How to back up your social media data

(Mashable) -- Remember how we were all freaking out on New Year's Eve, 1999, convinced that the world as we know it would end -- at the hands of machines, of course?
Well, we weathered that storm and then some. Still, as we shamble forward into the next decade, it might be prudent to take pause and take stock of the years behind us. Translation: Back up your stuff.
Think of it as stockpiling food and building a fallout shelter for the 21st century.
We have a ton of information, photos and memories scattered around the web that we would be loathe to lose, and while it's unlikely that the entire Internet is going to come crashing down in the next week or so, it still might be wise to put some of that stuff in an iron box for safe keeping.
Read on, and Christina Warren and I will show you how to...
... back up your Facebook
We're coming pretty close to living our lives on Facebook -- it's our photo album, diary and mailbox, all in one -- so why leave all that info up to the whims of the all-mighty servers?
This October, the social network got hip to data portability after it started allowing users to download their profiles -- photos, statues, updates, videos and all.
The process is really too simple to forgo. Here's how you can stow away your social life for safekeeping:
1). Go to Account Settings
2). Click on "Download Your Information" and allow Facebook to download your info
3). Wait for an e-mail that will let you know your info is ready (it takes a while, what with all the stuff you probably have on Facebook)
4). Go through the security test that allows you to download your info (kudos on that one, Facebook), and, voila, your profile is ported to your desktop in a nifty folder.
Do this before you go through with that New Year's resolution to make your profile less scandalous -- you know, for when you're old and gray and full of sleep and nodding by the fire.
... back up your tweets
Yes, the Library of Congress is now hoarding tweets, but that doesn't do much for the casual user looking to keep a log of his own mundane musings, now does it?
Thankfully, you're got some options. There's TweetStream, which lets you back up your data as well as mine it for information and statistics. (Be warned, this service takes a looooong time to gather your info).
And if TweetStream doesn't strike your fancy, TweetScan, a site we covered back in 2009, will track your data back to 2007, and, using OAuth, will even grab your timeline, tweets from friends and direct messages.
Pinboard, a paid, Delicious-like (RIP) tool, also lets you store your tweets -- you can also back up or archive tweets from other usernames or from hashtags, as well as add favorites from a username and turn links embedded in tweets into bookmarks.
... back up your blog
After Tumblr's epic outage the other week, we showed you all how to back up your blogs. Well, we're just going to reiterate that right now, along with some solutions for WordPress as well.
Remember how you felt when your mom threw away all your old journals, crammed to the margins with angsty poetry? Well, that's not a feeling one would like to replicate later in life (unless it was relief -- in which case, disregard).
Tumblr
Last year, Tumblr launched a backup app that allows users to save their blogs so that they can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD or hosted as an archive of static HTML files.
The app is super easy to use: Simply download, enter your Tumblr sign-in info and save your blog to your desktop. You can launch the app and backup more info every time you post as well.
Note, this app is only for Mac OS X (10.5 or higher), but there are other options for those who use different operating systems.
Wordpress
If your blog or website uses WordPress, grabbing a backup file of all your posts, pages and comments is easy. In the WordPress dashboard, just go to Tools, Export and choose what types of posts you want to export.
If you want a backup of your entire WordPress database, the excellent WP-DB-Backup plugin can make scheduled database backups for your WordPress site at intervals you choose and even e-mail you the backup file.
... back up your photos
If you're like millions of Internet users, you probably upload most of your photos to a photo-sharing site like Flickr or Facebook. While you're backing up your blog entries, tweets and Facebook messages, it might be a good idea to go ahead and archive all of your photos, too.
If nothing else, this is a great way to destroy the evidence from that sorority beer bong tournament in college.

Flickr is a great service and in terms of reliability, it's consistently solid. What's less consistent is the whims of its parent company, Yahoo. If the Delicious debacle has taught us anything, it's that Yahoo isn't afraid to sell off or shut down a service with millions of daily users.
Lots of apps and tools let you back up your Flickr photo stream, but a quick, fuss-free way to unload years of photo uploads is the Adobe Air app Flump. The app works on Mac, Windows and Linux and downloads a copy of each photo in your stream to a folder of your choice.

Be aware that while this will grab each and every photo, tags, titles and photo sets are not preserved. There a few other alternatives if you're willing to invest more time in the process, but Flump gets the job done.

65% of internet users have bought content online

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Holiday shopping online was strong right through Christmas, with consumers spending a record $30.8 billion for the season, according to a research firm report issued Wednesday.
Online sales for the 56 days ended Dec. 27 rose 13% from the same period in 2009, according to Reston, Va,-based comScore. There was a 17% year-over-year surge in the week that ended Dec. 26 -- the day after Christmas.
"For at least this holiday season, the American consumer has been able to shrug off the continuing economic challenges of high unemployment rates and depressed housing prices and spend at a rate that has been slightly stronger than we had expected," said Gian Fulgoni, comScore's chairman, in a statement.

Computer hardware led the way in online sales, with a 23% increase from last year, aided by Apple' (AAPL, Fortune 500)s iPad and e-readers from various sellers, according to comScore. Book and magazine sales rose 22%, consumer electronics sales gained 21% and software sales excluding video games were 20% higher online.

65% of internet users have bought content online

(Ars Technica) -- About 65% of Internet users have paid for some kind of online content, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.
Pew found that digital music and software are the two most common purchases, yet almost half of the users have only bought one or two kinds of content, and most have only used one method of access, such as streaming or downloading.
Of the 1,003 people surveyed, 75% were Internet users, which is consistent with the general proportion of Internet use in the U.S.
While previous surveys had looked at online purchases in general, the goal of this one was to isolate purchases of content only, rather than physical items. Of the people who where online, less than two thirds had ever used it to buy some kind of content.
33% of those who bought online content had gotten either digital music or software, and 21% had bought apps for cell phones or tablet PCs.
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10% had bought an e-book, and 15% had used it to by ringtones. Only 5% had paid to use online dating sites, and according the the data, a remarkable 98% of the users have never paid a penny for adult content.
Some of the more interesting collected data had to do with payment and delivery methods. 66% of Internet users have used only one method of getting content, like streaming, downloading, or using subscription services.
However, only 23% had subcribed to a service, 16% were downloading their content, and 8% were streaming. Even if these three groups were totally disparate, that leaves at least 19% who are buying content on the Internet, but don't know how they're getting it.
The average content expense was $47 per month, but Pew noted there were some very high-end users who skewed this number a bit. The median user spends only $10 per month for online content, with more going to downloading individual files than subscription services.
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Unsurprisingly, consumption of online media went up with income brackets. 43% of people with a household income of $75,000 or more buy music online, while 26% of those with an income of $30,000 or less do.
Paying for premium content on websites, such as the Wall Street Journal's site, is a fairly unpopular use of online content dollars -- an average of 11% of users do so. But when divided up by income, 17% of the richest bracket pays for premium content, while only 6% of the lowest bracket does.
People with more education also seem to be more invested in online content. For instance, 43% of those who graduated from college bought digital music, but only 23% of people who had never been to college did so.
As far as the gender divide, women and men seemed to pay for online media in roughly equal proportions, differing no more than 2 or 3% in most cases. The only notable exception was Internet-obtained software: 40% of men had bought software off the Internet, while only 26% of women had.

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Of the people who use the Internet but don't buy content, those ages 30-49 were the least likely to abstain from digital purchases -- 29% haven't bought anything, compared to 33% of 18-29 year olds and 39% of 50-64 year olds.

This indicates the 30-49 age bracket makes a good target for companies that are looking to sell online content, as it has the largest overlap between technological literacy and financial security.

1,000-Core Chip Could Make PCs 20 Times Faster

Scottish scientists have built a 1,000-core processor, claiming it will run 20 times faster than today’s chips while using less power.

Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede led a research team at the University of Glasgow to create the futuristic processor using a programmable chip called a field programmable gate array (FPGA).

Instead of the built-in circuitry of conventional desktop computer chips, these processors can be customized. So with some extremely clever programming, the research team was able to divide the processor into 1,000 cores, each capable of its own computation.

To give you some perspective, the fastest consumer processors such as Intel’s Core i7 top out at six cores. According to the Daily Mail, the 1,000-core processor processes 5 gigabytes data per second, and that’s “20 times faster than modern computers.”

The researchers gave each one of the cores its own dedicated memory, speeding it up even more. Remarkably, they were able to leverage all this extra speed and power without using more energy. Because they’re using those more energy-efficient FPGAs, Dr. Vanderbauwhede calls them “a greener option.”


Will we be seeing these processors in our laptops anytime soon? Not exactly. The team will present their research at a symposium next March, but according to Vanderbauwhede, “I believe these kinds of processors will only become more common and help to speed up computers even further over the next few years.”

AT&T to expand Times Square Wi-Fi by New Year's Eve

(CNN) -- Ahead of the annual New Year's Eve celebration, wireless provider AT&T says it will expand a Wi-Fi hotspot in New York City's Times Square.

So if you plan to tweet "OMG it's 2011!!!" from Times Square early Saturday, you may have an easier time of it than you would have in 2010.

The "hotzone," as AT&T calls it, is part of a company effort to improve wireless data transmission to smartphones in certain urban areas. These public, outdoor Wi-Fi connections are intended to supplement the company's 3G cellular service, the company said in a press release on Tuesday.

That 3G network has drawn complaints from smartphone users, who say it's difficult to send and receive data from their phones, particularly in high-traffic areas like New York and San Francisco.

Connection problems often are compounded when large numbers of AT&T smartphone users gather in a certain area and are trying to send and receive data via their mobile phones at the same time. There are few better examples of this than New Year's Eve in Times Square, where an estimated 1 million people will gather to ring in the new year. Many will want to send photos, e-mails and text messages from the celebration.

The AT&T outdoor Wi-Fi project started earlier this year when the company installed pilot Wi-Fi hotzones in New York, Chicago, Illinois and Charlotte, North Carolina. The effort is now expanding to beef up Wi-Fi in New York and to include a new Wi-Fi-connected zone at San Francisco's Embarcadero Center.

The company says the existing Wi-Fi hot spots work well.

"Our initial AT&T Wi-Fi hotzones have received great customer response and supported high data traffic," says John Donovan, AT&T's chief technology officer. "The pilot demonstrated the clear benefits of having fast and readily-available Wi-Fi options for our customers and our network, and so we have decided to deploy hotzones in more locations."

The Wi-Fi "hotzones" supplement AT&T's existing network of more than 20,000 indoor Wi-Fi "hot spots," the company says.


Wi-Fi connections generally help smartphone users send and receive data faster than existing cellular networks. Wi-Fi also use less of a phone's battery and doesn't eat into an AT&T customer's wireless data plan the way 3G connections do.

Verizon Wireless also has a Wi-Fi hot spot in Times Square, according to the company's website.

Wi-Fi, of course, is prone to failure, too, especially under heavy traffic demands. In one high-profile example of this, Apple CEO Steve Jobs' presentation crashed at a press conference earlier this year when a Wi-Fi network went down because of a traffic overload.

An AT&T spokesman would not comment on how much traffic the New York hot spot will be able to handle.

"As in any situation where a large number of people in a dense area are using smartphones, periods of network congestion can occur," the AT&T spokesman wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "Wi-Fi hotzones provide another broadband option in high traffic areas, and we feel that customers will benefit from having the option to log onto AT&T Wi-Fi in these locations."

A viral video on viral videos?

(CNN) -- How many videos go viral per year? From Bed Intruder Video to Annoying Orange, there's an insane amount of memes we've run with in 2010.


And a new video attempts to cram them and dozens of other viral ideas into one video.

Called the Klick! Holiday Party, the seven-minute clip, from ad agency Klick!, is a mock festive event in its cubicle-laden offices.

What we get are dozens of employees dressed up like their favorite memes, dancing to The Isley Brothers' classic "Shout."

The video is an almost continuous shot, but more impressive is the sheer number of memes it hits. Klick! claims more than 50 are referenced, including:

• Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain"
• Tron Guy
• Double Rainbow
• I Can Haz Cheezburger
I caught about three dozen, but there were a few I didn't even recognize -- and I wrote a book on the history of memes.

The video is both brilliant and overwhelming, and it will probably make you eager to hunt down the viral ideas you haven't caught yet.

'CityVille' now bigger on Facebook than 'FarmVille'

(Mashable) -- Facebook game developer Zynga has proved once again that it knows exactly what it needs to do to keep millions of Facebook users happy and occupied.

In less than a month, its latest game "CityVille" has become the most popular application on Facebook, surpassing Zynga's previous hit "FarmVille" in all areas.

According to AppData, "CityVille" now has 16.8 million daily active users, compared to "FarmVille's" 16.4 million. Looking at monthly active users, "CityVille" is also ahead with 61.7 million users, while "FarmVille" trails behind with 56.8 million users.

Zynga's "FrontierVille" and "Texas HoldEm Poker" also round out the top five: put those four apps together (we'll disregard the fact that many of those users overlap for a second) and you have a very impressive number: 184 million active users across four games.
The only non-Zynga app in the top five list is "Phrases," which at one point threatened to take the top place, but is now overshadowed by both "CityVille" and "FarmVille."


"CityVille's" future success wasn't hard to predict after an amazingly good start at the beginning of December, but it's still impressive to see Zynga amassing tens of millions of users in a matter of days, proving that all that venture capital that went into the company isn't there by accident.

The 10 biggest tech 'fails' of 2010

(CNN) -- In 2010, we saw social networking skyrocket in popularity. We embraced a new category of tablet computer. And we rushed to new gaming systems that let us play video games without a controller.

But in the technology world, not all valleys are made of silicon. While the highs were high for the tech winners this year, the low points were equally low.

Even tech titans such as Apple and Google had some rough moments in 2010. And some ambitious ideas that must have made sense behind closed doors just didn't translate well to the real world.

So here are our top "tech fails" of the year: the missteps, misdeeds and mistakes that remind us that no one -- not even Steve Jobs -- is perfect. What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below.

1. iPhone 4 'Antennagate'

Apple drama -- nothing brings out the diehard fans and Cupertino haters quite like this one.

The newest iteration of the wildly popular smartphone was released in June.

By all standards, it's been a huge success. All standards except one.

Some people couldn't actually use it for phone calls.
OK, maybe that's an overstatement. But the Grip of Death (caused when users covered part of the antenna in a band around the phone's edge) was real -- and a big glitch in the device's rollout.

First Apple said the problem didn't exist. Then they said it was a software issue. Then they kind-of admitted it existed and gave away free cases to help. Then, they said it doesn't really exist anymore and stopped giving away the bumpers.

Months later, the problem is all but forgotten and the phones show no sign of dipping in popularity. So "fail," in this case, is a pretty relative term.

2. 3-D TV

After being all the buzz at the trend-making Consumer Electronics Show Video in January, 3-D television didn't do much of anything this year.

Three-dimension movies may have taken over your neighborhood multiplex. But how many people do you know who will pay $4,000 or more for a TV that has a limited amount of special content and makes you wear special glasses in the comfort of your own home?

That will likely change as prices fall and the technology gets better. But so far, in a market full of folks who just recently shelled out four figures for high-definition TVs, 3-D television has fallen flat.

3. Microsoft Kin

We almost don't have the heart to beat up on the Kins anymore.

Having already served up the short-lived, tween-centric phones in our Thanksgiving all-time tech turkey list, we'll just remind you that the Kin One and Kin Two (Born: April 2010. Died: July 2010) aimed to be the fun, social smartphone for kids but ended up as a sort-of iPhone Lite, with a pricier data plan than their limited functions could justify.

Microsoft seemed happy to move on to the Windows Phone 7 system, so we will, too.

R.I.P. Kin. We hardly knew ye.

4. Nexus One

Speaking of phones that failed ...

Google's Android phone operating system came into its own in 2010, actually outselling phones running Apple's system by the end of the year.

But Google's effort at making their own phone to run it, the Nexus One, fizzled fast.

And here's the thing -- just about everyone who tried out the Nexus One liked it. It had features to rival the iPhone's, and reviewers were kind.

But Google might have gone wrong by originally selling the phone only online. Apparently, folks like to get their hands on their gadgets before paying for them.

5. Facebook privacy

Nothing on the internet elicits as much squawking as a change to Facebook.

Any change will do, really.

But this spring, some of the roughly half-billion users on the site got really miffed when a handful of privacy bugs, among other things, made private chat conversations briefly visible to Facebook friends.

And on April 21, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new Facebook feature called the "Open Graph," which essentially brings Facebook-like functionality to a number of websites.

A few folks actually left on a protester-created "Quit Facebook Day." Most didn't, but the sustained anger led Facebook to eventually simplify its privacy controls and roll out some new ones.

6. Google Buzz

Buzz was supposed to be Google's entry into the world of social networking in much the same way that Google Wave, which Google killed in August, was supposed to revolutionize real-time communication.

But it didn't help that, right out of the gate, Buzz's default settings amounted to a privacy breach. Basically, if users didn't tweak things at set-up, the people they e-mailed and chatted with the most through Gmail automatically became their followers.

So, theoretically, someone only needed to take a quick look at your profile to see who you interacted with the most in forums that most people assume are private.

Google quickly patched the problem. But the tool never really caught on. In Google Land, that might be OK, though -- the latest speculation is that Buzz might have been just the first step toward a networking site called "Google Me."

7. Gawker media sites hacked

Two fails here, really.

Fail No. 1: Gawker Media sites were breached in early December, with hackers saying they got access to the user names and passwords for about 1.3 million users of sites such as Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker and Kotaku.

Fail No. 2: A published list of the most-popular passwords hacked showed that "123456," "password," "12345" and "qwerty" were at or near the top of the list.

Sorry, folks. If those are your passwords, it's awfully tough to feel sorry for you getting hacked.

8. Content farms

Creating click-bait junk on the internet didn't start in 2010. But it certainly took off in a big way.

Demand Media, Aol's Seed and Associated Content, bought this year by Yahoo!, operate on a similar "content farm" model: They choose topics people are searching for on the internet, pay a "journalist" a tiny amount to write something -- anything -- about it, then slap it on the Web so people will click on it.


According to a Wired article, industry "leader" Demand Media already was cranking out 4,000 videos a day in late 2009. And they were on pace to publish 1 million items a month by this summer.

The magazine interviewed a videographer who has done 40,000 videos for Demand. Asked about his favorite, he said he couldn't really remember any of them.

Writing to what readers are interested in is one thing. At CNN, we monitor Twitter, Google Trends and other digital listening posts to make sure we're covering what people want to know about in the tech world.

But cranking out by-the-numbers copy, with profit as the only motive, just junks up the Web for everyone. It cynically betrays the promise of what the internet could, and should, be.

And maybe it won't work. The Wall Street Journal has said Demand has never made a profit. And just this week, there were reports that Demand is delaying a public stock offering because of concerns about its accounting practices.

9. Digg relaunch

It's impressive that content-sharing sites such as Digg have clung to some degree of relevancy in an era when most people share their favorite digital content on Facebook and Twitter.

But, to be sure, they've struggled. And a revolt by some vocal members of Digg this summer didn't help. The site got a major overhaul to make it easier for users to find content.

But the changes were buggy at first, and some old-school features such as the "Bury" button (which was eventually returned) had regulars claiming they were bolting for Digg competitor Reddit.

The fallout was still clearing by year's end, and the reasoning behind Digg's changes -- to help curate content in a more manageable way -- made sense. But the change brought some headaches that Digg's top brass no doubt would have liked to avoid.

10. iTunes Ping

There's a whole social network set up in Apple's iTunes store now.

Didn't know that? Well, there you go.

Not all musical artists are on there. And it doesn't integrate with Facebook. (Although Ping and Twitter just linked up). And, a lot of the time, it simply pushes you to buy music.

Needless to say, Ping hasn't really caught on.

Two lawsuits target Apple, app makers over privacy concerns

(CNN) -- Although Apple gadgets sat under many a Christmas tree this year, the computer company is receiving some unwanted holiday-season attention.

Two separate class-action lawsuits filed last week in federal court allege that Apple and as many as eight makers of popular applications for the iPhone facilitated the sharing of private information about their customers to advertisers.

Though a recent news report claimed that many apps are sharing this personal data, the lawsuits together target just eight: Dictionary.com, the Weather Channel, internet radio service Pandora, the messaging app textPlus 4, as well as the makers of entertainment or game apps Talking Tom Cat, Paper Toss, Pumpkin Maker and Pimple Popper Lite.

The plaintiff leading one of the suits, Los Angeles County resident Jonathan Lalo, has been using four of those apps on his iPhone, said Dave Stampley, a partner at KamberLaw, which is bringing the case in a San Jose, California, district court.

"Mr. Lalo has had some of these apps since they were first issued -- in some cases, years," Stampley told CNN.

A copy of Lalo's suit, obtained by CNN, claims many iPhone and iPad owners have been "the victims of privacy violations and unfair business practices."

Both cases are seeking class-action status in the hopes of covering all Americans that are allegedly affected. More app developers could be added to the suits, or sued separately, as more plaintiffs join the case, Stampley said.

Lawyers filed the suits in U.S. District Court on behalf of the named plaintiffs and an unspecified number of unnamed plaintiffs.

The other suit was filed Thursday on behalf of three Texas men and a California woman, all of them iPhone owners. It states that "their personal, private information was obtained without their knowledge or consent ... their personal property -- their computer -- was hijacked by Defendants and turned into a device capable of spying on their every online move."

The plaintiffs seek an unspecified amount in compensatory and punitive damages.

An Apple spokesperson could not be reached for comment because its press department is closed for the holidays, said a company message.

Apple recently launched an ad network of its own, though that does not seem to be a target in the suits. Apple has said app makers must obtain users' permission before transmitting data.


The suits follow a December 17 Wall Street Journal article highlighting dozens of apps that reportedly collect usage data and send personal info to advertisers without the user's consent or knowledge.

"I think it was through the Journal," that Lalo discovered the issue and decided to connect with KamberLaw, said Stampley. That investigation by the newspaper claimed that Android apps were also sharing personal info but that the Android platform was less intrusive.

Mobile app data-sharing differs from websites, which commonly use small files called cookies to track users, because smartphone apps can access a device's UDID, an unchangeable string that's embedded in each Apple device.

People can generally delete cookies on most browsers, but they can't change or hide a UDID. This allows advertisers to more reliably tie behaviors to a single iPhone user, for example.

HOW TO: Land a Job at Microsoft

Everyone has a dream job. Whether it’s a company you’ve been pining to be a part of or a new product you’re dying to throw your creativity into, there’s always a line of work that seems like the perfect fit.
Though recognizing your ideal position is easy, actually getting the job is the hard part. For those looking to start a career at tech giant Microsoft, the sheer size of the company makes the hunt seem even more overwhelming. Resumes can get lost in a sea of applications, and finding the right contact to reach out to can be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
But that doesn’t mean you should give up on your dream of working at one of the most successful and dynamic corporations in the world. Here are some tips and resources from the company’s recruiters and employees for landing a job at Microsoft.

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Getting Started

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With so many locations and products, the first step in starting your Microsoft job search should be deciding where you want to work and what you want to create. Visiting the Microsoft Careers website can help answer these questions. There you can look for a specific position in the navigation bar or choose a country from the drop-down menu. On the Find Your Fit page, details on the company’s various professions and technologies are laid out to help you explore opportunities.
Once you apply by uploading your resume to a specific job posting on the site, it’s up for review. So how do you get that resume noticed?

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Standing Out

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Many recruiters use keyword searches to pull up resumes — but that doesn’t mean every other word needs to be “motivated” or “team player.” Be sure to list the names of certain technologies and programming languages you’ve used in each project you include. This will allow a recruiter to see what you know and how well you know it.
When putting together your resume, think about how you affected your environments and less about the basic facts of what you did. “Often, applicants write their resumes like a list of job tasks, but it’s even more important to call out your major achievements and the difference you made: what you did, how you did it, and why it mattered,” said Gretchen Ledgard, communications manager for Microsoft Recruiting.

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Doing Your Homework

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Microsoft is known for its difficult interview process and obscure questions. The best way to nail it? “Do your homework on us,” Ledgard said. Candidates who come in with knowledge about the role, team and location tend to already have an idea of how to frame their answers and are ready to ask solid questions.
Thom Mitchell, a Microsoft account technology strategist who was hired earlier this year, couldn’t agree more. He researched each person who was interviewing him and read up on the products he would be responsible for in the role and the competition for those products. He even prepared a short PowerPoint presentation about Microsoft products in case he was asked to present something on the fly (he wasn’t). When Mitchell asked questions, they were substantive and role-related — not “How are the health care benefits?” or “Is there a gym reimbursement?” More importantly, when he didn’t know an answer to a question he was asked, Mitchell simply said so and didn’t try to talk around the issue or come up with a fake answer.

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Following Up

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If you have questions after submitting your resume, many Microsoft recruiters are open to being contacted via social media, Ledgard said. Microsoft Careers is also open to connecting through social networks and has resources for potential job candidates on its advice hub JobsBlog.
But how do you strike a balance between keeping your name on the radar and being a nuisance? For Mitchell, the key was checking in as needed. He followed up with the recruiter after each screening interview and sent brief thank you notes to the hiring manager he interviewed with in person — but not to each person who interviewed him. Mitchell said his recruiter let him know what would happen every step of the way, so there wasn’t a need to over communicate.

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Finding a Fit

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There’s a big focus on not only job fit, but also company fit at Microsoft.
Recruiters look for people who go above and beyond in everything they do, whether that’s taking the most difficult computer science courses or working on extracurricular projects, Ledgard said.
Still, there’s no fool-proof formula for landing a job at Microsoft. Even though the position you’re applying for might feel like the perfect match, sometimes it’s just not. Microsoft’s recruiters and hiring managers are the experts on what type of person will be a good fit for both the job and the company culture. The best advice? Relax. If it’s meant to be, it will.
Have you scored a job at Microsoft or are you trying to? What has your experience been like? Tell us in the comments below.

When will Santa get there? Ask NORAD, Google

(CNN) -- Think half-eaten cookies and carrots are the only way to prove it was actually Santa who put that reindeer sweater under your Christmas tree? Think again.

Thanks to Google and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, you can track old Saint Nick on his Christmas Eve journey around the globe.

Log on to Noradsanta.org to view a special Google Map displaying Santa's whereabouts.

The map, which launched at 2 a.m. EST on Friday, uses little red and yellow presents to note the places Santa has already visited. Click on the presents to learn a bit about each location, like Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, where, according to the map, Santa visited at 8:16 a.m. EST on Friday.

A tiny Santa icon is used to show his current location while a countdown clock below the map lets users know where he'll take the sleigh next.

But NORAD's interactive tracker isn't the only way to follow Mr. Claus around the world on Christmas Eve.

Google Earth shows Santa and his reindeer in action as they make their way across the globe, from Seattle's Space Needle the to pyramids in Egypt and so on.

Traveling on Christmas Eve? NORADs got you covered.

Search "Santa" using Google Maps on your smartphone, or, better yet, just ask OnStar.


"Do you have an OnStar-equipped vehicle?" NORAD asks on its official Noradsanta Twitter page. "On Christmas Eve day, press the OnStar button and locate #Santa!"

The bi-national air defense command began tracking Santa in 1955 because of a typo in a Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement, according to NORAD's website. The ad, reading, "Hey, kiddies! Call me direct on my telephone," accidentally printed the wrong number, directing children to the phone of the former NORAD director of operations.

Adding to the holiday excitement, first lady Michelle Obama teamed with NORAD to take calls Friday from children eager to know Santa's whereabouts, according to a NORAD press release.

"Hello, this is first lady Michelle Obama with NORAD Tracks Santa. How may I help you?" she said, according to the release.

Obama fielded the calls from Hawaii, where the first family will spend the holiday.

Activision CEO: 'Call of Duty' is like Facebook, texting

(CNN) -- Instant messaging, texting, Facebook, and ... "Call of Duty?"
The "Call of Duty" games effectively adapt to changing communication habits, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of game publisher Activision, told CNN on Tuesday.
And that could be the smoking gun in the franchise's takeover of the video-game industry.
The latest entry in the console-game series, "Call of Duty: Black Ops," has netted more than $1 billion in sales worldwide since it came out on November 9, Activision announced on Tuesday. In that time, gamers have spent 600 million hours with the game, the company said.
"More people play 'Black Ops' every day than watch Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon, combined," Kotick boasted. "The audience of 'Call of Duty' is probably greater in terms of size ... than in any other interactive form of entertainment."
Activision didn't invent war games or first-person shooters. Even today, the genre continues to attract new big-budget entrants. On Tuesday, Electronics Arts released "Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam."
Yet it's the "Call of Duty" games that attract blockbuster openings and fervent support. By some estimates, "Black Ops" had the biggest five-day opening in revenue of any entertainment debut in history.
The "Call of Duty" games generally feature compelling, cinematic storylines. In
"Black Ops," soldiers are tasked with assassinating Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
But it's the competitive play that draws the biggest crowds, Kotick said. Some 60% of traffic coming through Microsoft's Xbox Live online gaming service is from "Call of Duty" games, where players can take each other on, he said.
"The multiplayer is really the thing that has changed the game in such a meaningful way," Kotick said.
Instead of getting together to watch a movie, some people huddle around the living-room game console, or strap on a headset and chat online with friends across town or across the country over some gunfire.
"If you look at the 500 million people who are on Facebook and the way that people text each other and instant message and use video chat, there is now an evolution of media," Kotick said. "Those are the characteristics and attributes that a generation and audiences feel are very important to their media and entertainment experiences. And we expect that."
"Call of Duty" delivers on that trend, he said. These games can be as integral to the social lives of young people, especially males, as any other form of digital communication.
Kotick rattled off various factors he says make the "Call of Duty" franchise stand out from competitors -- "production value, the level of polish," that "no detail gets left unaltered," he said. Perhaps most important is "the sophistication and capability of the multiplayer matchup," Kotick said.
"Black Ops" credits Activision's Treyarch studio as the primary developer. The game came under scrutiny from video-game critics after a shakeup at Infinity Ward, the developer most often associated with the franchise.
Activision fired two executives from Infinity Ward for "wrongdoing" -- "so wrong that you were left with no choice" but to dismiss them, Kotick said. Their positions have since been filled after the company was flooded with about 5,000 résumés, Kotick said.
"Multiplayer has been largely developed by Treyarch," even in games like "Modern Warfare," which were credited to Infinity Ward, Kotick said. "I don't think Treyarch got their due for how much they contributed in the production and polish to the multiplayer."
Future "Call of Duty" games may borrow some things from Activision Blizzard's other massive franchise, "World of Warcraft," Kotick said. For example, developers should constantly mold their games based on audience feedback, he said.

"Blizzard really created the model for how to do this successfully and effectively, making sure the community of 'World of Warcraft' players has incredible influence on the future of the product," Kotick said. "There's so much more that we can deliver to our players."

Skype working to get back to normal

(CNN) -- Internet phone service Skype was working to get back to normal Thursday after an outage that started the day before.

"We've seen evidence of a significant increase in the number of people online," Skype said on its Twitter page on Thursday morning. A @Skype Twitter post at 8:54 a.m. said the increase was estimated to be 10 million people online.

"Unfortunately, it's not possible for us to predict on an individual level when you'll be able to sign in again, and we thank you for your patience in the meantime."

The outage started Wednesday, Skype said on its website, and technical problems were keeping people from logging into the internet phone service.

"The ability of one Skype user to find another relies on what we call 'supernodes', and yesterday, a number of these failed due to a software issue, which we've now identified. Our engineers are working to resolve the problem," Skype said in an update on its website Thursday.

Skype, said its enterprise product, Skype Connect , is working normally but its Skype Manager and "other web-based functions will continue to stay offline for a little longer. Additionally, features like group video calling will take longer to return to normal."


Skype apologized for the "disruption" and will continue to provide updates, the company said. It urges people to refer to @skype on Twitter for updates. Twitter is a microblogging site that allows users to display messages.

Skype, which allows free Internet voice and video calling, has grown in popularity. Users can also call land lines or mobile phones with Skype for a fee.

How to break into the video-game industry

(CNN) -- Breaking into the video game industry doesn't require fancy degrees, insider knowledge or a well-connected ex-roommate.

Better still, anyone can do it right from home and get started overnight.

But it's not necessarily easy. Leading game companies receive thousands of queries from eager job seekers weekly. Finding ways to catch their attention -- through bold designs, clever Flash games, cool smartphone apps or graphic makeovers for first-person shooter games -- is the secret to standing out.

With hordes competing for the chance to work on smash hits such as "World of Warcraft" or "Call of Duty: Black Ops," it's how you demonstrate your talent to game developers that counts most.

So don't just sit around playing games. Get involved with projects, from apps to books, modifications (mods) to retro remakes, that showcase your creativity.

Create something

Whether you're an artist or programmer, designer or marketing maven, the operating rule is show, not tell. Building a portfolio is easy though, thanks to the vast range of free and cost-effective tools offered online. There's also an array of level- and map-making utilities built into many leading games such as "Fallout: New Vegas" and "Torchlight."

Artists should establish a singular style that acts as their personal calling card, then look for ways to gain visibility. Contributing to fan-made game updates such as "King's Quest" reboot "The Silver Lining" and extreme visual makeovers of hits such as "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" are a great start.

Crafting quirky concepts, including paintings of popular '80s heroes in unlikely situations or free downloadable desktop wallpaper that pays tribute to beloved series such as "Halo" and "The Legend of Zelda," can also work.

Designers and programmers need to create. Small-scale projects such as new maps, missions and scenarios for popular titles make a great starting point. So too, do iPhone apps, homebrew remakes of classic games from the Commodore 64 and IBM-PC, social network games and Flash titles (games designed to run in one's Web browser).


Teach yourself some tools

Software engines such as the Unreal Development Kit, Torque, Adventure Game Studio, Playground SDK, and services such as App Hub can help you get started developing for computers, consoles such as the Xbox 360 or handsets that run on Apple or Windows Phone 7 systems.

To stand out, creations need to be unique and easily comprehensible at a glance.

Focus on building a handful of well-executed features instead of many mediocre ones. And conduct frequent prototyping and testing, since few great ideas are birthed fully formed.

Musicians likewise need a personal calling card, which could be a specific style of music, genre or audio flourish. (Think T-Pain's signature Auto Tune sound which, while annoying, makes him impossible to miss.) In-game creations should also be designed to evoke specific storytelling moods and stand up to multiple plays as adventures progress.

Providing audio scores for amateur and indie game projects is a great way to get one's creations heard. But you can also capture people's attention with offbeat alternatives, such as concept albums inspired by popular titles (e.g. "Halo: The Musical) or downloadable mix-tapes for enjoyment alongside specific games ("Assassin's Creed: The Unofficial Soundtrack").

Get published

Want to cover the gaming industry? Would-be journalists and writers should use blogging tools such as WordPress, Blogger and TypePad to instantly start publishing gaming content. Aspiring DJs can hook up USB microphones and free podcast recording programs such as Audacity and create their own radio shows.

Such digital video camcorders as Kodak's Zi8 and the Flip Ultra HD, coupled with YouTube and live streaming services including USTREAM and Justin.tv, let you play online gaming show host as well.

Between fan sites and internet gaming shows, you can collect enough published clips to present to potential employers and possibly even get you a job as a reporter, website manager or TV correspondent.

But to stand out, you'll need to have a singular voice, speak loudly and have something to say that thousands of others aren't already saying.

Marketers and executives lacking technical skills can always find talented development teams or freelancers at sites such as Gamasutra, IGDA.org, GameDev.net and oDesk.com. Online vendors such as Lulu.com, CafePress, MagCloud and CreateSpace also can put you in the publishing business overnight.

Got an idea for a new gaming site? Crowdsourced funding sites IndieGogo and Kickstarter.com even let you present ideas to the public and request donations to get your game projects off the ground.

Last resort: Become a professional gamer

Finally, though it's crushingly difficult to make a viable career out of professional gaming, circuits such as Major League Gaming and Virgin Gaming do reward skillful players with cash and prizes.

Don't quit your day job, however, unless you live in South Korea.

Spending quality time with hundreds of games does provide vital experience, frames of reference and an innate ability to analyze what makes successful titles so compelling.

But with so many game-industry wannabes competing for so few coveted positions, ultimately it's one's willingness to work, not play, that determines who gets the job.

Skype works to fix outage

(CNN) -- Internet phone service Skype was still trying to fix an outage early Thursday that was keeping many from using its service.

The outage started Wednesday, Skype said on its website, and the technical problems were keeping people from logging into the Internet phone service.

Early Thursday morning, the company announced on its Twitter page that it was still working on the problem. Twitter is a microblogging site that allows users to display messages.


"Thanks for your continued patience while we get everyone back online -- sorry especially to those of you who are still waiting," the announcement said.

The company said the issue stemmed from a problem with connecting to computers they called "supernodes."

"Our engineers are creating new 'mega-supernodes' as fast as they can, which should gradually return things to normal. This may take a few hours," Skype said Wednesday afternoon.

Skype allows free internet voice and video calling and has grown in popularity.

Users can also call land lines or mobile phones with Skype for a fee.

Report: Google TV devices delayed as Google tweaks software

(Mashable) -- We won't be seeing too many Google TV-powered devices at the next CES, which takes place in Las Vegas in January, because Google needs more time to work on the software, reports the New York Times citing unnamed sources.
Right now, Google's original partners for Google TV -- Sony and Logitech -- are the only ones actually selling the devices.
Samsung and Vizio are still supposed to reveal their Google TV devices at CES, but we'll have to wait a little longer for devices from Toshiba, Sharp and LG.
We can expect more Google TV devices after the software is updated, which will probably mean the addition of the Android Market. It should happen sometime next year, NYT's sources claim.

This is another in a series of obstacles for Google's foray into TV space; after receiving some lackluster initial reviews, Google TV suffered another blow when it got blocked by several U.S. major broadcast and cable networks.

FCC to vote Tuesday on 'net neutrality' rules

(CNN) -- The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote Tuesday on a set of regulations designed to ensure that internet providers grant everyone equal access to the Web.

The "net neutrality" rules, proposed by the Obama administration, would be the government's biggest foray yet into one of the Web's fiercest debates.

In announcing the proposed rules earlier this month, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said they would require high-speed internet providers to treat all types of Web content equally.

The rules would, in effect, keep the companies that own the internet's real-world infrastructure from slowing down some types of websites or apps -- say, those belonging to a competitor -- or speeding up others from high-paying clients.
The commission's agenda says the vote will address "basic rules of the road to preserve the open internet as a platform for innovation, investment, competition and free expression."
If it passes, as it is expected to do, the plan will go before Congress for final approval. That isn't expected to happen until the new Congress, elected in November, takes office next year.
Internet-freedom advocates have called the rules a step in the right direction but say they don't go far enough.
For example, the proposal doesn't set the same set of rules for mobile communications as it does for Web-based ones. And it wouldn't let the government strictly regulate internet providers in the way some advocates would like.
In fact, the proposal is similar to one put forward earlier this year by Google and Verizon, two of the internet's biggest stakeholders.
Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat and one of Congress' most vocal net-neutrality advocates, calls the issue "the most important free-speech issue of our time." In a column Monday for the Huffington Post, Franken said some of the current proposal's language could actually weaken protections.
"[T]his Tuesday, when the FCC meets to discuss this badly flawed proposal, I'll be watching," he wrote. "If they approve it as is, I'll be outraged. And you should be, too."
Michael Copps, a Democrat and one of the commission's five members, said in a written statement that he won't block the plan after weeks of trying to make it tougher.
"The item we will vote on tomorrow is not the one I would have crafted," Copps said. "But I believe we have been able to make the current iteration better than what was originally circulated.
"If vigilantly and vigorously implemented by the commission -- and if upheld by the courts -- it could represent an important milestone in the ongoing struggle to safeguard the awesome opportunity-creating power of the open internet."
Technically, Copps said he will vote to concur, which means not endorsing all parts of the plan but letting it move forward and, theoretically, be tweaked later.
Copps' two fellow Democrats also are expected to concur, while its two Republicans likely will vote no.
One of those Republicans, Robert M. McDowell, criticized Genachowski's proposal Sunday in a Wall Street Journal column.

"Nothing is broken that needs fixing ... " he wrote. "Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs and ultimately increasing consumer prices."

Foursquare adds photos and comments

(Mashable) -- Foursquare has added two heavily requested features to its popular iPhone app that should make the service significantly more social: photos and comments.
The new features let you attach photos to checkins, tips and venues, and add comments to the checkins of your friends. These social updates, released just in time for the holidays, will also get enmeshed within the rest of your Foursquare activity and included on your history page.
With photos, you'll be prompted to add one as you check in, in much the same manner that you're already prompted to add a "shout" with each checkin. You can then continue to add photos after you check in that will be added to the checkin detail page -- this page is also where comment activity happens.
Photos and comments will stay mostly contained to your immediate circle of friends. Photos associated with checkins will only be visible to your Foursquare friends and the other social networks you share them with. Comments, however, are only viewable by your Foursquare friends. So, should you share a photo checkin with Facebook and Twitter, the photo and the checkin will be visible but the comments can only be seen by a logged in user who you're friends with.
As for photos associated with tips and venues, those will be public to all users with the intention of adding richer context to your picks and pans.
"The community of users that we have are already super comfortable with checkins, so adding something like this to that mix should be pretty powerful," says Foursquare's head of product Alex Rainert. Rainert believes photos and comments will stimulate activity in and outside the application and better support the fluid exchange of information.

Foursquare also hopes these new features will help transform the way you think about the service and your location-based activity. Eventually, the startup would like to present your personal archive -- photos, checkins and comments -- in a more visually arresting manner, according to Rainert. "There are interesting things you can do when people create media at places," he says. "We hope to build creative ways to let people browse and share that history in the future."
Rainert stressed the fact that photos and comments have been in the works for months, but were pushed out in an accelerated fashion to get them to users before the holidays. Several enhancements are already in the works, he says. Users should soon have the ability to export photos to Facebook and Flickr, better track comments and more easily access old photos, for example.
Today, however, mobile photo sharing fans already using Foodspotting, Instagram and Picplz, will be gifted with the ability to share their photos -- not just their checkins -- with Foursquare.

Android users can expect photos and comments sometime this week; BlackBerry owners should expect a photo and comment compatible version of their own in January.

New iPhone app translates foreign-language signs

(CNN) -- Augmented-reality applications have promised to revolutionize the way we live on the go with our smartphones, but none have fully delivered yet.
This may be changing. A new free iPhone app called Word Lens shows remarkable promise for helping international travelers.
Word Lens uses the phone's video camera and processor to interpret printed words and almost instantly translate them between English and Spanish.
Those traveling abroad could hold the phone in front of their eyes to decipher a foreign-language street sign. The app projects the translated words onto whatever sign at which you point the phone.
This could be a leap forward for augmented-reality apps, which normally employ cameras and GPS systems to merge the physical world with information compiled about people and places on the internet.
Word Lens is the fruit of two-and-a-half years of work from a small outfit called Quest Visual, run by Otavio Good, a former game developer, and John DeWeese, who worked on the Electronic Arts game "Spore."

"The tourism market is really very large," Good told CNN in a phone interview Monday. "I want to sell this to all the tourists in the world."
Google's Goggles app has the capability to translate text or identify objects in an image. But it requires users to take a picture with their phones. Word Lens does it on the fly, meaning it's interpreting frames in video, almost in real time. A similar app called LookTel, designed to help blind people, scans print on objects such as packages of food and reads them aloud.
Word Lens has posted a video demonstration of how to use the app. The free version of the app can match fonts and erase text from a scene. It's only available for the iPhone, but work has already begun on an Android version.
Right now, the app can only translate between English and Spanish. (Each language package costs $4.99.) Quest Visual says it plans to add dictionaries to support other languages soon. Adding each language will take a few months of fine tuning, Good estimates.
"It's a little rough around the edges," Good said. "But it's going to get better."

Translations for sentences can be somewhat crude. Still, the app may be useful to any traveler trying to decipher a sign or cafe menu in a Spanish-language country, or vice versa.

How would you change the T-Mobile G2?

Outside of the Nexus One (and recently-launched Nexus S, of course), T-Mobile's G2 is about as close as one can get to stock build of Android. 'Course, it's now a point release behind Gingerbread, but we're hoping that'll be remedied in short order. Outside of that, we're curious to know how you'd change the slip-sliding Android phone if given the schematics and the ability to start over from scratch. By and
large, we felt that HTC nailed the design, but of course, everyone's capable of seeing things in a slightly different light. What would you tweak about the G2 if given the choice? Change up the keyboard? Offer it on AT&T or a CDMA carrier? Throw in a row of LEDs along the left edge, just for kicks? All (reasonable) ideas are welcome in comments below -- you never know who'll be tuning in.

British government wants all porn filtered out of the web, all fun sucked out of life

You can't be surprised at developments like these when you elect a political party whose very name is Conservative, but it's still rather sad to hear that the current UK government is putting pressure on ISPs to "protect children" by universally blocking access to porn websites. It's not outright censorship, you'll be able to "opt in" and restore your freedom to explore adult content (or anything else that's been inadvertently blocked), though it's all a rather misguided effort in our eyes. Claire Perry, one of the leading voices behind this push, cites stats noting that 60 percent of nine- to 19-year olds have found pornography online, yet she fails to elaborate on what's been so traumatizing or debilitating about the experience -- or why violent content is getting a free pass. We still think good parenting -- say, by using the local controls built into your OS or search engine -- is a much cheaper option than some complex censorship wall, but that won't prevent the Conservatives from pursuing legislation over the next couple of years if broadband providers don't figure out blocking mechanisms of their own. For shame, Britain

Alienware M17x laptop said to be suffering from power-related GPU issues

Well, it looks like at least some Alienware M17x laptop owners just can't catch a break. While the previous so-called DPC latency issue has apparently finally been resolved, a number of users are now reporting another issue that's only become apparent after the earlier problem was fixed. As it turns out, the symptoms are similar to the stuttering caused by the DPC latency issue (hence the confusion), but the new problems are being blamed on power issues -- namely, that the GPU is drawing more power than the laptop can provide. Worse still is that it seems like those with the highest-end configuration are the most likely to experience the problem, as they're effectively maxing out an already maxed-out system. For its part, Dell has apparently fixed the issue in the most recent revision of the laptop, but users on the Notebook Review forums are reporting that the company hasn't exactly been eager to dish out replacements for everyone affected (which seems to be the only surefire "fix" available).

Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs and motherboards now on sale in Malaysia, what Consumer Electronics Show?

Let us all warmly greet the Core i5-2300, the i5-2400, and the Core i7-2600, three desktop-bound members of Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge CPU brigade. You'll note that all three are fully dressed in their retail attire in an image coming from Malaysian electronics store Compuzone, which also has a full pricing and speed breakdown for these central processing units. The 3.4GHz Core i7 part costs 939RM ($301), followed by 609RM ($195) for the 3.1GHz 2400, and 585RM ($188) for the 2.8GHz 2300. It seems like Intel's up to its old tricks again, letting some stock roll out early in distant Asian locales. At least this should mean there'll be plenty to go around once the CES 2011 launch of these chips is out of the way. Hit the source for more details and to scope out pricing for the new LGA1155 motherboards

Mac App Store Coming January 6

Apple has just announced that its Mac App Store will open its virtual doors on Thursday, January 6 — right in the middle of CES.
The Mac App Store was unveiled as one of the new features of Mac OS X Lion, which will be available to users later in 2011.
The idea behind the Mac App Store is to bring the same experience of finding, installing and updating apps on iOS devices to Mac OS X. For consumers, the Mac App Store promises a way to streamline the installation and app discovery process, as well as keep apps synced across various machines.
We’ve discussed the potential upsides and downsides of the Mac App Store with a number of Mac developers. The hurdles of app submission guidelines and more stringent policies on upgrades, trials and volume licenses aside, the consensus seems to be that not participating in the Mac App Store would be a mistake.
Furthermore, unlike the iOS App Store (), the Mac App Store won’t preclude developers from offering upgrades or variable pricing via their own storefronts.
What do you think of the Mac App Store? Let us know in the comments.

5 Great Gadgets for Reinventing Your Road Trips

If you don’t live in a bustling city with ample public transportation options, chances are that you spend a fair bit of time in your car, so you want to make that time as pleasant as possible.
That’s where tech can step in to help entertain you, keep you connected, make sure you’re charged up and even help you get wherever it is you’re going.
We’ve picked five fantastic gadgets that will help you get the most out of your time on the road. Have a look through the list below and let us know in the comments what your motoring must-have device is.

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1. Griffin iTrip FM Transmitter

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An FM transmitter enables you to play the tunes from your phone or your MP3 player on your car stereo. This model from Griffin works with all iPhones (apart from 4) and most iPods. It automatically beams your music via the best FM frequency it can find. Griffin also offers a companion iPhone app, the iTrip Controller, that provides easy-to-use controls for the device.
Cost: $49.99

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2. TomTom Ease In-Car GPS

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Once you use in-car GPS, you’ll soon wonder how you ever found your way around without it. If you’re looking for a standalone device, you can’t go wrong with the entry-level, and therefore affordable, TomTom Ease. It’s compact and easy to use and offers A-to-B, turn-by-turn navigation (including street and place names) across the U.S. and Canada.
Cost: $109.95

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3. Jabra Cruiser In-Car Bluetooth Speakerphone

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A speakerphone will help you stay on the right side of the law if you have to take or make a call when driving. The Cruiser from Jabra clips onto your sun visor and, once you’ve paired it with your phone via Bluetooth, enables you to chat and drive. It offers dual microphones for better sound quality and 10 hours of battery life (13 days standby time), so you should have plenty of juice for long journeys.
Cost: Approx. $45

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4. Coffee Cup Power Inverter

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Shaped to fit conveniently into your car’s cup holder, this clever gadget converts your car’s power into two 120-volt AC outlets for charging your electronics on the go. It also offers an incredibly useful USB charging port. It can juice up three gadgets at once, so you’re pretty much protected from flat-battery-gadget-hell on a road trip.
Cost: $29.99

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5. XO Vision Overhead Monitor

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An overhead video monitor will transform your vehicle into a mobile movie theater. The beauty of the overhead design, of course, is that the equipment stays out of reach of little fingers. This model boasts a 9-inch screen and can play DVDs with the audio coming through your car’s speakers. Other features of note include USB and SD card slots and AV input for hooking up other electronic devices.
Cost: $127.81

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Your Picks

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These five devices are a great start for gearing up for better trips in your car, but we’re sure you have a few go-tos yourself. Let us know in the comments about your must-have car gadgets.

5 Predictions for Game Mechanics in 2011

This year was the first time most people heard the term “Gamification,” the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Although this strategy has always been around us, a combination of factors have made the topic explode onto the scene. These include the rise of Zynga and social games into the largest sector (by reach) of gaming, the demonstrable power of Foursquare ()’s badges and mayor mechanics to engage consumers in simple tasks, and 30+ years of video games everywhere.
But if 2010 was the year we make contact, 2011 promises to truly be the year when game mechanics take over: a potential roller coaster of exciting product, company and organizational launches. And so, here are my predictions for the breakthroughs we’ll see in game-powered enterprises.

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1. Health Gets More Fun

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Getting fit and staying healthy are some of the hardest things to do. Games like Brain Age and Wii Fit have emerged in the past few years, making headlines for their ability to turn exercise –- mental or physical –- into something fun. But while these games haven’t yet had much of an impact on our health, hundreds of startups and established companies are leveraging the lessons of those games to create real change.
In 2011, we’ll start to see the first successful examples of game mechanics used for health — largely around big data streams and mobile, building off Fitbit, Nike+ GPS and other monitoring and measurement ecosystems. “Gamified” health will look less like games, however, and more like apps that make fitness fun — for example, tying Xbox achievements to gym-based treadmills instead of creating virtual treadmills to run on.

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2. Education Hears the Bell

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Almost everyone agrees that education needs reform. But most efforts to use games to educate children have been failures, largely as a result of designers having to please parents and teachers before kids’ needs are served. With the advent of devices like the iPod touch and tablets however, a new generation of education companies can reach kids with less friction and more feedback.
I believe we’ll see the first “trans-institution” apps that connect students across different schools. We’ll see the first “gamified” textbooks from publishers while federal and state governments will continue to innovate and support initiatives in education. For adults, applications like MindSnacks, an iPhone app that makes learning languages more fun, will transform how we engage with continuing education. Expect an explosion in apps and services for language, food, finance and geo-location that manipulate game mechanics.

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3. Blue Skies Ahead

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Although a number of games have been made to help people change their environmental behavior, few have had much long-term success. More subtle experiences, however, like the “health meters” in the Toyota Prius and Nissan Leaf are proving to be a hit with drivers through ambient feedback, like a plant that grows when the car is driven in more environmentally friendly ways.
Companies like RecycleBank have had early success convincing customers to recycle by giving them rewards, and a whole host of electricity and carbon-offset startups are emerging to help consumers reduce their consumption. Big and small companies alike will continue to innovate here, with the support of energy companies and progressive governments; the stakes couldn’t be higher.

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4. Loyalty Programs Get More Virtual

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Airline frequent flyer programs are among the best examples of successful game systems. United Mileage Plus and American AAdvantage together count more than 100 million active “players.” Recently, these programs have become more game-like, adding progress bars and competition to their mix to improve user engagement.
At the same time, major online gamification players like Zynga and TopGuest have been striking deals to break down the walls between virtual activities (like checkins) and “real” rewards. From hotel chains to credit cards, reward programs will continue connecting with game-like experiences online. Plan to start earning points and miles in unexpected places and redeeming those points for virtual goods.

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5. Big Brands Get Involved

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Startups drive innovation, and game mechanics are ripe for exploration with exciting technology and service companies emerging almost weekly in the space. Big brands also understand the need for game-like connections. Traditional advertising continues to lose effectiveness with younger consumers, and customer acquisition costs remain stubbornly high.
Some of the world’s biggest brands have taken notice of how game mechanics can help their strategies. In 2011, we’ll be likely to see a handful of major media companies and consumer goods brands launch gamified experiences, with even more to follow in 2012. Expect to see the most innovation in finance, travel and TV.
Next year will be a very exciting year for gamification and customer engagement overall. From small startups working on energy consumption to the world’s biggest media properties, tools like points, badges, leaderboards and challenges will be increasingly deployed to create emotional and brand loyalty. That’s a fun future we can all look forward to!

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Amazon Updates Kindle for Android With Magazine Support

Amazon has updated its Kindle for Android app, adding support for newspapers and magazines. Amazon has long offered access to newspaper and magazine content via its Kindle hardware devices, but this is the first time that functionality has been extended to third-party gadgets.
Amazon originally announced its plans to bring periodicals to its iPhone, iPad and Android apps in October. Users can purchase single issues or subscription content for newspapers and magazines from within the Kindle for Android () app or from Amazon.com. Subscription content is auto-delivered and content is synced across devices and platforms.
Amazon competitor Kobo introduced periodical support for its iOS apps in October. The approach — as well as the available content — is similar on both services.
We signed up for a trial subscription to The Atlantic to test Kindle for Android’s new periodical support. Each article is accompanied by a small image, but this is still very much a text-based implementation. Still, the reading experience is surprisingly good. While lacking the multimedia enhancements of magazine apps for the iPhone or iPad, Amazon’s approach still offers good navigation and easy readability.
Newspapers and magazines support full text search (a nice touch) and selected text can be defined on the fly by Dictionary.com or looked up in Wikipedia (). You can also find other instances of a word or phrase within the publication.
Although this text-centric approach works quite well for smaller screens — like smartphones — we’re unsure how well the experience will translate to larger-screen Android tablets or on the iPad. For publications like The Economist, The Atlantic or The New York Times, the experience is quite serviceable.
For example, we downloaded an issue of a local magazine, The Atlantan, and found the experience to be less enjoyable. Text is still selectable and images can be zoomed in on, but the overall layout suffers from the same problems that many books with graphical layouts suffer when translated to ePub. Reformatting content for touchscreen devices is a non-trivial task, and as it stands, the Kindle implementations of periodical content can’t compete with the solutions offered by Adobe (), ScrollMotion or even PDF-based Zinio.
The key advantage of Amazon’s solution lies not in its implementation,
but with the buy once, read everywhere strategy, as well as its subscription pricing plans. Like Kobo, which offers similar functionality, this is a great value proposition for consumers who can be reassured that their purchased content is accessible across platforms and devices.
Apple is rumored to be close to launching its own subscription magazines solution. A consortium of major media publishers is also prepping Next Issue, which is self-dubbed “Hulu () for magazines.” It’s possible that Amazon could take a more tablet-centric approach for some of its content — much as Barnes & Noble is planning with the Nook. Were that to happen, Amazon’s offering could be much more attractive.
For now, we’re impressed with the Kindle of Android update, with the caveat that this is really suited for text-heavy publications.
Are you buying or subscribing to magazines or newspapers on your smartphone or e-reader? Let us know.

iPod nano Watch Project Makes Kickstarter History

The iPod nano watch kit TikTok+LunaTik is now officially the most successful Kickstarter project of all time.
The all-or-nothing funding site has had its fair share of successes in the past, but the TikTok and LunaTik multi-touch watch kits are on another level. The project reached its conclusion late Thursday evening, bringing in a staggering $941,648 from 13,511 backers in just 30 days. That figure is all the more impressive when you consider that TikTok+LunaTik’s original goal was only $15,000.
The project itself was born after Scott Wilson, the founder of the Chicago-based design studio MINIMAL, first saw the new iPod nano. When we spoke to Wilson last month, he explained it was clear that the device could be a great wrist watch, after seeing the size and shape of the new nano. Wilson wasn’t alone. To date, scores of companies have brought their own iPod nano watch straps or kits to market.
When the success of TikTok and LunaTik became clear, Wilson took measures to ramp up production at the factories in China. Through the course of the project, Wilson has offered up additional updates on the status of the kits, created a website for interested users who missed out on the Kickstarter pledge bonanza at Lunatik.com and promoted other worthy Kickstarter projects.
When speaking with Wilson, it was evident to us that he recognized that actually manufacturing and distributing LunaTik and TikTok would be a massive undertaking. Coordinating with the factories, preparing packaging and handling shipping are not trivial tasks, especially when talking about an order of this size.
Earlier this week, just ahead of the project’s closing date, Wilson uploaded a video compilation of his trip to China, showing off his hands-on time with the manufacturing process.
These updates and this “inside look” at how something moves from concept, to prototype, to finished project, is part of what we thinks makes Kickstarter so special. Beyond just acting as a great way to raise funds, the ability to share updates and include backers in the journey is unique. Aspiring entrepreneurs are encouraged to take notes on Wilson’s approach to making the most out of Kickstarter.
As a backer of this project, I can’t wait to get the final product in my hands — and on my wrist. What do you think about Kickstarter’s potential for funding small and large scale projects?