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Blog 3552
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Twitter.jp Soon to Introduce Premium Accounts
Twitter Japan had always been isolated from rest of the Twitter Global herd. Earlier Twitter japan had launched the Twitvideo service
and is the only country to have different services compared to its parent company. With ad rates ranging from US$5,500 to $33,000 for a customized page and banner and additional initial fees, the site also charges advertisers for targeted exposure to relevant groups making Japan the only country which runs a ad-enabled Twitter service and shows tremendous profit.
With signs of Twitter Premium/Paid Accounts around the corner, DG Mobile – a subsidiary of Japanese Twitter partner Digital Garage announced that Twitter.jp would introduce paid subscription options starting very soon by January that will allow account holders to charge audiences who want to look at their tweets and access links to their external websites.
Why for Twitter.jp?
Being affiliated to local partner, Twitter has the ability to experiment with the Japanese internet market with the Analysis made by Digital Garage, the plan will allow audiences to view some excerpt of the posted 140 characters on all tweets but will charge a fee to unlock access to images, external URLs and complete text.
Credit card payment model would be introduced to make it easy for users to pay and buy the monthly subscription and view the premium account tweets. Along with monthly subscription there are plans to introduced prepaid tickets which either could be bought online via credit card or local convenience stores. Finally, audiences can choose a pay-per-tweet option, which is charged to credit card, convenience store top-up cards or carrier billing for Twitter-on-mobile users. This is the rough idea of the payment model to be introduced.
Its assumed that this model would be ideal for account holders who deliver real-time information, news and educational content, and include original photographs, video images and audio. According to the reports, the amount charged to each user will vary according to the charging account holders and is likely to range from JPY100 to JPY1000 (US$1.16 to $11.60). Twitter will take 30 per cent cut of the transaction fees.
The Japanese Twitter site did launch its official mobile site last month and wireless technology booming in Asia, it’s likely that most of its traffic will come through mobile in the future. But Mixi.jp, the most popular social networking site in the country, receives approximately 70 per cent of its traffic through account holders on mobile. Which could make it tougher for Japanese Tweets to capture the market.
Similar Twitter Payment model would or wouldn’t work for Twitter in most global markets, but in Japan, Twitter has real potential to sustain the system. The ad-based twitter system did work well and showed tremendous profit. -
Get Your Free iPhone Apps Here – Black Friday Deals
If you like to save a dollar or two, and download iPhone applications, we have good news. In anticipation of Black Friday, numerous applications have gone from paid, to free.
Black Friday of course the famous day in which retailers attempt to convince shoppers to get up early enough that they spend more money than they had intended strictly on grogginess along.
Appshopper maintains a list of applications that have recently had a price change. As it turns out, there are dozens of applications that have just moved from costing at least a dollar, to no cost at all.
Now, some of these apps will now have some form of advertising, but you cannot beat the price of free. After the jump, a few of the top free applications, and the full list.
WinC went from $2 to free, along with a $10 price drop for Photo Diary. Fun games BomberDove and Cannon Frenzy are now free, each costing$1 before.
For a full list of the applications that are now free, check the full listing here. Happy Black Friday, everyone. -
Massive Price Cuts Abound At Mac Retailers
Stores selling Apple hardware are competing for your dollar over the next few days, by slashing price across the board on Mac machines. Some discounts are up to $300 on a single machine.
AppleInsider has put together a phenomenal price guide, tracking prices across ten different stores, finding the best deals. As it stands, MacConnection seems to be selling for the least. It has the cheapest Macbook Pros, Macbooks, iMacs, and half the cheapest Mac Pros.
MacMall has the cheapest Macbook Airs and Mac Minis. Savings move from a modest $50 on the cheapest Mac Mini, to $300 on high-end Macbook Pros.
All told, this is the cheapest and best time to buy a Mac that we have seen recently. Of course, Apple itself might be moving towards doing something in the near future, but for now, cheap and Mac can be placed in the same sentence.
Are you going to be picking up a new Mac anytime soon? -
British “Alien Seeking” Hacker Faces Trial in US
The British government says it will not prevent the extradition of an autistic computer hacker accused of breaking into U.S. military computers.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson has confirmed that he will not intervene in the case of Gary McKinnon. a man that U.S. prosecutors say attempted to hack into computers shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Johnson said he had considered demands for him to intervene in the case but had decided that the extradition would not breach Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon’s human rights.
“If Mr McKinnon’s human rights would be breached, I must stop the extradition. If they would not be breached, the extradition must go ahead.” said Johnson
Mr McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, said Mr Johnson and the Government “should hang their heads in shame”.
His lawyers say he has a form of autism and is at risk of suicide if extradited. Johnson said U.S. authorities had assured him that they would meet McKinnon’s health needs.
Karen Todner, Mckinnon’s lawyer, said she planned to start a judicial review of the home secretary’s decision. “We cannot give up because in some ways it’s like dealing with a death row case, and we genuinely believe Gary’s life is at stake here,” she said.
Gary McKinnon is charged with breaking into dozens of computers belonging to NASA, the U.S. Defense Department and several branches of the U.S. military soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. prosecutors have spent seven years seeking his extradition.
The 43-year-old claims he was searching for evidence of alien life, although prosecutors say he left a message on an Army computer criticizing U.S. foreign policy.
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A New Twist On Navigation Apps
In case you missed it in one of our earlier posts, there’s a free social-navigation app that provides users with turn by turn navigation and adds a social twist with real-time reporting and user rankings.
They’ve recently found a very clever way of engaging users… by rewarding them.
Waze uses turn by turn navigation in real-time while giving drivers the ability to update each other on traffic, speed cams, construction and even police speed traps.
Waze’s lure, for me is in it’s community. Awarding users to contribute by traveling to new frontiers turns driving into a point-earning fun. Similar to apps like Four Square the user is able to receive rewards for places they discover.
They have included Twitter integration if you’re interested in sharing your reports with your Twitteratti.
Waze works with a base map which is exactly what it’s name implies; a basic map. The success of this app will depend on the users collaborative effort to update, report and fill in the gaps. When you contribute to the map your data is updated within 24 hours and fills the map with your data. If you like you can even become an area manger of a district.
Points = Amazon Gift Cards
Waze is driving users to use the app with challenges such as the
International High Points Challenge and Holiday High Points Challenge.
“Here’s the deal: the top three users who rack up the most points from ‘road goodies’ during this time frame will receive Amazon gift cards in the amounts of $500, $300 and $200”
Finding icons like cherries, hammers and presents give you bonus points.
I’m on board to become an area manager in my district. From the companies website you’re able to log-in for stats, view live maps and connect with the Waze community.
My Location
View your location on the map along with all the events going on around you.
Drive to
Get turn by turn direction to an address or location.
Waze learns as you drive so routing quality may change from day to day.
It’s promised to gain knowledge after a few trips in the car.
Live info
Post or retrieve live information that Wave users have reported.
The reported event provides a subject, such as “ Big Accident” along
with the distance of the event in relation to your position.
Events are additionally categorized by topics like “Speed Cam”, for easy usability.
Settings & Customization
Aside from tweaking the display on the map, it allows you to access your music within settings. Routing specifications offer up options to avoid highways, dirt-roads, unknown roads or minimize turns. If security is an issue for you, just change your privacy settings and post as Anonymous.
Waze Pacman
Waze has turned navigation into a game where you can earn points for helping validate the road and it’s driving direction. If you’re the first to be driving down a particular road the Waze Pac-Man character munches up the street on the map. Totals are documented for user Ranks.
Get it (iTunes) *free
Compatible with the iPhone & iPod touch. OS 3.o + required.
Waze’s site
(Thank you to bitrebels for illuminating this app for me) -
Virgin Media becomes the first UK ISP to test a filesharing
Virgin Media has become the first ISP to officially announce testing of a ‘deep packet inspection’ technology that will measure the level of illegal file-sharing on its network.
The system, called CView, is provided by a company called Detica and can then look inside those packets and analyse what is licensed and unlicensed. Information on licensed content is to be provided by the record industry.
CView is the first commercially available solution to provide a metric highlighting the volume and nature of Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing activity on an ISP network,” says its owner, Detica.
But it, “does not, and cannot, identify individual Internet users,” it states flatly, boasting it’s, “The only accurate way of providing a ‘digital piracy’ index to both ISPs and CPs is to measure the actual P2P activity taking place within an ISP network.”
A Virgin spokesman said none approximately 40% of Virgin Media’s network would be monitored but none would be informed as doing so would be “counter-productive, because it doesn’t affect customers directly.”
Virgin claims that it is merely interested in how much of the file-sharing traffic infringes on copyright, and will simply measure the overall level of illegal file-sharing activity, rather than act on it. The company is also keen to emphasise that it will not keep a record on individual customers.
To think I was just about to sign up with Virgin after announcing it would be bring Tivo to the UK.
via The Register -
Wikipedia: We’re not dying but we need YOU
The Wikimedia Foundation has responded to recent reports that Wikipedia’s army of volunteer editors is drying up.
As far as it’s concerned the online encyclopedia is doing just fine… but it could do with a few more people helping out.
A recent Wall Street Journal article quoted research that claimed that the site had lost 49,000 editors in the first quarter of 2009, compared to just 4,900 the year before.
The conclusion of the WSJ’s article was that Wikipedia was in terminal decline. As a site run entirely on financial donations and volunteer editors, a massive drop in support from its community is an obvious problem. Wikipedia is a hugely important silo of knowledge and to lose that thanks to the apathy of those that helped build it would be tragic.
Luckily the Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation that looks after Wikipedia, says that rumours of the service’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
In a blog post today the Foundation writes that too much is being read into the research behind the Wall Street Journal’s article. For a start, the research didn’t account for editors who might be taking an extended break from editing the site. What’s more, the ‘drop in editor numbers’ included all users of the site who had made even one small edit (as small as fixing a typo or adding a link).
It’s logical that many of these would never come back – it takes a certain kind of person to dedicate their time to significantly improving a public resource like Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Foundation itself defines an ‘editor’ as anyone who has made at least five edits. So what do Wikimedia’s own numbers say? Apparently that…- Wikipedia’s worldwide audience is growing. There was a 6% increase in traffic from September to October this year, for example.
- Thousands of new articles are being add to the site every day, adding to the 14.4 million already on there.
- The number of editors peaked in 2007 before declining slightly and has remained stable ever since. As people stop making edits, a roughly equal number start up.
The Foundation says it doesn’t know the ideal number of editors Wikipedia requires (although surely everyone on the planet would be the ideal
, but it does say that it doesn’t have enough and needs a “significant increase”.
So, why not help out? If you’ve ever found Wikipedia useful (who hasn’t maybe today’s the day to put something back by writing or editing an article there.
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Nurphy, what are you?
The guys from Nurphy have created a conversation platform that’s attempting to take another stab at email.
If you’re familiar with how Google is attempting to create a conversation platform through Google Wave, this is far from it. In fact, it’s quite challenging to try to define Nurphy without being somewhat negative: It’s like Twitter without the character limitations with a lot less social networking features.
Let’s take a look.
You can register to Nurphy using either your standard credentials or using your Twitter account. Then you’re ready to start messaging by adding contacts (an email address would do) and composing your message – or conversation.
In addition to private conversations, you can compose a completely public conversation where any other user can participate or host an exclusive conversation which others can read but cannot reply to.
Recipients will be automatically given a username and can reply by either registering online or replying in a specific location within the email body. Your BlackBerry won’t like it.
You can reply via email by including your message between these two lines:
[===> Please enter your reply below this line Please enter your reply above this line -
Unveiled: why Twitter decided on 140 characters!
Via GeekAndPoke, again. -
The Virtual Thanksgiving Guide From TheNextWeb
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, whether if you celebrate the holiday or not. For those of you not partaking in the wonderful excuse to eat too much, I have built you a small list of things to do online to allow you some involvement in the holiday.
So, if you will, TheNextWeb’s guide to a merry, non culinary, online Thanksgiving.
To begin, you must go turkey hunting, but virtually. There is a wonderful game for that, that you can find here. It looks like this:
Now that you have secured your provisions, you need to find some people to eat with. Head over to Google and run this search, that should take care of that.
You now have company, and food, all just while sitting at your desk. You probably now need some place to host and eat. Fortunately, real estate prices around the world have taken it on the chin. Go ahead and buy a house here, it will suffice.
Once you have finished your wonderful digital meal, in your virtual house, with your pixellated turkeys, there is nothing left to do but have a beer and watch a (American) football game.
Here, have some drinks and the television guide. There you have it! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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