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Thursday, December 30, 2010
iPhone 4, Barbies top eBay's list of top shopped items
San Jose's eBay came out with its picks for 2010 top pop culture items and trends, based on its review of its 200 million daily listings.
The iPhone 4 was No. 1 and the iPad was No. 5 but in between them were Barbies, military jackets and Hot Wheels. No mention of Android phones, Kindles or any other consumer electronics on its top 10 list.
The online marketplace said it sold more than 1.6 million iPhone 4 related products, as well as more than 621,000 iPad related products. Meanwhile, nearly 1.2 million Barbies were also sold.
| Dec 30 at 11:25 PM
Facebook tops Google for top-visited site in 2010
In yet another example of its massive popularity, Facebook was crowned the top-visited site in 2010, toppling Google, according to Experian Hitwise.
Facebook accounted for 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010 while Google ranked second with 7.19 percent of visits. Yahoo Mail, Yahoo and YouTube rounded out the top five.
Facebook was also the most searched term, along with variations Facebook login and Facebook.com.
Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian was the top personality searched, Lady Gaga the top artist searched, Star Wars the top movie searched and Dancing with the Stars the top television show searched.
| Dec 30 at 12:11 AM
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Record $30.8 billion in online holiday shopping
Consumers spent a record $30.8 billion online this holiday season, up 13 percent from last year, comScore said.
That includes $2.45 billion, up 17 percent from last year, during the week of Christmas, spurred in part by the blizzard in the Northeast. (Stuck inside? Online shopping time.)
One of the biggest jumps between this year and last year occurred during the last day that shoppers could take advantage of free standard shipping. On Dec. 17, consumers rushed to spend $942 million, up 61 percent from the year before.
| Dec 29 at 10:10 PM
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
An analysis of Facebook status updates
Young Facebook users are angrier and more self-centered. Older users like to talk about other people, including their family, and tend to write longer status updates. People tend to get moodier as the day goes on.
Those are some of the conclusions from a recent Facebook analysis of the words people use in their status updates.
Young Facebook users use more negative words, swear a lot and talk about themselves -- lots of "I's" and "my's."
More popular people tend to use the word "you" more, don't write a lot about their family, talk about music and sports and are less emotional in their status updates.
People also use more positive language in the morning and, as the day drags on, their language becomes more negative.
| Dec 28 at 11:32 PM
Twitter fail whale artist meets Conan O'Brien
Following up on the profile of Twitter fail whale artist Yiying Lu, here's a clip of her meeting comedian Conan O'Brien a few weeks ago.
| Dec 28 at 11:13 PM
About AT&T;'s new free Wi-Fi 'hot zone'
Early this morning, AT&T; announced that it plans to introduce Wi-Fi access for subscribers in San Francisco -- but it was a little vague on when and where.
AT&T; still won't say when the so-called 'hot zone' will launch -- "the very near future" was all spokesman Steven Smith would tell us, via e-mail -- but we can tell you a bit more about the location than a wire report in this morning's Business Report, which said the service would be "along the Embarcadero."
Smith said the hot zone -- which will grant Wi-Fi access to AT&T; customers, just as the company has done in New York's Times Square -- will launch in the Embarcadero Center. The five-block, mixed-use space runs from Battery to Drumm streets in between Sacramento and Clay.
"AT&T; customers enjoying the shops, restaurants and entertainment options will have this added feature with no additional cost," Smith said.
Here's looking forward to the very near future.
| Dec 28 at 03:27 PM
McAfee predicts attacks on social services, mobile products in 2011
McAfee Labs released its annual "Threat Predictions" on Tuesday, highlighting online vulnerabilities that cybercriminals are likely to target in the coming year.
They include URL shortening services like Bit.ly, social geolocation services such as Gowalla, mobile devices like smart phones and the Mac operating system, which has long been considered a less attractive target than Microsoft's far more popular Windows.
The Santa Clara security company also anticipates more "hacktivism" in 2011, along the lines of the denial of service and other attacks launched by WikiLeaks supporters against companies and individuals deemed to be critical of the site.
Any dire warnings from a company like McAfee should be considered against the fact that it makes money by selling security software and services. But they're not alone in sounding the alarm for several of these potential areas of susceptibility.
In nearly all of these cases, the growing threats are tied to increasing usage, the company said. Because cyberattacks require considerable work, hackers only tend to spend the time to infiltrate software and services that are widely used and promise some kind of a financial payoff. It's why the dominant Windows platform has long been a ripe target.
But now, millions of people are adopting mobile gadgets like Android smart phones and Apple's iPhone and iPad, as well as social networking services like Facebook, Twitter and Gowalla.
Meanwhile, the user base for Apple's OS for personal computers has rapidly expanded in recent years as well.
Credit card numbers, social security numbers, shopping habits, frequently visited locations and other information frequently pass through these devices and services, making them potentially attractive targets for criminals who can exploit the data.
For instance, URL-shortening services, made popular by the desire to share content on social sites like Twitter and Facebook, create abbreviated URLs that cybercriminals could use to mask links to malicious sites, McAfee said.
Meanwhile, the growing use of iPads and iPhones in the workplace could increase the financial motivation, and ease the way, for hackers to launch various attacks on businesses, the company said.
"We've seen significant advancements in device and social network adoption, placing a bulls-eye on the platforms and services users are embracing the most," said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, in a statement.
| Dec 28 at 01:34 PM
Monday, December 27, 2010
Just in time for resolutions, new fitness apps
As the holidays wind down and Americans wake up from their collective food coma, they're likely to find themselves a few pounds heavier than they were before cookie-party season began. And if losing weight makes its way on to your list of New Year's resolutions, dozens of smartphone apps will compete for your attention -- and money.
Among the New Year's more prominent fitness app developers is Nike, which recently released Nike Training Club. Geared toward women -- or anyone interested in performing pre-packaged workouts with names like "Slim Chance" and "The Heartthrob" -- Nike Training Club offers more than 60 workouts and 90 drills for a variety of fitness levels. A beginner's workout might include a light jog and some modified push-ups; advanced level workouts include jump rope, push-ups and the ever-unpleasant mountain climbers. Videos of women performing the exercises correctly help you keep your form in check.
One smart feature lets you can tie your workout to a playlist or album already on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app also tracks your progress and offers you rewards as you go, including Foursquare-like badges, smoothie recipes, and new workouts featuring "audio motivation" from tennis player Maria Sharapova. Best of all: the whole thing is free.
If you enjoy coaching every step of the way -- and don't mind being instructed by a disembodied robot voice that may remind you of the Terminator -- you may want to check out Workout Trainer, by the online fitness-tracking company Skimble. Workout Trainer offers coached workouts (and session tracking) for a wide variety of activities, including running, yoga and rock climbing. Social features let you see what your friends are doing with the app. One downside: the app regularly nags you to upgrade to a paid version -- $5 for three months, or $10 for a year -- or to spend $1 for audio coaching from a real (but recorded) human voice, instead of the Terminator.
Nike and Skimble are just the latest to go after the smartphone-using fitness crowd: there are 882 healthcare and fitness titles in the App Store at the moment. Even separating out the apps devoted purely to medical health and care, that still leaves hundreds of apps designed to get you up and moving.
Popular entries include Livestrong's Calorie Tracker, FitnessClass, Fitness Free HD and Training Peaks. (Your humble blogger is partial to iFitness, which comes in both iPhone and iPad versions and offers videos of dozens of exercises in addition to a food tracker, weight monitor, BMI calculator and other features.)
| Dec 27 at 02:25 PM
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Autodesk helps you build that new Lego castle
For generations of children, Christmas morning has meant waking up to a brand-new play-set from Lego. But for parents, the joy of watching a child opening the gift can quickly turn to frustration -- how the heck do you put this thing together?
In the case of the Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts castle, the answer is a 196-page instruction manual. Follow the guidelines step by step, and you'll discover how to turn 1,290 Legos into a rough facsimile of Hogwarts -- unless you or your child lose interest halfway through. Or burst into tears and run away.
AutoDesk employees saw the kid-on-Christmas-morning problem and thought its software could help. The company makes a free iPad app, Autodesk Inventor Publisher Mobile Viewer, that displays animated, three-dimensional versions of instruction manuals. People already use it to build escalators and other complicated machines, the engineers figured. So why not Legos?
"If you look on YouTube, there are thousands of Lego 3D instructional videos that people have done in other applications -- but they're static," said Carl White, a director of digital design products at Autodesk. "I hit 'play' and it shows me how they go together. But I can't actually use the object in three-dimensional space. This is the next evolution of that."
After downloading the mobile viewer app, visit this site to get the Harry Potter instructions on your iPad. Then use the app to see the castle get built brick by brick. The app lets you rotate the castle in three dimensions to make sure you're building it correctly.
"As high as 75 percent of returns are based on the fact that people can't get the instructions right," said White said.
He says animated 3D instructions are the wave of the future -- and that, with any luck, Christmas-morning toy-building tears could be a thing of the past.
Here's a video of how it works.
| Dec 25 at 09:00 AM
Friday, December 24, 2010
Dear Santa
It's not just about tracking Santa's whereabouts on NORAD anymore. Parents who want Santa to send a special message to their children can use Portable North Pole.
Parents enter their child's name and age and select among some practices that the child has been working hard on, such as getting along with a sibling or eating her vegetables. Parents can also upload photos.
The site, developed by Montreal's Ugroupmedia, then produces a personalized video clip with Santa talking to the child, using the child's name and other details the parent has entered. There's also an app for the iPhone and iPad. Santa is watching!
| Dec 24 at 06:56 PM
News and views from the digital frontier.
By Marcus Chan (moderator), Benny Evangelista, Casey Newton, James Temple, Read Bios
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