Lessons from 2010 I view myself both as a practitioner and student of business. Therefore, I always try to find learnings in my experiences and to crystallize those learnings into nuggets that I can remember. Here are some of my key, nugget-ized learnings from 2010. Analyze from near and far. Those are my takeaways from the year. Like this: Like Loading... The Official Microsoft Blog – News and Perspectives from Microso Back in November 2009, we introduced the Outlook Social Connector and announced our first partnership with LinkedIn. The Outlook Social Connector is a set of new features that bring together communications history, contact information, and professional and social networking information into the Outlook experience. Most importantly, it brings all of your friends, family and colleagues into one place, making it easier than ever to stay in touch with the people you care about. Today we’re expanding that reach in two ways: 1. The Outlook Social Connector allows users to see e-mail and social activities for a contact in their network across multiple social networks, including Facebook and LinkedIn. The LinkedIn download for the Outlook Social Connector brings together the most popular professional network with the world’s leading professional inbox. What we think users will appreciate is that the Outlook Social Connector doesn’t add another professional or social network into the mix.
The Top 40 iPhone Apps of 2010 Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Alex Ahlund, the former CEO and founder of AppVee and AndroidApps, which were acquired by mobile application directory Appolicious. You can read his previous iPhone app picks here and here The iTunes App Store is huge. More than 300,000 apps huge. I’ve watched this monster start from nothing and turn into a billion-dollar industry in only a few short years. There are currently 20 overall categories, with Games offering an additional 20 subcategories. The expectation is that the market will dictate an app’s worth, but it doesn’t always work out that way. With that said, I’ve compiled what I believe to be the best apps that have come out this year. I present the top apps of 2010: Top iPhone apps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Top Entertainment Apps: 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Top iPhone games: 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. Top Technical Achievement games: 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.
Saving Money, Space, and Energy With Blade Virtualization - wash In 1986, Attorney Nicholas Barrett founded Nicholas Barrett & Associates with just himself and an assistant running the business. But over the last 24 years, that small two-person office has grown into a bustling 45-person law firm specializing in litigation, real estate law, collections, and loan servicing. Like any busy law office, Nicholas Barrett & Associates is a document-driven business that depends on reliable e-mail and file servers to meet clients' deadlines. Further, the company's infrastructure had become prone to crashes due to single points of failure including switches, hard drives, and RAID controllers. A Simpler Solution Rather than waste the company's time and money overhauling each of the 12 aging servers individually, we opted for a simpler, more streamlined approach. Within the Blade server, we virtualized the 12 existing machines using Citrix XenServer. Disaster Recovery Images of the firm's virtual servers are now kept off-site in secure co-location facilities.
Ripley’s reveal 'Top 10 strangest stories of 2010' We like to think we know a thing or two about weird news, but we're not the only ones. Ripley's Believe It or Not! have revealed their top 10 strange stories of 2010. The firm which publishes books on weirdness and runs odditoriums around the world say they've scoured headlines from 2010 to find the strangest. And it looks like 2010 was a bumper year for oddness with stories including a bearded woman finding her son and our very own spray on clothes and the invention of deep fried beer. Other odd tales making the list include a cat which can predict deaths and a woman bidding to become the world's fattest. Top 10 strangest stories of 2010 Bearded Woman Finds Son: Vivian Wheeler was born with hypertrichosis (werewolf syndrome) and as a hermaphrodite (both male and female reproductive organs) and was told she couldn’t have children. Ripley the Dog: The living, breathing big pile of fur found in a ditch in Houma, La., turned out to be a one-year-old poodle. LINKSRipley's
Google Acquires Email Startup reMail – Founder To Join Gmail 17 February '10, 11:09pm Follow Google has just picked up Y Combinator incubated startup reMail, bringing its talented founder Gabor Cselle on board the Gmail team. reMail was an excellent iPhone application that would download all your email to your phone, making searching your email wildly faster. The application could also save you money if you needed to roam outside of the United States where AT&T rates can be abusive. The application will be pulled (sadly) from the App store. The application retailed, before being removed, for $4.99. At the time of writing, no price is known for the transaction. reMail had raised money not just from Y Combinator but also Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh (Friendfeed co-founders). Gabor Cselle had this to say on the acqusition and his future: While reMail is gone for now, Gmail has just picked up a very capable employee who they intend to use as a product manager. You can read Mr.
The top 10 weird news photographs of 2010 2010 has been a great year for weird news, from a psychic octopus to 7,500 people accidentally selling their souls to a computer game store.But it's some of the odd news images which we will remember the year for, so here are some of our most trafficked photo-based weird news articles of 2010. Amazingly, as they looked for whales, a massive 10 metre one leapt from the water off the coast of South Africa and headed straight for their diminutive yacht. A bizarre service has launched in Switzerland where people can hire an 'Evil Clown' to stalk (and presumably terrify) their friends and family. Dominic Deville says his Evil Clown service has been extremely popular as a birthday 'treat' since he launched it late last year. An airline has decorated one of its planes as an idiot's guide to aviation -- labelling things like the engines and where the pilot sits. A giant Japanese spider crab with limbs more than 5ft (1.5m) long has gone on show in Britian.
Google’s Buzz Draws Scrutiny From Privacy Watchdogs (Update2) - Tech in 2010: Samurai CEO Ellison, Apple's Antennagate and More | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD According to 2009′s safely-looking-ahead-at-the-year-to-come articles, 2010 was to be “a year of social media convergence.” It was to be a year in which The Cloud “became part of the everyday lexicon of business” and “a year of invention and innovation.” 2010 was to be not just “the year of the tablet,” but also “the year of the smartphone,” “the year of the tweet” and “the year of location.” Above all, 2010 was to be “a year of significant developments” and generally “a busy year for technology.” And I suppose it was that. But for me, 2010 was a year like any of year–one not to be taken too seriously. It may be true, as my colleague Peter Kafka noted earlier this week, that there’s little point in pretending we know what’s going to happen in the year ahead, but the year about to pass remains good for a laugh.
Group Interview: Expert Advice For Students and Young Web Design Advertisement Our readers have requested that Smashing Magazine conduct an interview with industry leaders on issues that are relevant to students and those just starting off in their design career. With the help of our panel of 16 designers, we’ll dispense advice that should help new designers get their career off to a promising start. We’ve asked a few different questions to each of the designers; you’ll see all of their responses below. Henry Jones (Web Design Ledger)Wolfgang Bartelme (Bartelme.at)Chris Coyier (CSS-Tricks)Chris Spooner (SpoonGraphics, Line25)Soh TanakaJon Philips (Spyre Studios)Paul Boag (Boagworld, Headscape)David Leggett (Tutorial9, UX Booth)Jacob Gube (Six Revisions)Elliot Jay StocksBrian Hoff (The Design Cubicle)Darren HoytWalter Apai (Webdesigner Depot)Jacob Cass (Just Creative Design)Zach Dunn (One Mighty Roar and Build Internet)Paul Andrew (Speckyboy Design Magazine) You may be interested in the following related posts: 1. David Leggett Wolfgang Bartelme 2. 3. 4.
A Look at How Mobile, Local and Social Defined Retail in 2010 | Tricia Duryee | eMoney | AllThingsD Three trends accelerated in 2010 that may redefine the way we shop for good: Social, local and mobile. And, in case that’s hard to remember, for short we will refer to it as “so-lo-mo,” like do-re-mi from the “Sound of Music,” except without much “Glee” for retailers. That’s because other than the recession, this past year may represent the biggest challenge for the retail industry since the mid-’90s, when e-commerce was born. Here’s how this daunting, yet exciting and opportunistic, trifecta played out this year: Mobile: There’s definitely an app for that. Result: Retailers watch in horror as shoppers leave their stores empty-handed and drive across town to another store or go online to order a different or cheaper product. Social: Friends and social circles influence purchase decisions through the rise of Facebook and Twitter. Local: Advertising begins shifting to Groupon and LivingSocial, as group discounting and daily deals gain popularity. “There’s still a ton to be done.
PleaseRobMe website reveals dangers of social network A website called PleaseRobMe claims to reveal the location of empty homes based on what people post online. The Dutch developers told BBC News the site was designed to prove a point about the dangers of sharing precise location information on the internet. The site scrutinises players of online game Foursquare, which is based on a person's location in the real world. PleaseRobMe extracts information from players who have chosen to post their whereabouts automatically onto Twitter. "It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers. "People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend's or friend's house, and sharing the address - I don't think they were aware of how much they were sharing." Simple search The website took just four hours to create. "It's basically a Twitter search - nothing new," said Mr Van Amstel. "The website is not a tool for burglary," he said.
Internet Security Breaches in 2010 Increased in Scope and Scariness | Arik Hesseldahl | NewEnterprise | AllThingsD I can’t remember a year during which computer security stories jumped so readily from the tech and business pages to the front page. The year 2010 was bookended by two such cases. It opened with Google’s disclosure that it had come under attack in China, an apparent attempt to penetrate the Gmail accounts of certain activists and journalists. It ended with the WikiLeaks affair, which stemmed from the alleged theft by an Army private of classified documents stored on a government network. And let’s not forget in mid-year came the story, as fascinating as it was sobering, of Stuxnet, a computer worm developed by parties unknown–although the smart money is on Israel–that penetrated and ultimately damaged equipment used in the Iranian nuclear program. In Google’s case, the attacks upon its systems raised questions about where it draws the line with authorities in Beijing about such matters as freedom of speech. So, it was not technology that failed. Something similar was true of Stuxnet.
Linux, open source driving smartphone revolution | Open Source | It's nice to see open source software driving a revolution in smartphones -- and small PCs. Google's Linux-based Android operating system powers the industry's latest must have, the Motorola Droid. Many more Android phones are making their debut, such as Motorola's Backflip, which will be sold by AT&T it was announced at the Mobile World Congress this week. Apple must be thrilled. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that Apple jumpstarted the excitement in the smartphone category with the launch of iPhone. In early 2009, Palm abandoned its proprietary Palm OS and Microsoft Windows Mobile bundling efforts and launched a new webOS platform based on Linux. Nokia's very recent and (some might say) long delayed decision to open source its leading Symbian OS, and also to merge its other Maemo mobile platform with Intel's Moblin to create a Linux-based MeeGo platform were no doubt precipitated by the success of Android. It shouldn't come as a surprise.