NASA announced that they are hosting their first space shuttle launch tweet-up. A tweet-up is when a group of Twitter users around the same area of residence meet up. The Atlantis shuttle has been moved to its launch pad earlier this week. The Atlantis plans to launch on November 12. Atlantis will be delivering goods to the International Space Station.
Who gets to see the shuttle lift off? The first 100 NASA Twitter followers that sign up for the Kennedy Space Center tour. The registration begins later today.
NASA astronauts have been tweeting for quite some time now including Michael Massimino. I’m sure the event will be memorable. If anyone reading this ended up attending the event, let us know about your experience.
Ooyala is a video start-up company that has raised $10 million in Series C funding. The funding will be used for aggressive growth, partnerships, and international expansion. Investors in the company include Rembrandt Venture Partners and Sierra Ventures. Ooyala created a platform called Backlot which is used for publishing and monetizing videos. Some of Ooyala’s customers include Warner Brothers and Electronic arts.
Ooyala was founded by three former employees at Google in 2007. So far the company has raised $20 million in funding. This past August, the company hired Jay Fulcher as the CEO. “We will probably be doubling, possibly even tripling our operation (from over 60 staff) over the next 12 months,” stated Fulcher in an interview with paidContent.
Cereal production company Kellogg’s is taking an interesting approach to exploit those who counterfeit Corn Flakes. Kellogg’s is planning to etch their logo on every single flake. Only a certain number of boxes will receive flakes that have the Kellogg’s logo etched on them. If the cereal company decides that this approach is feasible, the concept will spread even further.
About 128 billion bowls of Corn Flakes are eaten every year across the world. Corn Flakes was also the first cereal to have made it to the moon when being brought on-board Apollo 11.
The Acer Timeline 1810T was spotted in August, but there wasn’t an official launch date. Well now there is an official date and it is October 22nd. The 1810T 11.6″ netbook will have the Windows 7 operating system, full size keyboard, 8 hour battery life, multi-touch touchpad, and the dual-core Intel CULV processor. The netbook will also have several color options, built-in webcam and mic, Bluetooth, 902.11b/g Draft-N WiFi. The price will be $549.99.
The number of mobile phone users in India is massive. The population in India is about 1.1 billion and many of them have mobile phones. People in India communicate very often with SMS and text messages. Now if Twitter connected their services by allowing people in India to tap their accounts into SMS and text messages, there would be a major increase in use. Twitter just made a deal with Bharti Airtel to make this happen. Bharti Airtel is the largest telecommunications company in India with 100 million subscribers.
Bharti Airtel customers will be allowed to receive SMS tweets for free and send tweets through a text message at the standard rate. The reason why Twitter shut down their SMS service last year in many other countries is because of the charges that telecommunication companies wanted from Twitter. Twitter has been trying to find the middle ground between telecommunication companies from now on.
To get started using Twitter on Airtel, customers need to send a text message saying START to the number 53000. After that Twitter confirms that you are willing to send and receive SMS tweets.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is preparing to launch an e-book store called Google Editions. Google Editions will allow consumers to buy books and read them on e-book devices. This is the first time that Google will be getting into the e-book sales market.
Google Book Search publisher partnership program head Tom Turvey said that the publishers will be the ones responsible for setting the price of the e-books. Next year Google Editions will launch with about 400,000-600,000 e-books. “It will be a browser-based access,” stated Turvey at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. “The way the e-book market will evolve is by accessing the book from anywhere, from an access point of view and also from a geographical point of view.”
Google will earn 55% of the e-book profits and the rest will go to the publisher. That is too massive of a chunk for selling someone elses’ work in my opinion. Google lets developers keep 70% of revenue earned on the Google Android Market mobile application store.
Some of the most popular e-book readers on the market today include the Amazon.com Kindle and the Sony Reader.
Given that Wally World is the biggest retail company in the world, it is inevitable for them to offer a phone service that one-ups what other telecommunications companies have to offer.
Walmart is beta testing a program called Straight Talk. Straight Talk is a wireless service that will not require a contract and costs only $45 per month for an unlimited minutes, messages, and data plan. There will also be a $30 plan that offers 1,000 minutes, 1,000 SMS and text messages, and 30MB data.
However the phones that will work with the plan retails for $100. These phones include the LG Slider 290 and the “Samsung 451.” The Samsung 451 is expected to have a QWERTY kayboard. The LG Slider 290 does not have that many features.
“It has been very encouraging to see the excitement and response to the Straight Talk pilot in 234 stores that began last summer at Walmart,” stated Walmart U.S. VP of Media Services Greg Hall in a press release. “In light of the savings customers continue to need, we have worked very quickly to extend this offering to all of our Walmart customers nationwide, and just before the holidays.”
The new version of TweetDeck has launched. TweetDeck is software built on Adobe Air intended to make using Facebook and Twitter easier. TweetDeck can support multiple accounts and has columns that filters out Twitter tweets, replies, direct messages, and groups. The updated is called TweetDeck version 0.31.
TweetDeck version 0.31 now has keyboard shortcuts and an overhaul in the notifications system. The notifications system can be added for certain groups instead of across all the columns. The new TweetDeck also allows the users to to reply, RT, or directly message users from within the notifications menu.
Another cool new feature is the ability to view your newest 100 followers. This way you can decide whether to follow or block them.
The new version of TweetDeck has keyboard shortcuts. This allows users to quickly make changes and send messages without even having to touch the mouse.
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