Adobe today announced it has reached a deal to acquire ECM vendor Day Software . In a telephone interview, Erik Larson Senior Director of Product Management at Adobe, cited Day’s technology’s scalability and social features and the company’s support for open-source software as the primary factors driving the acquisition. According to Day’s website , “Day Chief Scientist Roy Fielding was co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation , author of the Apache Software license, and creator of the Apache web server.” Day has contributed to 12 Apache projects and 25 other open-source projects.
Steam is gathering on the rumors that Google is planing to launch a Facebook competitor that will focus on social gaming. The company is supposedly in talks with a number of online game makers in order to build a stable for launch, according to unnamed individuals speaking to the Wall Street Journal . However, even if Google succeeds in launching a social network that will keep users’ interest, it seems unlikely that it will make much of a dent in Facebook in the near term. According to the WSJ ’s sources, Google is currently talking to Playdom, Electronic Arts’ Playfish, and Zynga (maker of the popular Facebook game Farmville ).
No one will accuse The Dream Machine of looking generic. Created in part as a response to the seemingly endless stream of similar-looking games on the market, the developers at Cockroach Inc. built The Dream Machine to be something different: a stop-motion, episodic, point-and-click adventure. Ars spoke with Anders Gustafsson, one half of Cockroach, to learn just how to make a game out of cardboard and clay.
Web technology has revolutionized finance by making it easier than ever to monitor cash flow and track trends in your spending. Mint.com has been a leader in this realm for personal finance: its technology helps you track multiple accounts, analyze spending trends, and manage financial goals. There isn’t a clear counterpart to Mint for businesses, though. That’s where inDinero , a Y-Combinator-funded startup, comes in.
Twitter has rolled out several different advertising systems in recent weeks and we’re hearing that the next one will take a page from the Dell Computers playbook. In December, Dell famously reported $6.5 million in sales through links published over two years on Twitter. Imagine how much more Twitter might be able to pull in with a bigger audience, more diverse products and promotions and big brand partners. We believe that’s what Twitter will soon announce is the plan for the two-week old account @earlybird , which just opened up to accepting followers today
Last week, Lady Gaga and President Obama were in a race to be the first to 10 million Facebook fans. Today, Lady Gaga wins! When I asked, most of you predicted she would be the winner, and now she has the second highest amount of Facebook fans ever recorded, behind Michael Jackson . Gaga still has a long way to go before she hits MJ’s 14 million fan mark, but is anyone really surprised that the tech-loving star managed to become the most popular living person on Facebook? It’s no secret I’m a huge Gaga fan – so I’m definitely pumped for her latest victory
Remember all the controversy surrounding Twitter’s suggested interests box? Whether or not you do, Facebook is now offering a feature which automatically suggests Pages that new users should become a fan of. Right now the suggestions appear to be among the top Facebook Pages so there shouldn’t be as much controversy, given that most pages are mainstream. This contrasts Twitter’s initial strategy which effectively built popular individuals and helped launch a few media companies in a matter of months
As William Shakespeare almost wrote: “If music be the food of love, mashup”. That’s appears to be the ethos behind Tastebuds , a dating site with a difference – it puts music taste first by working in a little Last.fm magic. If you’re an avid music fan you probably want a partner who shares your favourite bands. By digging into the Last.fm API, Tastebuds makes finding that person who likes the the same music as you do simple
Hot on the heels of the news that Google is dead-set on developing a serious music product there are fresh rumors on Apple’s musical future, streaming iTunes . Ever since Apple purchased LaLa the technology world has been waiting for Apple to develop a browser-based alternative to the generally heavy desktop software tool that helped launch the digital music revolution. We have yet to get our hands on anything substantial.
A study which was recently completed by Mulley Communications found that Facebook users spend more time looking at advertisements on profile pages than on the homepage. More specifically, “71% of users looked at adverts on their Profile pages, 31% of users looked at adverts on the News Feed page”. While the data wasn’t surprising, the study provided interesting insight into the behavior of students at the National College of Ireland. Here were the main finding of the survey: 71% of users looked at adverts on their Profile pages, 31% of users looked at adverts on the News Feed page (homepage)
A California appeals court has ruled that Verizon Wireless is to pay some 175,000 customers current and former customers $21 million as a settlement in a class action lawsuit over early termination fees. The class action suit was filed in California on the behalf of customers who were upset that Verizon asked they pay a flat ETF of $175 regardless of how many months were left on their contract. Each customer is expected to receive $87.50 as a result of the ruling. Too bad history is bound to repeat itself now that Verizon’s ETF for “advanced devices” (i.e
Last night Facebook made a relatively big announcement for developers: the company will be removing publisher attachments. The idea behind it was that applications could create custom attachments that would show up in the feed. According to Facebook the feature was getting little usage, however the concept behind it was pretty powerful.
We know you wouldn’t buy an off-the-shelf Dell PC. You have gaming needs. But others aren’t as savvy as you. They bought off-the-shelf Dell PCs
This afternoon Facebook saw the first improvement to its photo application thanks to its recent acquisition of Divvyshot: the addition of face detection to photos. Now when you upload photos to various areas of the site, including the homepage, you should be able to instantly tag your friends without clicking on them in the actual photo. Instead, the system will automatically detect faces in the photos and prompt you to select the friend who’s face it is.
Facebook has begun testing face detection technology for Facebook Photos. This is the first of what seems like a series of new features for its popular photo product. The tests, which some users will see starting today, focus on decreasing the tediousness of “tagging” friends in Facebook photos. In the current Photos feature, users upload photos, click on each face in a photo, tag that photo with the friend pictured therein and continue the process until the album is tagged
