Web2024

Google Checkout is the next Google service to be discontinued, and will be closing shop on November 20th. The payment gateway will cease operations in favor of Google Wallet. Google Checkout is a PayPal alternative for Web merchants, and also the favored transaction medium for Google Play developers. Google expects the transition to be smooth as it announced its focus on Google Wallet as the new medium of commerce. The post Google Discontinues Google Checkout, Offers Google Wallet Instead [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool has been the standard for AdWords keyword research for over a decade, but there’s a new sheriff in town: the AdWords Keyword Planner. This new keyword tool combines the functionality of the existing Google Keyword Tool as well as AdWords Traffic Estimator into a single integrated workflow to help advertisers find [...]Author information Larry Kim Larry Kim is the Founder/CTO of WordStream, a provider of PPC Management Tools. Google+ The post 5 Things You Need to Know About AdWords’ New Keyword Planner by @LarryKim appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Indexing, trash bins, folder positions – OS X keeps track of all these things, on every drive connected to your Mac, by creating files. These files are fine on a Mac – OS X uses them regularly, and hides them from the user. Plug a drive mainly used with Windows into a Mac, however, and in Windows you'll see a variety of useless files cluttering things up. Do you want to stop the madness? You can. The post Why Do Macs Leave Garbage Files Like “ds_store” On My Flash Drive, And How Do I Stop It? appeared first on MakeUseOf.

This is true for anyone that devotes a large portion of their time to the Internet. It may be bloggers trying to grow their website, technology workers working remotely, or just folks that get overly addicted to online games. The Internet can steal away many hours out of your day in the blink of an eye, and when you wake up you could discover that much of what you once loved is no longer there. The post 7 Ways To Avoid Letting The Internet Destroy Your Life appeared first on MakeUseOf.

For most people, the note-taking application of choice is Evernote. And Evernote users have good reasons for choosing the service for their note-taking needs -- it’s very functional, highly accessible, and has add-on features that can take you beyond the default Evernote experience. Here are seven tools that help to improve the way you use Evernote. The post 7 Tools To Improve The Way You Use Evernote appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Arrested Development is back, with Netflix having given the show a lifeline by commissioning new episodes. Here's hoping that this time Arrested Development is watched by the size of audience it deserves. To give the show the best chance of succeeding it's a good idea to educate those who previously missed out on the goodness. The post Keeping Up With The Bluth Family: Discover Arrested Development On The Web appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Khronos Group, open standards consortium behind some of today's most innovative technologies, has announced a new initiative to develop an open, royalty-free API for advanced, low-level control of mobile and embedded cameras and sensors. Khronos created the Camera working group to develop the API and is currently recruiting participants. All participants may contribute to the standard and the group will collaborate with other working groups to enhance its effectiveness.

The iPhone is often targeted for its lack of features and functionality. When the bullet points are laid out side-by-side Android appears to have a hoard of extras that Apple’s device can’t match. I don’t buy this arguement, however, because it assumes all features are equally important and executed with equal grace. Not all functionality is equally important, and while Android offers many slight tweaks, the iPhone excels where excellence matters. The post iCan: 5 Features iPhone Users Take For Granted That Android Can’t Match appeared first on MakeUseOf.

You probably already knew this, but a new report from Forrester wants to emphasize this seemingly obvious point: Tablets are not simply larger touchscreen smartphones. There are significant difference in where people use them, how they use them and for how long - all of which have big implications for app developers, marketers, tablet makers and a lot of other folks. As the table market continues its white-hot growth - nearly 50 million tablets were sold last quarter alone - these differences will force both innovation and disruption in publishing, advertising, retail, gaming and work, as people optimize apps, media and services specifically for tablet use. Tablet Usage: The Little Differences The majority of tablet users use their gadgets primarily in the living room and bedroom of their homes. This is true even for tablets with cellular connectivity, not just Wi-Fi. Even outside the home, Forrester's data reveal that tablet usage is concentrated in "fixed" locations. These include...

In this day and age, we’re all part of networks and groups of peers that communicate and interact multiple times a day. With the rise of social media and other interactive networks, it is easier than ever before to reach out to someone and get information directly from the source. This is never more prevalent [...]Author information Stuart McInnes TwitterGoogle+ The post The Social Graph & Sociographics – How to Use Friends to Influence People by @roicomau appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Good news for developers who are migrating to the Twitter API version 1.1. They now have until June 11 to make the transition. After that, it’s lights out for any application still running on v1. The original retirement date for v1 was May 7, but Twitter postponed that date to accommodate more blackout testing.

Twitter has announced a new security feature which resembles the two-factor authentication offered on websites such as Facebook, Google, and Dropbox. The new feature aims to make sure that the person logging into your Twitter account is really you, helping you protect your account from phishing and other security breaches. The post Twitter Introduces Login Verification Via SMS For A More Secure Sign-In Process [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Shazam, an app best known for identifying songs playing around you, is making a big move into identifying all kinds of media playing around you. That promises to move Shazam from our pockets, where its smartphone apps mostly identify songs, to our living rooms—and hence to the tablets we typically keep near our TVs. Those tablets are becoming known as "second screens"—and Shazam wants to have a big presence on them. The most intriguing aspect of Shazam's latest version is its added capability to tag events on live TV in the U.S., a clear sign that Shazam wants to be the gateway app for second-screen use. As you watch a TV show, Shazam can listen and identify it, revealing information about the show and linking to related content. Commercials will be tagged as well, giving advertisers another channel to reach you. iPad users will also now get to use auto-tagging and lyrics delivered through Shazam's LyricPlay system. Those features were previously available on other platforms, but not...

Google is reducing Datastore prices by up to 25%, according to an announcement on their Cloud Platform Blog. This price change impacts both App Engines HRD and the new Cloud Datastore introduced last week at I/O. The price decrease is sure to capture the attention of Amazon Web Services, perhaps even to the point of a small cloud price war. (Also read How Amazon's Rising Headwaters Could Threaten Google.)

There’s no shortage of integration platforms in the cloud these days with Tibco Software becoming the latest vendor to join their ranks. Tibco this week unfurled Tibco Cloud Bus, a subscription based integration service that differs from other services in that IT organizations have the option of deploying it anywhere they like versus being locked into a particular cloud computing platform.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) polices are increasingly popular as a way for companies to let workers use the hardware they like best and are most productive with. But according to a new study from Cisco, that not be the best way to think about BYOD. Implement a strong BYOD policy, Cisco says, and your organization could save $1,300 per year per mobile user. Users meanwhile, report that they are happier and more productive - even though they may end up paying more out of their own pockets! (See also Worried Workers: BYOD Or You're SOL [Infographic]) Happier, More Productive, But Poorer? The survey, released Wednesday by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) consulting unit, polled 2,415 users in six countries to determine the effects of letting employees bring their own devices into the office. The results indicate that employees around the world were very interested in BYOD, and they were even willing to pay for it: On average, workers said they would spend $965 out of...

I love working with AdWords and big ecommerce sites. What I like about it is that it makes the revenue slip in easily and at an immediate low cost. In the past couple of weeks I have resigned from an old Client I used to work with back in 2010. It’s a big ecommerce site [...]Author information Andrew Lolk Andrew Lolk is the author of the 189-page free AdWords ebook The Proven AdWords Strategy. He's worked in AdWords since 2009 and have co-founded White Shark Media; A Paid Search agency specialized in delivering results for small to mid-sized businesses in the US. Twitter The post Why A Framework Process Is The Best Way to Build Out Huge Ecommerce AdWords Account Structures by @AndrewLolk appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Despite Google Android's long market-share rise against Apple iOS, developers continued to stick with iOS as their first deployment target. While Android offered superior volume, that volume was fragmented between different versions of the OS and disparate hardware. Meanwhile, Apple offered better development tools plus clearer, more profitable revenue options. Even open-source developers tended to congregate on highly proprietary iOS. Something changed in 2012, however, and Android-related open-source development exploded. According to new research from Black Duck Software, new Android-related mobile open-source projects outstripped open source iOS projects by a factor of four in 2012, growing by more than 96% each year since 2007. New iOS project growth, on the other hand, was just 32% from 2011 to 2012. Over 15,000 new Android mobile projects were launched in 2012, bringing the total number of Android projects Black Duck tracks to more than 28,000. New projects associated with the...

AngelHack, a premier educational technology events company, has just announced that the "biggest hackathon competition in the world" AngelHack, is now accepting applications for the AngelHack Accelerator Program, Summer 2013 cycle.

Square, the mobile payment service that has been making strong inroads within the North American retail sector, has announced the availability of its service in Japan. The company is already processing $15 billion in annualized payments, and this move into Asia is expected to greatly increase the popularity and profitability of the service.

In today's world, nothing escapes the fact that we are moving in a direction where quantifying and recording stuff obsessively is sort of the norm. We use Foursquare to check into places, we annoyingly take photos of our meals with Instagram, and we share our thoughts on Twitter. So would it be much of a surprise if we also like to track the number of steps they take, or how much we sleep? Today, we'll put the Fitbit Flex and the Jawbone UP against each other, and decide whether it's the newcomer or veteran who takes home the gold. We'll also be offering both devices, so enjoy the review then remember to join the contest. The post Fitbit Flex vs. Jawbone UP: A Comparative Review appeared first on MakeUseOf.

You can't have a conversation about Big Data for very long without running into the elephant in the room: Hadoop. This open source software platform managed by the Apache Software Foundation has proven to be very helpful in storing and managing vast amounts of data cheaply and efficiently. But what exactly is Hadoop, and what makes it so special? Basically, it's a way of storing enormous data sets across distributed clusters of servers and then running "distributed" analysis applications in each cluster. It's designed to be robust, in that your Big Data applications will continue to run even when individual servers — or clusters — fail. And it's also designed to be efficient, because it doesn't require your applications to shuttle huge volumes of data across your network. Here's how Apache formally describes it: The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models....

What has Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood and his team been up to since selling the email-app maker to Dropbox for a reported $100 million in March? Mostly working on new versions of the product—like an iPad version of the app, which is coming out Thursday morning on Apple's App Store. Like the original iPhone version, which attracted a million users at breakneck speed, Mailbox for iPad lets you swipe messages off to the right or left to handle them. A short swipe to the right archives them, while a long swipe deletes them; a short swipe to the left "snoozes" messages for later reading, while a long swipe puts them in folders based on actions: "to read," "to buy," or "to watch." Mailbox for iPad doesn't change that basic concept for email handling, but it does add a column to let you read messages alongside a list of messages in your inbox. Resisting Design Temptation ReadWrite sat down recently with Underwood to talk about the challenges of rethinking an app originally meant for...

This post is the second in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face trying to make money from Android apps. How do you get mobile developers to love you? Give them free tools and pad their wallets. One of the big themes for Google last week at its I/O developers conference was helping developers make more money creating apps for Android. That included a variety of tools to help them engage with their users and process transactions as well as optimization tips to monetize Android. Monetization is a big challenge for Android developers. Developers who make Android apps earn a fraction of what they make from Apple's iOS, which paid developers nearly $1 billion alone in January this year and $8 billion total as of February. Android developers can only dream of such riches. (See also How Google Is Wooing Developers to Make Apps For Android First.) Yet there is hope. Google's VP of Android product management Hugo...

With talks of the new Google Penguin update and how social media can help stabilize and improve a site’s performance online, site owners are increasingly focusing on social media marketing campaigns.  The question is – how do you really know how effective your campaigns are, and how can you determine ROI? Of course, the ultimate [...]Author information Marcela De Vivo CEO at Gryffin Media Marcela De Vivo has been an SEO since 1999, promoting thousands of sites including large corporate sites and small mom and pop businesses. She loves to connect, so don’t hesitate to reach out through her Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest or LinkedIn profiles. TwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedIn The post Benchmarking & Analytics: How to Track the Effects of your Social SEO Campaign by @marceladevivo appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Earlier this year in April, our good friend Pratik talked about the, then upcoming penguin update. It’s official, Google just released version 2 of Penguin. The first update literally shook the internet. Webmasters had to re-invent themselves and embrace content marketing. Google is wise and is fully committed to their mission of making the search [...]Author information Adam Morgan Adam Morgan is a PPC expert, entrepreneur, blogger, and amiable guy. In his spare time, you can find him updating his own blog. Follow him on twitter @smorgs13. TwitterGoogle+ The post Google Just Unleashed Its Penguin 2.0 Update by @smorgs13 appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. Most of the listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here.... The post Cool Websites and Tools [May 22nd 2013] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Microsoft released Windows 8 last year to a barrage of criticism from people who didn't like the wholesale changes made to the operating system. Microsoft had legitimate reasons for building Windows 8 the way it did, but it has also listened to feedback from users and is preparing to release a major update. Windows 8.1 will be released before the year is out, with a public preview available on June 26. Your hopes for this update form the basis for this week's 'We Ask You' column. The post What Changes Do You Want To See In Windows 8.1? [We Ask You] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

You probably have a practical understanding of how Wikipedia works. To sum it all up, anyone can edit the information on a page, and they can do this quite quickly. These are the basic mechanics of how a wiki generally works, and Wikipedia just so happens to use it for their online encyclopedia. However, there are plenty of other purposes for this type of site. I'm here to offer a few suggestions for offbeat ways to use your own wikis. The post It’s Not Only Wikipedia: 5 Offbeat Ways To Use Your Own Wikis appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Smartphones and tablets have changed the way we live life. No longer can we wake up and lull around in bed without checking our email or Twitter mentions. Nobody worries about getting lost any more unless they're low on battery, the smartphone user's achilles heel in a world of do-everything devices. Our gadgets have also replaced a significant amount of physical objects, to the point where many of us wouldn't consider buying a product when there is an equivalent piece of software that is up to the task. The post There’s An App For That: 10 Household Items Replaced By Software [iOS] appeared first on MakeUseOf.