Apple’s much rumoured iPad Mini will be a 7in Retina Display toting tablet out this October. This comes from a source of iMore who also claims the price will be a meager US$200-250 (£125-£155). Read More
This week I’ve been amazed by the prophetic wisdom of folk music legend Harry Nilsson. In 1969 he sang: “Everybody’s talking at me, I don’t hear a word they’re saying, Only the echoes of my mind.”
So, why has Harry been echoing in my mind? And what has folk music got to do with social media? Read More
Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail is to follow The New York Times and others and begin charging its readers for content. The paper is to implement a metered paywall system although it has yet to announce how much it will charge or how many articles it will give readers for free.
It said the it was moving its plans forward for the paywall in response “to an unpredictable advertising market”, which that has seen both print and digital sales drop this spring at publishers in both North America and Europe. Read More
News International’s experiment with a non-penetrable paywall around websites for The Times and Sunday Times has been a failure, while the rise of Mail Online has been the “world success story”, according to former Guardian leader, Tim Brooks. Read More
Many professional services are finding the digital era very challenging, and personally speaking the digital revolution presents a bit of a conundrum to me…
On the one hand, I absolutely love what the digital revolution has done. Take smartphones – what these things are capable of is truly breath-taking. Every gadget I ever dreamt of owning as a pre-digital kid all rolled into one sleek, cool, pocket-sized slab of usefulness. Read More
The accounts of 55,000 Twitter users have been hacked and the usernames and passwords copied into Pastebin. The hack is the largest in the service’s history, and required five pages on Pastebin to leak all the data. Twitter have said only that they are looking actively at the situation.
The ease with which the service could be penetrated could make users, and potential users, more cautious of using it, although I believe the idea was to highlight security flaws as opposed to anything more malicious. As AirDemon point out, this could have easily been avoided, by guiding people to use more secure passwords when they signup as is common practice on many websites, and encouraging regularly password changing. Twitter has always emphasised how easy it is to sign up and start posting, but this has left its users’ data vulnerable.
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In the last week, the latest Google algorithm ‘Penguin’ has come into force, looking to eradicate websites that break search best practice rules. However, Google has been forced to admit teething problems with the update after it received complaints from legitimate companies that had been removed from search rankings as a result of the changes. Read More
A great example here of how how effective video is at telling stories, we still recognise the importance of traditional media, especially when it comes to a child’s education. That’s why we like this ad from Reading is Fundamental in the US, highlighting the importance of the written word. Yes it’s a bit twee, but the idea of getting famous characters from books into modern settings to get kids interested in reading is a good one.
Stoney Nakoda
Recently I got an email from a friend of mine asking me to make a $25 donation toward her 4-year-old daughter’s book publishing project, by making a pledge on the popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter.
Young Stoney Nakoda and the effort (lead by her family) to fund her project with help from people’s contributions of small donations is already getting her close to reaching a goal of $5,000 by 23rd of May. To date, the family has raised $1,634. Stoney, and her story book about how she overcame her fear of shadows, is one of many exciting stories coming out of the crowdfunding movement. Read More
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