have long wanted to buy the Apple TV box but its near to insignificant interest from the public I have held myself from getting one. Maybe there was a reason for that and now when the Pop Box is showing up on the market I can fully understand why I wouldn’ go and buy an Apple TV box.

But, it remains to see if there is really a use for it in Europe or if it just for the American public to start with. Well, if not I’ll just have to get one as soon as I am moving to the U.S…

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Video Tutorial

Final Image

This is the final image that we will be creating.

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It’s been one year to the day since Yahoo brought in former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz as its new Chief Executive. During her tenure so far, Yahoo under Bartz has focused on slimming down, cutting costs, and shoring up flagging revenue.

In the past year, the company has effectively cemented the road map to get out of the search game by completing a partnership deal with Microsoft. They’ve integrated with Facebook Connect and added Twitter to search results. They also launched a new branding campaign and brought in entertainment talent to create original programming for Yahoo’s web sites.

In the cost-cutting department they’ve trimmed the staff, shuttered GeoCities and offloaded Zimbra to VMware. They even closed the Yahoo offices for the holidays, leaving only critical staff on duty, in an effort to shave expenses.

Still, with both Yahoo and Bing losing ground to Google, and revenue still declining, the company still has work to do to manifest a turnaround. On the other hand, profits exceeded analyst expectations in the latter half of 2009 (in large part thanks to the cost-cutting measures), leading some to speculate Yahoo’s big picture has begun to stabilize.

One year in to CEO Carol Bartz’s tenure, the executive gave herself a B- for her performance thus far. How do you think Yahoo has fared under her leadership?

Tags: carol bartz, ceo, executives, Yahoo

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The technology sector around the globe is set to rebound in 2010 as businesses and governments start spending again on information technology, the report forecast. As a corollary of this the global tech upturn the U.S. IT market will grow too.

“The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over,” said Andrew Bartels, the Forrester Research analyst who wrote the report. “All the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound. In the U.S., the tech recovery will be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product this year.”

U.S. IT spending will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion after declining 8.2 percent in 2009. Global IT spending, which dropped 8.9 percent last year, will also rise 8.1 percent in 2010 to more than $1.6 trillion. Software and computer hardware will see the greatest growth.

Forrester’s report of solid growth in the U.S. tech market in 2010 is partly based on reversals of the two factors that caused the U.S. tech downturn in late 2008 and early 2009: the economic recession and the financial crisis.

Growth will start slowly in 2010 but pick up steam later in the year, with computer equipment and software leading the way, and IT consulting services following.

Worldwide, purchases of computer equipment will be up 8.2 percent, communications equipment buying will grow by 7.6 percent, software spending will increase by 9.7 percent, purchases of IT consulting and systems integration services will grow by 6.8 percent, and IT outsourcing services will be 7.1 percent higher than the year before.

Regionally, the European IT market will see the strongest performance, thanks in part to its strong euro.

Do you think that 2010 will mark the end of the global tech downturn?

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This year’s Consumer Electronics Show is over, but we still have news coming from Vegas. In the spotlight today are Audi and NVIDIA who have announced a partnership for future car models to use the new Tegra 2 graphics processor to power those stylish dashboards that get your eyes.

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However, while Apple furiously works away on their tablet there are others that have already taken the next big gadget to another level. How about a computer that has a tablet incorporated into it? Yup, “Lenovo Ideapad U1″ does it really cool and gives you a multiuse computer. You can use it as a laptop and when you feel like it just take off the screen and it will become a tablet. How wonderful is that. So far it seems like they mention it while telling you about just reading books on the tablet but I am sure that it will have several other functions.

Watching this clip makes me quite excited over the year of 2010. The tech companies at CES has really stepped up this year trying to reach the bar set by Apple, or most like will be set, and it is a year to remember. I am sure we will see some rather revolutionary gadgets released this year. How about an iPhone controlled video helicopter? Yup, even that is represented at the CES this year. There’s no end to it really. Check this out and you’ll probably be as excited as I am!

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I/O is two days of Google’s big ideas. Past events have been the forum for Android’s coming out party, the debut of Google Wave and VP of engineering Vic Gundotra’s epic HTML5 keynote, which showed off everything the HTML5 stack can do in the browser. The excitement has grown to be huge, much like the Stevenotes from many a Macworld past.

Last year, everyone got a free Android touchscreen phone. The official @googleio Twitter account has been pegged with questions about what’s going to be given away this year, but whoever is operating that feed at Google says there are no plans for giveaways at this year’s event.

Of course, if Google was planning on giving away something extra cool, why would it spoil the surprise?

This year’s event is set up much like the previous ones — there’s a big keynote each morning, followed by breakout sessions all day long on a wide variety of tech topics. Some sessions we’re looking forward to: A bunch of stuff about Chrome, like how to use Chrome Frame, how to make extensions and an update on HTML5’s progress. There’s also an intro to using Chrome’s built-in developer tools.

There are a couple of sessions about how to optimize your site for social activity using single sign-on systems and the real-time publishing technology PubSubHubbub.

There are also sessions on all the Data APIs and Google Web Toolkit. Read the full list.

There are also after-hours parties featuring things like drunken tricycle races, and this year there’s a special gadget party for the hardware geeks (and aren’t we all?).

See Also:

• Google Throws Its Weight Behind HTML5
• Android’s Debut Steals the Show at Google I/O
• Google Waves Goodbye to E-Mail, Welcomes Real-Time Communication

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MPower’s flashlights (or ‘torches’ as some on the TFTS staff would call them) really are for gadget people. For starters, it’s a powerful LED flashlight that uses less energy and gives off higher lumens than a conventional flashlight. The CR123 is intended to be used as an emergency flashlight, and has a 20 year battery life.

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Photo by Foxtongue.

People consistently set themselves up for failure by focusing too strongly on the end-game and too little on the planning and progress stages of personal change. Scaffolding is a technique well known among educators and coaches but largely ignored elsewhere—especially when it comes to personal growth. When a teacher structures lessons so that they move the student from being dependent on the teacher for help to being an independent learner they are scaffolding the student’s growth—ensuring they continue to succeed and have greater sense of accomplishment without just throwing them in front of a difficult task and saying “Figure it out.”

The “Figure it out.” approach is the approach most people use with themselves, however. Across the world, millions of people made vague and difficult to achieve New Year’s resolutions last week. People resolved to lose weight, quit smoking, be a better parent, have a better work/life balance, get out of debt, get organized, and so on. The vast majority of those people will approach the resolution with the best intentions and within a matter of months—if not weeks!—they will have abandoned their resolution or outright forgotten about it. This happens because the distance between one’s present state, whatever that state may be, and the future state that people dream of when they make a New Year’s resolution is a nearly impossible distance to cross without a map—a map you can build by reading the following guide and answering the questions in it.

Choose a Concrete Goal

Before all else, you need to have a firm goal in mind. A map isn’t very helpful if your only idea of where you want to go is somewhere in Asia. The more specific the destination—your goal!—the more specific the steps you can take to get to it. Avoid vagueness, what exactly does “be a better parent” mean, after all? If that was your choice for your New Year’s resolution then obviously something prompted you to think of it.

What does being a better parent mean? Spending more time with your children when you get home from work? Making a bigger effort to listen to the things they say? Don’t settle for an abstract goal. “Be a better person” is the kind of New Year’s resolution a shifty politician would make. Dig at your resolution until you find the meat inside. Photo by PhillipC.

What’s the Next Action?

You know what weight loss doesn’t look like? Sitting on the couch complaining about how hard it is to lose weight. Weight loss looks like someone planning their meals, learning about nutrition, and actively looking for ways to incorporate exercise into their daily routine. Nobody wakes up one day and says “Oh my. I’m a neurosurgeon. However did that happen?” They’ve got the how-it-happened part right into their brains from years of grueling study and residency and chances are none of that happened by accident. If you want to lose weight, get promoted, learn how to salsa dance, or become a yoga instructor, you’re going to need to lay out the steps and to do so as clearly as possible.

• What do you have to do right now to start achieving your resolution?
• If you don’t know, where can you go to find out?
• What will you have to do next month? The month after that?
• Does your resolution have an end?
• What skills or behaviors will you be adopting from this point on?

If you can’t answer the first question “What do I have to do right now to start achieving my goal?” then you’ll never achieve it. For every one-in-a-million person that stumbles into fame, fortune, or success, thousands of people get there by asking “How do I achieve this?” and getting to work. Photo by D Sharon Pruitt.

Make Your Resolution Open Ended

Open ended isn’t a euphemism for vague. Open ended resolutions are those which encourage you to continue a positive behavior. “I want to lose 10 pounds” is a concrete resolution but it’s not very opened ended. Either you lose the 10 pounds and succeed or you don’t and you fail. Resolving to exercise every morning or to learn to cook so you’ll eat less pre-packaged meals are both resolutions that will likely lead you to lose 10 pounds but they are resolutions that focus on adding positive habits and skills to your life instead of focusing on getting rid of something you don’t like.

It might seem like psychological slight-of-hand but you’re way more likely to keep a resolution that focuses on a positive aspect of your life and gaining new skills than you are to keep one that focuses on how much you hate your beer gut and want it banished. Open-ended resolutions do not excuse you from adhering to the “Next Action” rule. Photo by extranoise.

Seek out a Support Network

It might not sound like much fun, but take a hard look at your friends. Things like spending patterns, eating habits, and so on, are usually fairly uniform across a social group. People get fatter together, go into debt together, drink too much together, and by the same measure people exercise together, count their pennies together, and do just as much to foster positive behaviors. If your friends like to stay out late drinking and scarfing down fast food during midnight benders, you’re not going to have much luck losing weight by keeping up with them and their antics.

Nobody is telling you to ditch your friends, mind you, but you need to be aware of what a support network looks like and what it doesn’t. If you want to lose weight, surround yourself with health-oriented people. If you want to be more frugal with your money, stop going out on the town with your $10-a-drink-or-bust socialite friends. At the minimum be very conscious of how being around the people that encourage/embrace the negative habit you’re trying to stamp out makes you feel and impacts you. Seek out people that support positive change. Photo by Mike Baird.

Be Realistic and Be Kind

If you’ve taken the “Next Action” and “Open Ended” rules to heart, you’ve likely already set a realistic goal. If not, take this to heart: unrealistic goals are worse than no goals at all. If you’re 80 pounds overweight and you haven’t done any sort of formal exercise since Junior High it’s a bit unrealistic to think you’ll be competing in a triathlon by April. Although if you have your heart set on it, you know what to do—plan out all the next actions it’ll take to drag you across the finish line three months from now.

You’re not weak for setting a realistic goal instead of firing off a lofty and unattainable one. Setting reasonable goals that you can achieve will reinforce your desire to continue to improve yourself.

If you were a teacher, you would never expect your students to be able to ace the final on the first day. If you were a coach you’d never expect your players to be ready for the championship game after the first week of practice. If a friend came to you and asked you to help them with the very same resolution you’re struggling with, you’d help them plan out a course of action and support them in its undertaking. Yet most people don’t treat themselves with that degree of care by any measure.

You wouldn’t put a bat in a first grader’s hands and say “Alright. Go hit a home run.” and you shouldn’t stare at yourself in the mirror and say “Get it together.” as your only support for achieving your resolutions. Support and scaffold your own change like you would that of someone you cared about.

Have a bit of advice, tip, or trick for helping your fellow readers have New Year’s Resolution success in 2010? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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While in 2009 we were more than thrilled to discover a new smartphone capable of offering processor speeds of up to 1GHz, this year things are about to change. And it’s still Qualcomm that brings innovation to the mobile chip business. The company will launch better Snapdragon chips this year and I can’t wait to see what cell phone manufacturers will start employing them.
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EA may have attempted to address the financial issues that plagued them last year by loosing over 1,500 employees in November alone but now, in a bid to reduce operating costs still further, EA have confirmed that they are to close down 25 game servers during February and April of this year seeing game servers for the likes of Madden 09, Nascar 09, NBA Live 09 and NFL Tour permanently shut down.
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Is Twitter Necessary? Tell us what you think.

In a recent interview with WebPronews, SiteLogic‘s Matt Bailey said what a lot of people are probably thinking. You don’t have to use Twitter.

Frankly, it’s pretty astonishing how loyal Twitter users are considering the service’s frequent downtime and over-capacity errors. There are plenty of other ways that you could go. In this day and age there are so many marketing opportunities online, it’s ridiculous. However, they require time, and if you’re going to focus a significant amount of your time on one, you better make sure it’s a legitimate way of getting results.

This of course depends on the goals you have and the strategies you implement. As Matt says in the interview, "you need to have a consistent marketing strategy," and you should slow down and look at your marketing plan.

I’ve written before about 8 reasons you need to stop ignoring Twitter, but perhaps that title could’ve been toned down a bit. Think of these things as reasons that Twitter could be a good tool to consider using, because Matt’s right. You don’t HAVE to use Twitter. People are still running successful businesses without it. That said, it does have some advantages. The 8 reasons I discussed in that article were:

1. Twitter Lists
2. The Openness of Twitter
3. Building Valuable Relationships
4. Traffic That Cares
5. Staying Current
6. Connecting with Local Customers
7. Going International and Multi-lingual
8. It’s Still Young

Matt makes a valid point. Twitter may not be the "it" thing this time next year. It may still be as relevant as ever, but times change. I’m sure you remember when MySpace was the king of the social networks. MySpace is still around and heavily used, but it is often overshadowed in discussion by Facebook and Twitter.

Consider your goals (here are some possible ones). If Twitter fits into them, use it. If not, maybe it’s not worth the time. If you want to use MySpace to meet your goals, you might be able to do that.

Twitter is showing a lot of potential though. The company kicked off the new year with a bunch of new hires (including some former Googlers), and is really looking toward monetization and becoming more useful for businesses. With the opening of the firehose, a lot of new and existing apps are going to make it possible to do a lot of new and cool things with Twitter. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone expects Twitter to reach a level of billions of tweets per second.

Do you think Twitter is mandatory for businesses? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces

> Stone Makes "Several Billion Tweets Per Hour" Prediction

> 20 Goals for Business Social Media Use

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Twenty Ten

In other news, partner of this site Authentic Jobs is running a sweet campaign. Regular readers will know that there is this yearly promotion. This year however we are going to do something a little different.

We’re calling it the Twenty Ten promotion. It works like this: Post a listing between now and January 22 and you’ll receive 20% off your listing. More importantly, 10% of your purchase will be donated to Charity:Water to help bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

Promo code

Use promo code VEERLE10.

You may also join in and donate to our campaign independent of posting a listing. We’re hoping to raise $5,000, which is enough to fund the development of a freshwater well in one village.

Here’s to a fantastic (and cleaner) 2010. Oh right, one more thing!

Veerle’s blog 3.0 sneak peek

Here is a little sneak peek of my new blog

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Related posts:

1. Attitude Twitter update for the week (2010-01-01)
2. Attitude Twitter update for the week (2009-12-18)
3. Attitude Twitter update for the week (2009-10-16)

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There’s been a lot of speculation as of late with regard to the future of digital music, but judging by the results of a recent report by Nielsen Soundscan, music sales have only increased this past year.

According to the report, sales were up 2.1 percent in 2009 from 2008, with consumers snagging 1.16 million digital tracks (an 8.3 percent increase from ‘08) and 76.4 million digital albums (a 16.1 percent bump). In fact, 40 percent of all music purchases in 2009 were digital.

The top-selling artists this year were fairly predictable: Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift, The Beatles, Lady GaGa and Susan Boyle came out on top, signaling that pop culture trends (and Internet sensations) really do drive sales.

In addition to the burgeoning digital music market, record sales increased this past year as well — 33 percent. That’s 2.5 million records taken home by vinyl enthusiasts. But here’s the cool part: Two out of every three records were snapped up at an indie music store. And take a look at the top sellers:

You’ve got bands like Animal Collective and Bon Iver right up there with Jackson.

Record sales have been steadily increasing over the years as CD sales decline, indicating that we’re entering a time during which people buy music online for the sake of convenience and storage, and pick up records as mementos.

What do you prefer: Digital music, records, CDs or (if you’re super old-school) tapes?

Click here to read the full Nielson report.

[img credit: pokpok313]

Tags: digital music, music, nielson

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The experience of watching television is getting revolutionized at CES this year. Samsung has just added to this trend by announcing that it will launch an app store for HDTVs in July 2010.

With products like the Boxee Box and the Popbox, as well as services such as DivX TV and Yahoo Connected TV coming on the scene, it’s clear that interactive TV is where it’s at this year.

Come this July, Samsung fans will be able to purchase and download applications in the realms of video, information, lifestyle, games and sports for use on 2010 Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players and Home Theater systems. Content partners will include: Accedo Broadband, AccuWeather.com, The Associated Press, Blockbuster, Fashion TV, Netflix, Picasa, Pandora, Rovi, Travel Channel, Twitter, USA TODAY and Vudu.

Samsung already has a mobile app store, which has now been launched in England, France, Italy and Korea (the company plans to expand to 50 countries this year), and the addition of a store for HDTVs will only increase the company’s reach. The question becomes, however: In a market that is becoming more and more saturated with interactive TV technology, how will all the players seek to differentiate themselves from the pack?

[via Web Pro News]

Tags: App, CES, CES 2010, Gadget, samsung, television

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Last month we’ve released a giveaway with amazing posters from Simon Page. These poster are for The International Year of Astronomy 2009, and you can check it out how many people wrote a comment want some of the posters on their wall. So now, take a look if you were the winner!

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The International Year of Astronomy 2009 is a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and UNESCO to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery.

Paper Quality

The prints are on museum-quality paper that meet strict industry standards. The paper is internally buffered to resist fading and acid-free to eliminate any degradation. The inks have a very high pigment density, which allows for the sharpest possible image, perfect reflection of light and the widest range of printable colour. The pigment also resists water, light, and gas for superior archiving properties.

THE RESULT

We’re giving away 2 poster for our readers! You were the winner? Check it out! The winners are:

• Carlos Galindo
• John Mark Herskind

Congratultion for the winners, we will be getting in touch with you to delivery it! And if you didn’t win, cross your fingers, because we will be launching new giveaways soon!

In case you missed the last post, these are all the posters you could buy. Check the site for more informations.

If you were not one of the winners, check his site out and buy yours right now! All of them are available to buy!

All Posters

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It’s that time of the year again when we kick off our shoes from work and enjoy the festive season. As we welcome the year ahead, I’m sure most of us have made some kind of resolutions for ourselves. Needless to say, many of us have been unable to stick to our previous resolutions to go on a diet or keep to an exercise regime, perhaps due our hectic schedules. What then, is more important than a calendar in order to manage time well and stay organized?

Unless you switch one, you will be looking at your new calendar for the new year for the next 365 days. Why not get a thought-provoking, creatively designed or aesthetic calendar that you can appreciate each and every day? Here, we have compiled some of the best designed calendars over the recent years to let each of you have an idea on the variety of calendars that designers have came up with. Enjoy!

Ink Calendar
via Oscar Diaz
This innovative calendar lets the ink from the bottle diffuses across the days of the month.

Square-Comics Calendar 2010
via Alone-zino
A comic-inspired calendar.

Spiral Calendar 2010
A unique calendar design in the form of a spiral.

Scratch A Date
via Yanko Design
Welcome each new day by scratching off to reveal the date!

Russian Creative 2008 Calendar
via Fenyu
Interesting calendar where each month is a different traffic scene as viewed by a trucker.

Calendar 2009
via Rekord
Each color corresponds to different days of the week.

2008 Calendar
via Tim Pokrichuk
A unique calendar with a web-like design.

Spiral Calendar
via Carlos Coelho
Yet another spiral calendar with colors assigned to each individual day of the week.

Calendar Made of Matches
via Yurko Gutsulyak
Every date is made of matches.

2010 Bubble Calendar
via Perpetual Kid
Enjoy pressing bubble wraps? You should get this.

Barometer Inspired Calendar
via Lindsey_muir
As you can tell, you have to turn to circles to represent the correct month, date, day and even the weather.

An Apple A Day
via David Weik
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Peel off the label of each apple you eat and stick it to the date.

Happy New Year From Happy Milo
via Jonathan Davies
A spectrum of color across the months.

March 2008
via Jennifer Daniel

Helvetica Calendar
via Guilherme Pontes
A calendar that uses the Helvetica typeface and an enticing range of colors.

Moma Perpetual Calendar
via Gideon Dagan Design
A 3D structure as a calendar.

Edible Calendar
via Dmitry Kutlayev
Chocoholics, limit your intake of chocolates with this edible calendar.

Dr Reddy’s Laboratories: Calendar
via Sudler & Hennessey
The message of this calendar: Smoking shortens your life span.

"Dorogaya" Magnetic Calendar
via Serhiy Chebotaryov
Magnetic calendar that you can place on your fridge.

Dodecahedral Calendar
via Dave Gray
A twelve-sided polygon as your calendar for the year.

Calendar Gregory
via Calendar-Game
Connect each line to a new date everyday. Kids will love this.

Camera Lens Calendar
via Sharad Kaksar
A camera lens inspired calendar for avid photographers.

Calendar Tells Me Everything
via Maksim Biriukov
This calendar tells you the present year, month, date, day and even the time.

Napkins Calendar 2009
via Stas Aki
Napkin and calendar combined.

Corian Calendar
via Niels Kjeldsen Design
Plastic blocks with dates and months.

Office Calendar
via Qaaim Goodwin
This wooden structure is a creative switch from the usual paper-style calendars.

Recycle Bin Advent Calendar
via Kelanew
A hand-crafted calendar using recycled materials.

Kalenteri 2008
via Pulse247
Circular calendar with a spectrum of colors.

Teacup Calendar
via Takeshi Nishioka
Drink tea from this calendar.

Typographic Tear-Off Calendar
via Parachute
Check out the different typefaces each day of the year.

Tickler Calendar For The Slip Method
via Judyofthewoods
Slip in your appointments and to-do lists into each date.

Voskhod: Calendar
via Voskhod
Yet another scratch calendar, but this time it reveals funny pictures, jokes, riddles, etc below each date.

Typodarium 2010
via Slanted
See a new typeface for each day.

Twelve Calendar
via Thomas Williams
A unconventional layout for a calendar. Those dates that are shaded are the weekends.

Calendario 02
via Quintohache
A 3D calendar made of Lego-like bricks.

Google Lego Calendar
via Keso
Another lego-inspired calendar by Google.

Axe Schedule
via Elma+Alt+Shift
A cute calendar showing each date with people in a building.

Nie Auction Calendar
via Iheartlinen
A calendar for you to feel and appreciate the texture of linen.

October 2009
via The Digichick
A hand-drawn calendar with photos of family.

Perpetual Calendar
via Etsy
A calendar display of cards for month, date and day.

Pink Letterpress Calendars 2009
A cute calendar with cute messages and pictures.

Pop-up Calendar
via Johann Volkmer
Open each new month and be dazzled by the fine craftmanship of pop-ups.

Spin Calendar 70s
via Presentandcorrect
Turn each ring to indicate the correct dates and months.

Human Calendar
via Human Calendar
An amusing use of photographic portraits of people for each squares of the calendar.

Finn & Rockwell’s Counting-House Calendar
via DezinHQ
An old-fashioned calendar design.

2008 Map Calendar & Poster By Lart C. Berliner
via Little Otsu Publishing
Each month is drawn in manner to make it look like individual regions of a map.

2008 Calendar
via Kate
Another hand-drawn calendar using only black ink.

Timor Calendar
via Unicorn Graphics
Classic 20th century design desk calendar inspired by railway signs.

Urban Calendar
See the entire year in a towering skyscraper-like wooden calendar.

About Author – Michael Poh is a freelance blogger from Singapore. He is currently an undergraduate in National University of Singapore majoring in Psychology. He is an enthusiastic video gamer and has a keen interest in CG artworks.

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"The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year of marginally negative growth," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

"Among the highlights of the season was the first $900 million online spending day and a strong late season spending surge, propelled by effective retailer promotions, guaranteed shipping and a major snowstorm on the eastern seaboard that convinced many to shop from the comfort of home."

Tuesday, December 15 was the heaviest online spending day of the year and of all time, at $913 million, one of nine individual spending days to surpass $800 million during the 2009 holiday season.

Cyber Monday ranked as the second heaviest spending day of the season, the highest it has ever ranked, with $887 million in spending. The third heaviest spending day of the year was Tuesday, December 1, with $886 million in spending, followed by Wednesday, December 16 with $874 million and Monday December 14 with $854 million.

Jewelry & watches rank as the top performing online retail category for the holiday season growing 20 percent over 2008. Consumer electronics ranked second with 15 percent sales growth, driven by strong sales of flat panel TVs, mobile devices and e-readers. Other categories performing well included event tickets (up 8%), computer hardware (up 7%) and books & magazine (up 6%).
 

Related Articles:

>Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers

>Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday

>Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales

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Today Cisco announced new customers, features, and professional service options for the Cisco Eos social entertainment platform. The company also announced that it is providing a medianet (a media-aware IP video network infrastructure) to NBC during the network’s coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics Winter Games, February 12-28.

"Video is rapidly expanding from a lean-back experience confined to the living room, to a new breed of exciting video experiences available on any device or screen — anytime, anywhere," said Ned Hooper, chief strategy officer and senior vice president, Consumer Business at Cisco. "The network is the platform to make this happen, and as a result, we are enabling new experiences that allow consumers to easily capture and share their lives and connect with the people and content that matter most to them."

Cisco also announced today its data for Flip Video obtained during the 2009 holiday season, which highlights huge growth in video usage over the past year. The company says, "There were more than one million Flip Videos uploaded through FlipShare software in December 2009. These uploads represent three million minutes of Flip videos viewed, which is equivalent to more than six years of continuous video streaming, representing an increase of 395% from December the year before. In addition, there were 42,000 gigabytes of video streamed in December, up from 525% the year prior, indicating an increase in HD video usage."

Cisco says it will be sharing its vision and progress towards developing an "entirely new category" of video communication called “home telepresence”, while at CES. This uses consumers’ existing HDTV and broadband connection to deliver a unique natural video communication experience from the living room, according to the company.

"With Cisco’s best-in-class telepresence technology and networks such as Verizon’s advanced, all-fiber-optic network, we believe we will deliver a video communication experience to consumers unlike anything they’ve seen before," said Marthin DeBeer, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco’s Emerging Technologies group. "Home telepresence will make a difference in consumers’ lives by allowing them to enjoy natural video communications with family and friends wherever they are located. To ensure that early home telepresence users will have plenty of friends and family to communicate with, in addition to calling other home telepresence users, they will be able to place calls to PCs using a webcam and video chat service."

More details about Cisco’s announcements can be found here and here.

Watch for more WebProNews coverage of CES, with exclusive video interviews coming soon.

Related Articles:

> CES About to Kick Off the Year in Technology

> The Truth About CES

> Looking Back on CES

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I’ve collected for you some of the best 3D wallpapers around, and I’m pretty sure that you will like them too.

Most of the 3D modeling were made in: 3dsMax, Maya, Blender, Caligari, Shrek Software or just plain Photoshop.

Before I start this I want to wish you all the good things and best of luck in the new year 2010. Hope it will be a good year for all of us and for the design industry too.

1. 3D Ball

Resolution: 1280×1024

2. Nature captured by neo101

Resolution: 1280×1024

3. Around by sevenblah

Resolution: 1280×1024

4. Elevation

Resolution: 1280×1024

5. Pink 3D Wallpaper

Resolution: 1280×1024

6. LMFAO by shilpinator

Resolution: 1280×1024

7. The Screamy Wallpaper by emciem

Resolution: 1920×1200

8. Self Illumination by kutsche

Resolution: 1280×1024

9. Walk The Duck by reginalbull

Resolution: 1280×1024

10. Drunk by donbertone

Resolution: 1280×1024

11. Injektion by weirdone

Resolution: 1280×1024

12. The Opiated Wallpaper by emciem

Resolution: 1280×1024

13. CG Deep by webst3r

Resolution: 1280×1024

14. Cherry Beats by bra1n

Resolution: 1280×1024

15. Lust by donbertone

Resolution: 1280×1024

16. Above The Clouds by 1alpha1

Resolution:1280×1024

17. Deviant Pixi by altermind

Resolution: 1280×1024

18. Heliox GL by calzinger

Resolution: 1280×1024

19. Dice by scogs

Resolution: 1280×1024

20. Matter of life and death by icebone

Resolution: 1280×1024

21. Gears by 1alpha1

Resolution: 1280×1024

22. OH6Disco by 1alpha1

Resolution: 1024×768

23. YouEFOwe by 1alpha1

Resolution: 1024×768

24. AirPlay by videa

Resolution: 1024×768

25. Rainbow DNA by khameleon

Resolution: 1024×728

26. I day dream in 3D by skokie

Resolution: 1024×768

27. Metal Girl

Resolution: 1024×768

28. Revolution by j-pettit

Resolution: 1024×768

29. The Real You by sha-x-dow

Resolution:  1024×768

30. Emploding Sunflower by andidas

Resolution: 1024×768

31. Inflict by 1alpha1

Resolution: 1024×768

32. Alien Metal by maroc68

33. Oga by tukan

34. Glow by antonisfes

Resolution:  1024×768

35. Recreation by 1alpha1

Resolution: 1024×768

36. Skypha by loth

Resolution: 1280×960

37. Faithfulness by videa

Resolution: 1280×960

38. Cantaloupe by divineerror

Resolution: 1280×960

39. Black Gold by divineerror

Resolution: 1280×690

40. Blue Ice by subaqua

Resolution: 1280×960

I finish this article with the hope that you found here some inspirational 3D works which will help you to continue your work. Thank you for your time and don’t forget to share this with your friends .

Related posts:

1. 40 High Resolution And Elegant Apple Wallpapers
2. 25 Winter, Snow And Christmas Related High Resolution Wallpapers
3. 33 High Resolution And Eye-Catching Spring Desktop Wallpapers
4. 40 Inspiring High Quality Typographic Wallpapers
5. 78 Stunning Landscape Desktop Wallpapers

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This was a slow but important week. 2009 is done – it’s funny how time flies. The office stood still as we gathered with families, friends to celebrate the new year. Ourselves, we’re concentrating on 2010 – it’s going to be an important, career (and company) defining year.

Important decisions were made. As I briefly mentioned last week, we have always struggled with the question of whether to focus on our products (which we love) or to help other people with their own through consulting (which we also love to do). We’ve reached a conclusion, we’re happy with our decision and we’re sticking with it.

The decision is to do both, but with a twist: we’re taking a very limited number of consulting projects each year from now on – we’re thinking of about 4. This is the best of both worlds. When we’re consulting, we’re inspiring and getting inspired by other people. When we’re working for ourselves, we’re reinventing our ideas and hopefully building special products that you can use.

I wonder (and the others do too) how clients will receive the idea of us only doing a limited number of projects. We want to make the best out of the time we dedicate to other people. We want to be completely passionate about it, so four projects seems like the sweet spot. We’ll see how it goes.

If we have one new year resolution, it is to bring passion back to our business. If you want to work with us (or to have us work for you) in 2010, get in touch – we’ll try to help. Thank you, and happy new year!

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Look for a lot of new innovations in mobile, television, cars, and apps. There will no doubt be a lot of cool things unveiled.

As usual, there will be quite a few celebrities in attendance at the event. This year, a guest might bump into Stan Lee, Drew Carey, James Worthy, Chris Mullin, or Methods of Mayhem’s Tommy Lee. A full list is here.

Keynotes will be delivered by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro, Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini, Nokia President and CEO  Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, and Hisense Chairman Zhou Houjian.

There will be many, many exhibitors such as Adobe, AMD, Cisco, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Intel, Kia Motors, Kodak, LG Electronics, Marvel, Microsoft, Monster, MOtorola, Opera, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, Sanyo, Sprint, Taser, and lots more.

The nearly 400-page directory for the event gives you a pretty good idea about the breadth of information and technology that will be covered at this enormous event.  

You can find some of our past CES coverage here (articles). Our video coverage can be found here.

Related Articles:

> Scoble on TV Experience and CES

> The Truth About CES

> Looking Back on CES

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To ring in the new year I thought I’d start us off with a fairly simple black and white grunge set. The set should be ubiquitous enough to meet all of your grungy design needs. If you guys have any texture requests feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll try and fulfill them in the coming weeks. Enjoy!

Preview

a

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Even with that, with the speed at which the web moves and changes direction your prediction would still be well of the mark. Personally, I would rather sit back, and look forward to what new web design trends crop up.

I can't make a prediction about what web design will be like in 2010, but, that’s not to say its impossible to predict. In today’s news round-up we have collected some brave and honest articles that outline 'possible' trends for this year and also added some great articles with resolutions for designers, something we should all be doing!

Web Design Trends for 2010 from Web Design Ledger

Web Design Trends for 2010 from helikopterdesign

Top 10 Web Design Trends for 2010 from designtutorials4u

10 Web Design Trends for 2010 from Aaron Post

What Portfolio Designs Would We Continue to See in 2010?

Five Technologies That Will Keep Shaping the Web in 2010

New Years Resolutions For 2010 from Lee Munroe

5 Realistic Resolutions for Web Designers from Design Shack

51 New Year resolutions for Graphic and Web designers from Graphic Design Blender

What do you think?

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Ten of the top names in online business services have banded together to help your business grow bigger, achieve more and succeed in 2010.

We are proud to be participating in a giveaway that could really start off two of our lucky readers in 2010 on the right foot!

Enter to win the Better Business 2010 New Year’s business package and leave last year behind.

The prize includes…

• Pagelime—1 Pro Account for one year
• Are My Sites Up?—1 Standard Account for one year
• BuySellAds—$200 & advice on placing ads for the best ROI
• Campaign Monitor—10,000 Email credits
• Flashloaded—1 Full Copy of 3D Wall PRO
• FreshBooks—1 Shuttle Bus Account for one year
• iStockphoto—250 iStock Credits
• MediaTemple—1 year of (gs) OR (dv) hosting [winner chooses]
• Tuts+ —1 Full Network Account
• Webdesigner Depot—$100 Gift card

For all of the contest rules and details, visit http://betterbusiness2010.com. This is such a fantastic opportunity for someone to really rack up on the goodies!

We know you want all your dreams to come true in 2010, we just want to help make it a little easier!

Thank you to http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabrios1984/2623782343 for the gorgeous sunset photo.

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New Year, New Mashable! We rolled out a new look this morning, reorganizing our content into sections, removing clutter, and putting more focus on the stories.

If you’re particularly interested in a certain area of our coverage, you’ll appreciate our new sections: Social Media, Mobile, Web Video, Entertainment, Business and Tech. Each of these channels has a separate RSS feed.

Our channels are composed of subchannels, too, allowing you to drill down to your areas of interest. For example, our entertainment section contains subsections where you can get the latest on music, film, online games, sports, celebrities, food and media; our business section offers business news, advertising and marketing articles, small business advice, pieces on career development, and more.

We’re not done yet, of course: if you spot any bugs or issues, let us know. In the meantime, we’d like to ask: what do you think?

Special thanks to our partners at nclud for their work on this design!

Tags: design, mashable

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