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Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid
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This is a huge point, and one that often goes overlooked in reviews. For the past 10 years, Apple has really only done one thing, over and over: they’ve taken something we thought worked fine, and then simplified the hell out of it while maintaining the feature set. That’s exactly what they did to the idea of the smartphone with the iPhone, and it turned the damned market on its head.
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Two thousand plus words later, you might be a bit sad to read: Nope. But I wouldn’t recommend the iPhone over the Droid, either – and that’s the Droid’s real win here. This is the very first phone in over two years that I would consider carrying for day-to-day use instead of my iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I would recommend it whole heartedly to everyone.
Yahoo Is Inviting Partners to Build on Its Search Technology - NYTimes.com
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Me.dium offers a service in which users can see what Web sites their friends are visiting. That allows the company to collect information about what sites have “buzz” at any given time, said Kimbal Musk, the company’s chief executive. Me.dium will use that information to rearrange and supplement Yahoo’s search results, creating a service that captures the “social zeitgeist” of the Web, Mr. Musk said.
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“We think that for a good percentage of searches, we’ll get people to where they want to go a lot faster than regular search engines,” Mr. Musk said. He said it would have been impossible for Me.dium to create a search service on its own.
Yahoo estimates that it would cost $300 million to build a search service from scratch.
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Processing Online Credit Card Transactions
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After you decide on a gateway, you’ll need a merchant account, or someone who can actually process the credit card transactions. If it’s starting to sound tricky, don’t worry because obtaining a merchant account is easy. Authorize.net has a list of approved resellers for you to choose from. We went with United Bank Card because they had a respectable-looking web site, a solid reputation, friendly customer service reps, and competitive pricing. The application process consisted of filling out and faxing some basic business information and waiting a couple days for approval. Once approved, they provide us with an Authorize.net login and transaction code to get our store up and running.
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Some vendors such as PayPal are all-in-one solutions and provide a merchant account along with a payment gateway. This might seem more attractive and less of a hassle, but tends to come at a cost. With Paypal, you’re charged between 2.2% to 2.9% plus .30c per transaction. With the merchant account/Authorize.net combo, you should be able to negotiate somewhere around 2% plus 20c per transaction. All of the merchant account providers are selling the same product, so don’t be afraid to haggle a little. In the long run, every cent counts.
Put your Money where your Mouse Is: 6 Payment Gateways Reviewed [eCommerce]
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What is a Gateway?
In short, a gateway connects your ecommerce Website to your merchant account.
The gateway facilitates online payments by connecting your secure order form with your specific merchant account at a processing bank. The gateway takes the submitted form data and presents it to the processing bank. When it receives a response from the bank, it presents that return data to the site of origin for appropriate handling.
The gateway itself doesn't provide ecommerce features such as shopping carts, Web hosting, or merchant accounts, although, as you'll see, many larger gateway providers do offer additional services like these.
scottberkun.com » Google’s web browser (Chrome): early review
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Platform . Much of the promise described in the Book about Google Chrome (Charmingly cartooned by Scott McCloud, but a 2 page doc would have been an easier read) is about the platform. Improved security, enhanced performance, and an architecture that makes plugins and extensions easier. It’s hard to test or evaluate these things in an afternoon. I definitely liked their story for what they’re doing and why, but platform plays require getting FireFox and IE developers to take advantage: a long and slow process, no matter how amazing the new kid on the block is.
Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net : Diigo - Invasion of the Bookmark Snatchers
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Somehow, I find myself trusting Diigo more than Facebook, although you
can connect to Facebook via Diigo. What's also present is the potential
for "Diigo-spam." Ok, I've spammed everyone in my addressbook. I can't
remember the last time I did it, but I hope that if you received an
email via Diigo from me, you'll jump in and give this a try. If you
don't want to, hit delete. Do I think Diigo is that powerful a tool?
Well, yes. It offers something Delicious doesn't--groups, and a base of
operations that interfaces with other tools. If I could share
information using Diigo, ohmygosh, one ring to rule them all.
One of the other aspects of Diigo I liked was that the Diigo crew is
hopping to improve things. Importing bookmarks from Delicious API wasn't
working well (i had to try 3-4 times), so they came up with an
alternative way to accomplish the import. Dean
Shareski complained about the interface, and they re-did the user
interface. There's also talk of creating an education (student) friendly
Diigo....
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Easy group subscription - I wish there was a URL I could share with
people. They click on it, and bam, if they have a Diigo account,
they're subscribed. If they lack an account, it walks them through the
process then makes sure to hook them up with the group. I just don't
see how to do it easily now.
Social Bookmarking Soulmates at WRT: Writer Response Theory
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During the assignment, students are at first skeptical that they will find anyone with similar interest. Usually it is not till they find a “Gem,” or exciting link, through someone else’s tags that they see the value in the exercise. More importantly, the assignment hammers home the ways in which social bookmarking can help them become part of a network of scholars, collaborating albeit indirectly at times.
After a few weeks of my stressing the importance of effective tagging and annotation, however, students are often a bit disappointed with the disorder they see in the tags of others. I remind them, “That’s right. Stay off the streets. It’s two clicks from chaos out there.”
How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine
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If Facebook does decide to become an all-encompassing portal, it would be a bit late to the party. Customizable homepages like My Yahoo! and iGoogle already let you cram your favorite Web stuff onto a single page; there's also the trendy start-up NetVibes, which Slate's Reihan Salam called "the ultimate mashup." But a Facebook homepage would have a huge intrinsic advantage: The social network is already built in. Sure, the other portals incorporate Gmail and BBC headlines and YouTube searches and podcast directories. By adding a social context to all of this content, however, Facebook would immediately trump its main competition. With Facebook's News Feed, it's elementary to see when your friends sign up for a new product or service. That means the best add-ons become viral instantly—Platform's biggest success story so far, a music sharing app called iLike, started growing at the rate of 200,000 users a day.
25 Web Sites to Watch - Yahoo! News
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Clip elements of your favorite Web pages, and save them to your Clipmarks profile.The Internet is the best research tool in existence. That's the good news--and the bad news. Though finding information online is easy, keeping track of it all can be tough. Most people end up copying and pasting information from Web sites, printing it out, or bookmarking pages--with no good way to keep it all organized or find what they want fast.
Clipmarks solves the problem neatly by installing a toolbar that hitches on to Internet Explorer or Firefox. As you surf the Web, use the Clipmarks toolbar to clip and save sections of a page--text, graphics, and even YouTube videos. Clipping something automatically archives it under your Clipmarks profile, though you can also save it directly to your blog or send it via e-mail. You can even
share your clip collections, or look at archives that
other users
have assembled. -
Squidoo makes it easy to create (or look for) Web pages that reflect your passions.Got an obsession or special passion you want to convey to the world? Squidoo is your ticket. Using the site's simple tools, you can build a "lens" (aka, a Web page) that includes information on any topic that's close to your heart, whether it's cats or Kafka.
A lens can be quite different from a blog. With lenses, you share links to resources, book recommendations, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, eBay auction items, and other cool Web content related to a single subject. Even if you don't build your own lens, the site is worth visiting to see what
others have done. You can learn a lot more about lemonade or laptop bags than you ever thought possible.
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