Sunday, February 12, 2012

Mashable: Latest 13 News Updates - including “Grammys to Pay Tribute to Whitney Houston”

Mashable: Latest 13 News Updates - including “Grammys to Pay Tribute to Whitney Houston”


Grammys to Pay Tribute to Whitney Houston

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 08:57 PM PST


As the music community (and Internet as a whole) reacts to the untimely death of Whitney Houston, the Recording Academy is scrambling to arrange a tribute for Sunday night’s Grammy Awards.

Executive producers have confirmed that Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan have been contacted about performing a tribute, but acknowledged that things are still too raw for a full-blown tribute.

Meanwhile, at Clive Davis’s pre-Grammy Gala, Grammy nominees and attendees are reacting to Houston’s death. Grammy Live is streaming red carpet and live interviews from the event, alongside live Twitter commentary from viewers. Saturday night’s event is particularly bittersweet because Houston was Clive Davis’s biggest star and she was supposed to appear at the pre-Grammy Gala.

Fans are gathering outside the Beverly Hilton Hotel (the location of the Gala and where Houston died) to express their condolences. Social media has already played a strong role in the 54th Grammy Awards and that will continue into Sunday. Mashable will be at the Grammy Awards, tweeting and live blogging live from the show.

Let us know what you think The Grammys should do to celebrate the life of Whitney Houston in the comments.


Greatest Whitney Houston Performances


We’ve put together a collection of Whitney Houston’s greatest performances.


I Wanna Dance With Somebody


Click here to view this gallery.

More About: grammys, News, whitney houston, YouTube

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Knicks’ Jeremy Lin Continues Domination of Social Media and NBA

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 07:10 PM PST


Welcome to the Linternet.

After a 38-point outing to lead the New York Knicks over Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night, point guard Jeremy Lin has tightened the stranglehold he’s had on the World Wide Web since his improbable surge to NBA stardom began just several days ago.

His name and the hashtag #Linsanity have trended on Twitter multiple days in the past week. He has added more than 130,000 followers on the network over that time span as well, according to the stat-tracking website TwitterCounter.com. He’s added about 40,000 of those followers just since outdueling Bryant on Friday, according to the site. He’s even inspired spinoff accounts, such as the @Linterest page, which provides fictional updates of famous people’s “linboards” in a parody of the white-hot social network Pinterest.

An underground rapper posted a tribute rap to YouTube on Tuesday. Two days later, the well-known rapper Jin posted a tribute of his own.

How much has the digital hysteria exploded since Mashable first wrote about Lin earlier this week? On Friday night, the tech news website All Things D, which typically gives sports a wide berth, published a service piece titled, “Who Put Sports in My Twitter Again? The Jeremy Lin Explainer.”

Lin has a number of things in common with Tim Tebow. Tebow, quarterback of the Denver Broncos, was the last professional athlete to take the Internet by storm, and inspired one especially viral meme last fall. Both he and Lin are devout Christians. Both are seen as model citizens who “play the right way” and offer a counterpoint to many of the boorish aspects of pro sports. Both are seen as heavy underdogs at the professional level.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Lin was an un-recruited high school player in Palo Alto, California. After none of his dream schools offered a scholarship, he played four years at Harvard University, leading the fabled academic institution to new heights on the hardwood. He went un-drafted out of Harvard but made the Golden State Warriors as a free agent, becoming the NBA’s first Asian-American player since 1947, then bounced around some more before the Knicks picked him up.

Indeed, Lin’s status as the rare Asian-American NBA player has contributed to his popularity on social media — but led to some ugly moments as well. Lin’s Chinese name, Lin Shuhao, was among Monday's most-searched terms on Sina Weibo, a Chinese service similar to Twitter, according to The Wall Street Journal. Then, on Friday night, scores of people called for Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock to be fired after he posted this tweet.

What do you think of #Linsanity so far? How long do you think it will last? Let us know in the comments.


1. @SpikeLee




Spike Lee couldn't help talking some trash to Kobe Bryant after Lin torched the Lakers for 38 points on Friday night.

Click here to view this gallery.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Lin’s Facebook Page

More About: Social Media, sports, Twitter

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Pop Legend Whitney Houston Dies at 48 — Twitter Reacts

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 05:50 PM PST


Whitney Houston, pop music icon and the singer of such songs as “I Will Always Love You” and “The Greatest Love of All,” has died at the age of 48.

Houston’s death, which comes on the eve of the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, was first reported by the Associated Press. The cause of death is unknown at this time.

Houston, whose music career spanned nearly 30 years, sold more than 55 million records in the U.S. alone. Although her career peaked in the mid-1990s, Houston’s legacy as one of the great female vocalists of all time was never in question.

Already, tributes and messages praising Whitney are taking over Twitter and Facebook streams.

For Spotify users, enjoy Houston’s greatest hits album, available via this playlist.

Leave your Whitney Houston memories in the comments.


@MariahCarey




Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of RCA/Arista Records

More About: celebrities, death, trending, whitney houston

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Dad Addresses Viral Laptop Shooting After Daughter’s Facebook Post [QUOTES]

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 03:53 PM PST


The tech-savvy, gun-toting father who blasted nine hollow-point rounds into his daughter’s laptop after she wrote a disrespectful Facebook post is dealing with his newfound notoriety much the same way he handled the girl’s rant: publicly and proactively.

If you haven’t seen the now-viral video, here’s what happened: Tommy Jordan of North Carolina has a 15-year-old daughter who posted an indignant note to Facebook in which she complained about and harshly criticized her parents for forcing her do too many chores around the house and generally making her life a hassle.

She thought she’d hid it from her parents using privacy settings, but her father works in IT and found the note anyway, he said, when he was uploading photos to the family dog’s profile page. (She didn’t think to hide it from the dog.) So he decided to reprimand her publicly, saying in the video that "since you want to hide it from everyone, I'm going to share it with everybody."

He posted an eight-minute video to YouTube on Wednesday, refuting her key points and reading the entire note aloud while smoking a cigarette and sitting in a wooden chair in a grassy field. After about seven minutes of preamble, he gets up, points the camera at a laptop on the ground, introduces a pistol into the frame — "This right here is my .45″ — and blasts away.

Not surprisingly, the video took off. When Mashable wrote about it the day after it was posted, it had just over 5,000 YouTube views. Now it has 15 million.

SEE ALSO: Dad Shoots Daughter's Laptop Over Facebook Post [VIDEO]

According to Facebook posts by Jordan, he has since received more media inquiries than he can handle, sponsorship requests, and a deluge of both hateful and supportive messages from people eager to provide feedback on his parenting methods.

Jordan addressed the laptop shooting and subsequent hullaballoo in a recent Facebook post that begins, “Attention Media Outlets:”

While we appreciate the interest you're all putting forth to get in touch with us regarding the video, we're not going to go on your talk show, not going to call in to your radio show, and not going to be in your TV miniseries.

Some of you think I made an acceptable parenting decision, and others think I didn't. However, I can't think of any way myself or my daughter can respond to a media outlet that won't be twisted out of context. The Dallas news TV news already showed that in their brief five-minute interview with the psychologist.

Jordan goes on to say that exploiting the media glare would send his daughter the wrong message “that it’s OK to profit at the expense of someone else’s embarrassment or misfortune, and that’s not how I was raised, nor how she has been raised.” Jordan says in the post that he will make any further comments through his Facebook page, not through the media. “My daughter isn't hurt, emotionally scarred, or otherwise damaged,” he writes, “but that kind of publicity has never seemed to be to have a positive effect on any child or family.”

In subsequent posts, Jordan sheds more light on the zoo his life has become, further explains the reasoning behind his laptop assassination, solicits funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and promotes a social selling website he’s been helping to build. Many of his posts have received well over a thousand comments.

Here, in the gallery below, are several snippets of what Tommy Jordan has had to say over the past couple days. For the full versions, head on over to his Facebook page.

What do you think about this video going viral and Jordan’s following response? Let us know in the comments.


1. "Never again..."




In a post from Friday, Jordan says he was unprepared for the attention the video attracted.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Facebook, YouTube


Top 5 Best New Apps of the Week

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 02:40 PM PST


Airbind for Android





Airbind wirelessly syncs your iTunes library to your Android device. You just download a PC or Mac client and an Android app. There's no new media manager: You can just keep using iTunes. Free.

Click here to view this gallery.

With about 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store and an estimated 300,000 apps in the Android Market, finding the gems among the virtual haystack can be a full-time job. The good news is it’s our full time job.

We’ve trekked through the overly frivolous, the ugly and the downright impractical in our search for these five recently launched apps worth downloading in the gallery above. We hope you enjoy this week’s top picks.

More About: Airbind, cinemagram, Fab.com, kooaba, shortcut, trending, tweetbot, weekly app roundup


42 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 02:36 PM PST

Tablet and Icons

Take a break from planning the perfect Valentine’s Day (or planning an enjoyable Tuesday nonetheless) and catch up on the valuable digital resources we’ve covered with our weekly roundup of Mashable features.

This week we have the most romantic Pinterest boards, ways that social media can improve public safety and what is absolutely essential for your business website. You’ll also find free iPhone apps you can use every day, the best Super Bowl memes readers sent in to us and new sites to help you navigate the online dating scene. We’ve even covered how to be funny in 140 characters or less.

So, what are you waiting for? Take advantage of these resources!


Editor’s Picks



Social Media


For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.


Business & Marketing


For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.


Tech & Mobile


For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, scanrail

More About: Business, COMMUNICATIONS, Features Week In Review, Social Media, Tech


Top 10 Twitter Pics of the Week [PICS]

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 02:06 PM PST


1. Super Bowl





On Feb. 5, the 46st edition of the annual Super Bowl took place in Indianapolis. This annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL) is one of the biggest sports events in the world. A tradition that makes the #SuperBowl experience even better is the abundance of snacks consumed by viewers throughout the game. There is no denying that snacks are important, and sometimes preparing them can even turn into some kind of art form. This #SuperBowl Snack Stadium is a great example. It was shared on Twitter by popular singer Katy Perry (@KatyPerry, over 14 million followers).

Click here to view this gallery.

What a difference a week makes! This week’s batch of top 10 Twitter pics were terrific, thanks to an immensely popular Super Bowl game, snowstorms all over the northern hemisphere, Lady Gaga and a lot more.

It looks like our new algorithm is working, finding the most popular pics out of millions on Twitter . The top 10 selections are the brainchild of our cherry-picking stats experts at social media search engine Skylines, they’re narrowing down the most popular hash tags, and then culling the most popular pictures from there.

If you’d like to know more about the selection process, see the full results from Skylines.

If you missed them, here are last week’s Top 10 Twitter Pics.

More About: Skylines, Top 10 Twitter Pics, trending, Twitter

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Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 01:03 PM PST



1. Logitech M600





I had a chance to test this Logitech Touch Mouse M600, and I think it's excellent. Its beautiful slim design feels just right under my medium-size hand, and its touch sensitivity works just like a touchscreen on a good smartphone.

Logitech's smooth-scrolling software lets you fling browser pages just like an iPhone, and you can go back or forward in your browser with sideways gestures. The mouse's clicking mechanism takes a little getting used to, but overall, it's a huge win for Logitech.

[Logitech]

Click here to view this gallery.

It was a week of superlatives, where we found unique smartphones of the present and future, a new candidate for the world’s tallest building, an ambitious deep space outpost and a iPhone dock/boombox that knocked our socks off.

SEE ALSO: Previous editions of Top 10 Tech This Week

Come along with us on a journey through tech and ideas from today and into tomorrow, as we lay down a gallery of Top 10 Tech This Week.

Here’s last week’s Top 10 Tech.

More About: blackberry, droid, iphone, smartphones, space, Top 10 Tech, trending

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In Europe, ACTA Protests Hit the Streets — and Twitter [PICS]

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 12:19 PM PST


1. @glynmoody





Before the big day, London blogger Glyn Moody encouraged people to come out.

Click here to view this gallery.

Europeans against Internet censorship staged mass protests across the continent on Saturday. They also took their opposition to Twitter in the latest example of a grassroots movement spanning the physical and digital worlds.

Opponents of the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently being considered by European countries argue that the treaty will deal a critical blow to free speech on the Internet, much like the recently defeated SOPA and PIPA bills in the United States. ACTA’s supporters say that the agreement, already signed by a group of countries including the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, is essential to fighting online piracy and copyright violations.

The exact scale of Saturday’s protests has still not been determined, but more than 200,000 people were expected to turn out in more than 100 European cities, according to some estimates from earlier in the week. The Agence France-Presse reports that some 41,000 people rallied in Germany alone. An anti-ACTA website, meanwhile, puts that number at more than 100,000.

On Twitter, meanwhile, activist groups framed their messages and touted the ACTA protests’ robust turnouts from points across Europe. Citizens posted photos and videos from the streets. And traditional news media scrambled to cover the action in real time.

The amorphous-yet-widespread uprising against ACTA has already yielded tangible results in Europe. The governments of Germany and Latvia said on Friday that they would delay signing the treaty. A German spokesperson said that the country needed “time to carry out further discussion,” according to the BBC. Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia had already made similar decisions.

Last month, widespread online protest in the United States helped shut down the SOPA and PIPA bills. Check out the gallery above to see how advocates of a free Internet are hoping to do the same with ACTA in Europe.

Do you think ACTA will be defeated like SOPA and PIPA? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail mage courtesy of iStockphoto, richterfoto

More About: ACTA, SOPA


Top 6 Mashable Comments This Week

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 11:40 AM PST


Another week, another round-up of top comments on Mashable!

In this post, we showcase the week’s best comments on our site. We expecially look for thoughtful comments that engage the community and drive more conversation, as well as those that make us laugh.

Take a look at this week’s top comments on Mashable:


Johan Grönwall




Johan Grönwall discusses why he believes Samsung's anti-apple campaign will backfire.

Original comment found at -

Why Didn't Apple Advertise During the Super Bowl?

Click here to view this gallery.

If you haven’t commented on a Mashable article before, check out Mashable Follow, our content curation and social tool, as well as our comment guidelines to learn more. We’d love for you to join the conversation.

Be sure to comment, and check in next week to see if you make next week’s top comments roundup!

Galaxy Note Super Bowl Ad Inspires Twitter Backlash

More About: comments, community

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Who Will Win a Grammy? Twitter Predicts the Future [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 10:23 AM PST

Who’s going to win a Grammy on Sunday? Webtrends gives us a sneak preview, using Twitter as its crystal ball. Check out the prognostications in this exclusive infographic created fresh this morning using hot trending data from millions of tweets all over the world.

Webtrends, a digital marketing and analytics agency, uses the Twitter API to search for all kinds of data concerning the Grammys — for example, topical hashtags, artist names and twitter handles, and album and song names. They started collecting this stuff a week ago, and the data has been flowing fast and furiously at a rate of 7,000 – 10,000 tweets per hour.

So who’s going to win the top Grammy honors? Who’s going to be the best dressed? Check out this infographic and you’ll be the first to know.

By the way, if this data isn’t fresh enough for you, you can also see what’s happening at this exact moment. To do so, take a look at the Webtrends Live Interactive Dashboard, which lets you put your finger on the pulse of Grammy-watchers the world over.

If you want to see more Twitter predictions of the Grammys, here’s NM Incite’s stats from Friday, and don’t miss our own entertainment editor Christina Warren, who will be live-blogging the Grammys from the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

How accurate do you think these predictions are? Let us know in the comments.


Infographic courtesy Webtrends

More About: grammys, infographics, Twitter, webtrends

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How Social Media Can Help You Snag Top Talent For Your Company

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 09:45 AM PST

Digital Tree

Curt Finch is the founder and CEO of Journyx, a company that offers time-tracking and resource management software. Connect with him and Journyx on Facebook and Twitter.

Social media has emerged like an errant piece of debris from a tornado, and has smacked the world of business in its metaphorical face. Depending on who you talk to, this emergence of no-holds-barred communication has resulted in either the apocalypse for privacy and internal practices, or the advent of a new dawn of profitability and success. In any case, the plethora of social networking sites has led to a reevaluation of business practices. It’s no mystery that the area with the most important long-term implications for an organization is recruiting and staffing employees. One of the biggest and oldest problems for companies revolves around acquiring a talented and creative team — and digital gives the old, traditional methods a new spin.

According to a study [PDF] by the workplace psychologist group OPP, 39% of leaders said they still rely on gut instinct when making hiring decisions, and a quarter admitted that whether they liked someone personally was a major influence. These findings demonstrate that traditional hiring metrics, including quality of the cover letter and interview, compete in importance with the personal preferences of the hiring manager. Second, employers base hiring preferences on the applicant's personality, sometimes even more than on the hard skills an applicant brings to the table.

Social media tools and applications can offer a glimpse into these more personal aspects of an applicant beyond traditional hiring materials. But are businesses actually using social media tools to hire?


Importance and Prevalence


The answer to this question is surprisingly murky. A survey by CareerXroads, a company that's been tracking hiring sources for the past 10 years, found that 57.1% of respondents report that social media plays an important role in their direct sourcing program. A 2011 study undertaken by Jobvite goes further, stating that 89% of companies planned to use social media in their hiring process that year, and that 64% of companies directly used social media to hire an applicant in 2011.

On the flip side, Gerry Crispin, who co-authored the CareerXroads survey, levied some skepticism on the numbers he found for companies using social media. In an interview conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, Crispin states, "Some of the respondents stated that social media played a part in only 2-3% of their new hires, and other respondents reported that social media sites were used in 50-60% of their hiring decisions. When you have numbers that widely divergent, I think it clearly shows that employers are struggling to understand the real impact of social media."

Regardless of the confusion surrounding social media (which, by the way, should be expected given its rapid escalation in importance), there are proven techniques and applications in place, should a company wish to expand its hiring arsenal to the social sphere.


Passive Strategies


The truth is, even if a company doesn't actively include social media in its hiring strategy, it still plays a role in determining the talent pool. If a company has any form of online social presence whatsoever — and who doesn't? — the odds are that it has influenced who has applied for a position within that company, at least within recent years. Much buzz has been made about businesses screening the social profiles of prospective employees, but it goes both ways. Emily Bennington, co-author of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job, says, "Naturally, candidates can use the same tools to screen you and — just like you — if they don't like what they see, they move on."

Since most companies would like to have a large pool of talented applicants from which to choose, it behooves them to spend some time creating a dynamic social footprint. Alison Doyle, the job search guide for About.com, believes that some basic steps can improve the quality of applicants who find their way to a job through social media. For instance, publish engaging content focusing not only on what your company does, but how the company culture operates, to give insight into the inner working of the business. Also, create a strong employment brand on larger social sites such as Facebook.

Doyle also points out that employees who post positive things about their employer on personal social platforms make the company very attractive to prospects. For this reason, she encourages companies to allow employees to access social media during work hours, as they are more likely to post about their company then.


Active Strategies


For companies ready to dive headfirst into social hiring, there are a number of applications and tactics that make navigating the occasionally chaotic waters of Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk more manageable. That being said, sometimes the most effective strategies occur when a company creatively uses the tools at hand. Matt Simpson, director of marketing at Bulbstorm, relates the following story:

"My company, Bulbstorm, found me by Googling 'Phoenix Marketing Copywriter' and landing on my freelance website. My experience with social media and blogging related to my old sports website particularly piqued their interest. When I considered turning them down to focus on my freelance business, the CEO trash-talked me on Twitter. I loved how unconventional he was. That got my attention, and I signed on."

This story illustrates two levels of active social hiring. First, the company found an employee that matched its criteria by examining his social sites online. Then, using those social sites, it appealed to his personality. Even though he was not interested at first, its knowledge of his persona enabled the company to obtain a perfect hire.


Innovative Systems


So, harness the power of social media to reach talented people and land key hires within a company — that is the perfect scenario, right? Here are some of the most innovative tools I've found that can help you navigate the social hiring landscape.

CrowdHired: CrowdHired works through social crowdsourcing which, aside from being an overused buzzword, offers a dynamic approach to finding employees. The process is fairly simple: An employer selects advocates from his existing contacts and submits a bounty, or payment, that will be paid to both the advocate and the employee hired as a result of the recommendation. The advocate then recommends individuals from his network who he thinks would be a good fit. If the recommended person wants to apply for the position, he chooses whichever of his social networks he thinks will represent him best.

CrowdHired works well by eliminating the need to dredge through a large number of potentially unqualified applicants, and instead operates through the popular method of using recommendations to find the top people. The bounty simply adds an extra incentive for advocates to get on board and really recommend the best of their contacts.

HirePlug: This is an app that sits on top of your company's existing Facebook Page. It adds a tab that says "We Are Hiring" and allows applicants to view openings and apply directly from there. HirePlug not only leverages the network of your company but also employees’ networks. A company that uses this app can encourage employees to place the "We Are Hiring" tab on their profiles as well. The app also matches the skills from listed positions to profiles of friends within the employees’ networks. Employees can then send a recommendation from Facebook and via email. It tracks referrals so employees can be rewarded if their recommendation results in a hire.

Unrabble: Unrabble attempts to alleviate the issue of applicants submitting resumes that are, shall we say, a bit fluffed up. Instead, it institutes a relatively simple system of social "bragging" that requires proof to substantiate the claim. Each time an applicant "brags" about an accomplishment (increasing sales, successfully revamping a site, etc.), they must also provide an introduction to a contact on Facebook or LinkedIn who will vouch for him. While the system isn't foolproof, it offers a convenient alternative to wading through the piles of resumes from apparent miracle workers who single-handedly saved their company from financial bankruptcy, yet mysteriously received little enough compensation that they are now applying for another job.


Takeaways


Social media offers a whole slew of new and exciting avenues for hiring, but it will not always provide the best solution for every company. That being said, a company that integrates social hiring practices into its repertoire will undoubtedly be able to reach many applicants who might otherwise have gone unnoticed or undervalued. Plus, they will be able to claim that they are "hip" and/or "cool," or whatever the devil the kids are saying nowadays.


Social Media Job Listings


Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

More About: features, job recruiting, job search series, Job searching, mashable, online recruiting, social media jobs


Instagram Upgrade Introduces a Powerful New Feature

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 08:42 AM PST


Take a look at your App Store icon, iPhone users, and if you’re an avid Instagram user, there’s a big surprise for you inside. Instagram just received a big upgrade, and it’s going to make your pictures on the social networking service look a lot better.

The standout new feature is called Lux, and it can be a godsend for pics that look too dark in some areas. It can enhance photos that already look good, too. It acts like a magic fill light that you can shine on your picture, bringing up the brightness in the shadowy areas so you can see things you couldn’t see before. Lux is like HDR that you can apply after the picture’s been taken.

This brings an entirely new dimension to Instagram, the explosively popular app that’s for iPhone only. The app has attracted a network of users consisting of 15 million photo aficionados and people who just want to have fun with their iPhone cameras.

In addition to Lux, Instagram has added another filter, called “Sierra,” giving you yet another choice of filters to add to Instagram’s already extensive collection. And, notifications have been improved, where now you’re taken directly to the photo, profile or comment that’s been referenced.

You’ll also notice an interface upgrade, where the home screen’s navigation icons no longer have labels. New users probably won’t like this feature, because at first it’s hard to tell what will happen when you tap the buttons. But I noticed it’s quite easy to get used to these new icons, and the resulting interface looks much cleaner:

Want to jump into the low-fidelity iPhone-only Instagram club? The price of admission is free. You might be surprised how many of your friends are already using it.

Give it a try and let us know in the comments what you think of the upgrades.

Instagram [iTunes link]

Update: An earlier version of this post stated the price of Instagram is $1.99, but in fact, it’s free. The text has been updated to reflect that, and we apoloigize for the error.

More About: apps, instagram, iphone, photography, trending


5 Services to Help You Earn Money From Your Twitter Account

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 07:14 AM PST

Are you looking to make good use of your sizable Twitter following? Here are five simple services that can help monetize your account, potentially putting cash into your pocket and increasing traffic to your profile.


1. MyLikes





MyLikes lets you earn money by tweeting about products you like. This service has a variety of campaigns to choose from -- simply choose a campaign relevant to your audience, write a prompt and tweet it. You are paid on a per-click basis. MyLikes tracks all of your campaigns to formulate a quality score for each user. The higher your quality score, the more you get paid per click. MyLikes pays on a weekly basis via PayPal or Amazon gift cards.

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, aluxum.

More About: Advertising, How-To, trending, Twitter


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