Low on funds, Reddit ups the ante and goes for the gold with new focus on Reddit Gold program

As Reddit grows it's becoming more difficult to scale, and the company needs funds in order to keep everything ship-shape. In lieu of increasing advertising, Reddit has ramped-up its little known Reddit Gold program.

As Reddit grows, so does its need to scale — and by scaling, we mean more server space. Reddit is and will likely always remain a free service, and the collective Internet easily takes the platform and everything it offers for granted. Yishan Wong, Reddit’s newly appointed CEO, disclosed that the site raked in 3.8 billion page views last month and boasts 46 million unique users, but behind the guise of its successes, Wong hints at the reality that Reddit can’t sustain its growth without money. The solution, Reddit announced, is to ramp up its for-pay Gold program.

Reddit has stuck to remaining relatively lean in terms of the ads served on the site. Its contextual ads are non-intrusive and are native to its platform, with the exception of the lone banner ad on the right. To Reddit’s credit, that ad more often than not recommends Subreddits or the occasional hilarious cat or dog picture. You’re not going to find an insurance ad, but instead ads for Busted Tees.

While Wong admits that advertising will “probably always be a part of our revenue,” the little known Gold program that the team at Reddit has never overtly promoted hasn’t realy taken off, and the platform wants to change that. Reddit Gold is typically gifted to other users for a few dollars per month as a gesture of appreciation. There are a few perks like receiving exclusive access to new features before public release, surfacing content from up to 100 Subreddits, access to a super secretive members-only lounge whose existence is neither confirmed nor denied by Reddit, and a few other goodies. But many Reddits aren’t even aware of the program’s existence, says Wong, and if you’re a long time Redditor, the service wasn’t doing much to entice you.

“We want to announce a recommitment to Reddit Gold, a program we’d like to expand and promote,” Wong wrote in the blog post.

The new features that will be added to the Gold program, as Wong announced, include:

• An oft-requested feature: Comment saving and filtering saves by Subreddit
• Ability to give Gold to other peoples’ comments you really like [or “gilding” as Reddit calls it]
• Some upgrades and fun stuff in the members-only lounge …[that may or may not exist]
• [Reddit] might add a remote-controlled office robot you can drive. Under construction.

Wong adds that this is just the start of the program and that Reddit Gold will be worth its weight. “We also want to make Reddit Gold a membership that confers real benefits that are worth what you pay for it, so we’re talking to some Reddit-friendly companies to provide special perks or access to stuff for Gold members.”

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Apple carries out the UK court order, posts “Samsung didn’t copy us letter” on its website

Today Apple executed the UK’s High Court order that ruled the company should acknowledge that Samsung didn’t copy the iPad’s design in its Galaxy Tab slates.

Apple posted a link on the UK front page of its website to a “Samsung/Apple UK judgement” page, where it has posted the UK Court of Appeal’s ruling.

Just to refresh your memory, the court order states that the text should be published in a font no smaller than Arial 11 and Apple has done just this.

In the acknowledgement, Apple confirms that Samsung didn’t infringe on its iPad patents and hasn’t copied the tablet’s design in the UK, but also states other courts, like the one in Germany, have ruled the opposite.

Still, we can’t imagine Apple taking much joy in doing what it had to do – the letter may not sound like a sincere apology, but having to post such a thing on its website at all must have hurt quite badly.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

UK retailer jumps the gun, puts Nexus 4 up for pre-order

The Nexus 4 has been made available as a pre-order on a UK phone retailer's website, despite not being officially announced yet. Google is expected to launch the phone on October 29, when it could be joined by several other new devices too.

The Nexus 4 has to be one of the most leaked smartphones of the year, and even now, just a few days before the event where it’s expected to be officially unveiled, it gets leaked again — this time by a retailer in the UK.

Carphone Warehouse, an established and popular high street mobile phone shop, has put the Nexus 4 up for pre-order on its website, with a delivery date of October 30, the day after Google’s event.

It provides just about all the specification details we could want, starting with confirmation of the 4.7-inch display with a 1280 x 768 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 320ppi, plus a quad-core, 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, which can also be found in the LG Optimus G and the Asus PadFone 2.

The operating system is listed as both Android 4.2 and Android 4.1.2, depending on where you take the information from on the site. These are two different things, as 4.1.2 has already been seeded to the Nexus 7, Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S, bringing with it only a few changes.

Android 4.2 is listed separately, and several new software features that may or may not be related are talked about in the description, including a 360-degree photo mode and Gesture Typing, which sounds a lot like Swype.

Continuing to explore the feature list, we find an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, 2GB of RAM, NFC, a forward facing video call lens and GPS. Although no weight is mentioned, the Nexus 4 is 9.1mm thick.

Finally, the phone is shown to have just 8GB of internal memory and no microSD card slot, the combination of which could be a deal-breaker for many potential owners.

No SIM-free price is given, although it’s available with either O2 or Vodafone from £31 per month, when the device itself will be free. LG’s name isn’t mentioned either, however the company is the only one listed under the “alternative phones” list.

It’s now almost certain the Nexus 4 will be officially announced on October 29, but the question is, what else has Google planned for us?

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Windows 8 prices revealed, you can pre-order it with or without a computer starting today

Today we finally get to see all price options for Microsoft’s next-generation computer OS – the Windows 8. The OS will launch on Oct 26, but you can pre-order it on a DVD right now, if you absolutely need to have a disc. For the rest of us, the update would be available online for download and purchase via the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant for a cheaper price. The full Windows 8 Pro OS will be downloadable as well when you purchase the license separately.

Oh, yes, and the prices, of course. An online upgrade from Windows XP, Vista or 7 to Windows 8 Pro will cost you $40, as we’ve seen before. That’s a time-limited offer, valid only until January 31, 2013. But there are other options, too.

If you insist on getting the update on a DVD in one of their newly designed product boxes (one of which is pictured above), you will have to shell out $70 (already available for pre-order).

As previously detailed, if you buy a Windows 7 computer right now, come Oct 26 you will be eligible to upgrade your OS, for only $15 in the US, €15 in most of Europe and £15 in the UK. More information and detailed pricing for each country (over 140 worldwide) is available HERE.

If you are into buying a full license for Windows 8, and not just an upgrade, US online store Newegg reveals the prices will go like that:

• Windows 8 Pro Pack – Product Key Card (no media) – $70
• Windows 8 (Full Version) – OEM $100
• Windows 8 Pro (Full Version) – OEM $140

Starting today, we should also be able to pre-order any of the Windows 8 PCs, made by Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Samsung and Sony. So far I only had luck with checking out dedicated pages with the offers by Asus, Dell, Sony. I guess your nearest electronics retailer will already have a deal for you. So far, there is no pre-order deals available for Microsoft’s own tablet – the Surface.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Democratic candidate slammed for playing World Of Warcraft

Colleen Lachowicz is a pretty typical senatorial candidate, except she enjoys World Of Warcraft. Her opponents see this as a big problem.

The practice of publicly attacking a political opponent in order to make yourself and your colleagues look superior by comparison is as old as politics themselves. You need look no further than your own television to see Mitt Romney and Barack Obama trading barbs on topics like healthcare reform, education and the general state of our modern economy. However, Republicans in Maine have found a new vector of ad hominem assault in the world of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games.

Colleen Lachowicz is a Democrat currently running for a seat in Maine’s state senate. Her official site portrays her as a fiscally conservative liberal who believes in “the right of equal access to marriage for everyone” as well as reducing Maine’s dependence on government organizations to create jobs in the currently turbulent economy. Honestly she seems pretty moderate, despite the “D” affixed to her name, so in an effort to discredit her in any way possible, the Maine Republican Party has launched a website dubbed “Colleen’s World” that cherrypicks out of context quotes taken from Lachowicz’ online existence to paint her as some kind of morally reprehensible monster. Most crucially, given that we’re paid to write about games, the Republicans seem particularly fond of things Lachowicz has written online about her experience playing an Orc rogue in Blizzard’s wildly successful World Of Warcraft.

The Republicans even went so far as to issue a press release (and flyers akin to the image seen above) collecting the highlights of the baffling smear campaign. While we’re not about to reprint the release verbatim, we will share with you a few choice quotations that the Republicans seem particularly fond of:

• So I’m a level 68 orc rogue girl. That means I stab things . . . a lot. Who would have thought that a peace-lovin’, social worker and democrat would enjoy that?!
• I like to stab things and I’m originally from NJ…. what’s your f***ing point?!
• Yes, join us! We’re progressive… in fact we joke about being a socialist guild.

In fairness, some of the highlights collected by the Republicans are actually politically relevant:

• Now if you’ll excuse me, I may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown him in my bath tub.
• Or my dream from election season last year where John McCain sat at my childhood dining room table and I reamed him a new a**hole about Sarah Palin.

“These are some very bizarre and offensive comments, and they certainly raise questions about Lachowicz’s maturity and her ability to make serious decisions for the people of Senate District 25,” writes Maine Republican Party spokesman David Sorensen at the end of the PR blast.

 

For her part, Lachowicz has responded to the Republican allegations with the kind of bewildered disbelief that many of you are no doubt currently experiencing. “I think it’s weird that I’m being targeted for playing online games. Apparently I’m in good company since there are 183 million other Americans who also enjoy online games. What’s next? Will I be ostracized for playing Angry Birds or Words with Friends? If so, guilty as charged,” Lachowicz wrote on her website.

 

“What’s really weird is that the Republicans are going after my hobbies instead of talking about their record while they’ve been running Augusta for the last two years,” she adds. “Instead of talking about what they’re doing for Maine people, they’re making fun of me for playing video games. Did you know that more people over the age of 50 play video games than under the age of 18? As a gamer, I’m in good company with folks like Jodie Foster, Vin Diesel, Mike Myers, and Robin Williams. Maybe it’s the Republican Party that is out of touch.” Lachowicz then proceeds to quote statistics from both the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and the Christian Science Monitor that support her claims.

 

Now, normally we’d hate to take sides in such an obliquely political argument as this — we write about video games, so who wants to hear our thoughts on governmental propriety? —  but our ability to reason logically and read through biases forces us to point out the absurdity of this attack. Any of who have you played World Of Warcraft (or any MMO for that matter) likely read Lachowicz’ above quotes with a knowing shrug. If you play as a rogue in these games, stabbing and poisoning virtual enemies is simply what you do. It’s like playing Super Mario Bros. and claiming that you spend your free time lighting turtles on fire and collecting cash left lying around by giant anthropormorphic lizards.

 

As Lachowicz points out, this campaign against her paints the Maine Republican Party as utterly out of touch, though unfortunately for Lachowicz the Republicans often rely on voters equally as out of touch with modern trends as they are to flood the polls and drown out the comparatively small number of young, “hip” voters who are statistically more likely to lean toward the liberal side of the aisle. While we wish Lachowicz all the luck in the world in impressing upon the people of Maine that her gaming hobby has nothing to do with her abilities as a senatorial candidate, our cynicism toward politics as a whole has us worried that the Republican attacks might be as effective as they are silly.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Want To Sell More? Do Not Make These Mistakes

So, you wish to make a lot of money. That is cool but in order to achieve this, you have to be really good at sales and marketing. Oh, good is not just enough anymore; you need to be exceptional at it. But before you start learning the tricks of how to be a hotshot marketer, you need to learn what you should not be doing while marketing your products. Sometimes, you do not have to be exceptional at selling to make a lot of money, rather you should be aware of some common mistakes that can undone the whole process. Want to have a look at those mistakes that can derail your marketing endeavour? Here they go:

Opportunity is not easy to come by: You may have the best product or the best deal in the market but you need to find out the prospective buyers otherwise, how you will be able to see its sales volume shooting through the roof. You need to have an idea of who are your potential customers, how you are going to reach out to them or what they like and dislike the most, your marketing effort will be going nowhere. So, take your time, do extensive marketing research, figure out the potential audience who might be interested in your proposal and they go on a killing spree.
I have seen how my friend – Paul’s marketing campaign kissed the ground when he made the same mistake. He was selling new strawberry flavor candy and he was marketing that thing in different universities across Houston. Quite expectedly, the grown up guys seemed do not mind checking the taste of those beautiful candies. So, I believe that now you can understand why you should not be marketing your products to audience who might be least interested in your products.

Do not say “Yes” all the time:  Yes, I know they are your valuable customers but that does not mean that you would act like a “Yes man” all the time. Do not be that cheap. Rather you learn to say NO whenever it is required. But I know how you feel when a customer makes a request. Most marketers fall into this prey and says Yes just to get the person converted but this is like walking on eggshells. Because once a request is met, the customer will continue to press you until you start creaking. Apart from costing you money and your valuable time, it will make the customer bold enough to make unreasonable request because he knows that you will eventually oblige.

So, the sooner you start saying No to customers, the better it is for your career and marketing campaign. Moreover, if you promise something and then you finally realize that you will not be able to meet that you will make your customers angry and unhappy. Do not do that, say clearly what is possible for you to deliver and what is not in a polite way and believe me you will not lose your customers.

Do not Give them All: A confused person cannot be your customer. So, make sure that you are not making your customers confused with details that are unnecessary. Master the art of delivering your message to your targeted audience in a clear way. Do not try to look smart by using some tough technical jargons. When you are pitching your customers, you need to make sure that you are telling them exactly what they are looking for. Have the draft ready before you start addressing the customers so that you do not start fumbling in the middle. Make it short and nice full of cliff hanging moments that will help you seize the attention of the visitors.

 

Do not lose focus: While communicating your message to your targeted audience, you need to make sure that you are not wasting your time chitchatting with people. You should try to get your message across to them since you cannot have their undivided forever.  Obviously, you should not be speaking business all the time but you should at least try to make sure you have spread your message to them successfully and when you have spear time in hand, you can spend some time with them to build a better relation.

Wait for the opportunity: Take sales like Dating. You should not be desperate while wooing a girl and the same rule is applicable when you are trying to sell your product or service. Try to make an appearance that you are not that much interested in selling things or have enough customers who will be lining up to have your product. Do not pushy all the time, as it is a big turn off and make people aversive to your service.

Author Bio
Michael Evans is a passionate Writer and social media analysts. He works for Webarts, which is a Cyprus Social Media company. 

Tags: Ecommerce

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

$100,000 worth of iPhone 5 units stolen in Japan just before launch

Wait in line for the iPhone 5, exposed to the elements? Wait 3-4 weeks for your pre-order to go through? Nah, someone is Japan decided to go Gone in 60 seconds. Three stores that were going to sell Apple’s latest smartphone in the same night were hit and all but two of their handsets went missing.

The total damage is estimated at 7.45 million yen, nearly $100,000. That sounds like a lot, but it’s only 191 iPhone 5 units that are gone. Here’s what happened.

The first store was a KDDI au store which was hit at 2:30 AM and robbed of 42 iPhone 5s with only two left behind. Later, around 3 AM another au store was was wiped clean of its 33 iPhone 5s. Police was called around this time, with info that three men were acting suspiciously.

Finally, at 4:24 AM three men hit a Softbank store and took off with 116 iPhone 5 units, as seen on security camera footage. The police is still to announce if these three men are the same as the ones from the second KDDI store.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Southern Africa’s Premier Cloud Event For IT Leaders

The Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa offers innovative resources, ideas and best practice case studies enabling your enterprise to apply them immediately in order to leverage the cloud, assisting you in maximising performance, minimising costs and improving the scale of your projects. Improving resource utilisation through virtualising IT infrastructures is fast becoming precedence for enterprises, globally. Successful deployment requires upfront preparation and strategising when carefully determining the appropriate infrastructure components and architecture for the enterprise. The summit will allow attendees to discover the basic concepts behind cloud and virtualisation, the potential enterprise benefits and key decisions associated with virtualisation projects, and exactly how to get started with virtualisation assessment. 

Event           Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa

Date            10 to 11 October 2012

Venue          Hilton Hotel, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa

Website       http://www.cloudsummit.co.za/

The summit has been strategically developed to enable the convergence of enterprise and technology leaders, allowing attendees to explore the future of IT with cloud and virtualisation, and how cloud computing is fundamentally transforming the way in which we think about, acquire and use computing resources. The summit will allow senior executives to discover appropriate levels of enterprise cloud computing engagement, and how they can be deployed alongside existing static deployments of hardware and software. Share experiences with internationally renowned guests and industry experts, providing invaluable opportunities to discover next-generation transformations from a cutting edge conference agenda addressing critical industry cloud computing, virtualisation and enterprise-related issues. Best practice case studies presented by industry leaders and experts, while taking advantage of the unrivalled networking opportunities with executive peers within the African industry. 

Invited speakers include; 

	Dr Happy Sithole Centre of High Performance Computing, South Africa Director		Willem van Biljon Co-Founder & Vice President of Products Nimbula
	Simon Hudson Indwe Risk Services Executive Head: Business Improvement & Group CIO		Derrick Plank Founder ClearSpace Consulting
	Doug Vela Ubank CIO		Rocky Gwewera Senior Manager: Enterprise Architecture Development Sasol
	Tshidi Modiragale Mutual & Federal Insurance Limited Company IT Risk and Compliance		Rohan Isaacs Director Norton Rose South Africa
	Pat O’Callaghan Group IT Infrastructure Manager De Beers		Malcolm MacDonald CIO I-Net Bridge
	Shaybaaz Kumandan Group IT Manager NBC Holdings		Hrusostomos Vicatos Managing Director Victree
	Kim Andersen Principal Advisor CXO Advisor		Trevor Cronje CEO RentWorks
	Seaparo Phala CIO Department of Arts and Culture		Neville Perry CIO Bancabc

 I would like to offer you a full day press pass, with full access to the conference agenda to share with your audience. Please find all of the information including banners, logos, industry information, and videos at www.cloudsummit.co.za.

If you need more information, would like to interview the summit producer, or any of our guest speakers, please let me know. I will do my best to make it happen. If you are able to post or tweet, please send me the link so we can post it on our website. 

Media accreditation registration 

To register, please send a return e-mail to (or reply to this e-mail) shaunei@kineticevents.net with the following details for issuing of the media accreditation document;

*Full name:

*Position:

*Company Name / Publication / Media House:

Contact number:

*E-mail address:

Official Twitter handle:

*Would you like to be added to our mailing list for press releases, updates and announcements? Yes / No

If yes, please specify the e-mail address to add to our mailing list:

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Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

You Can Now Pre-Order the iPhone 5

Image credit: ABC News.

If it is 3:01 a.m. ET or past that time, you can now pre-order the iPhone 5 from Apple, Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint’s websites. No matter where you shop, the 16GB model will start at $199 with a two-year contract. Apple will offer an unlocked version of the phone — one that isn’t tied to a carrier — for more money but it isn’t expected to go on sale today.

While it will be late at night for many, lots of people are expected to get up in the wee hours of the morning, fork over their credit card numbers and order the phones. The iPhone will actually ship to those who order in one week, on Friday, Sept. 21st.

The new phone, which was announced earlier this week, has a number of new features, including a larger 4-inch display, LTE, a faster processor, improved camera and a new design. You can check out our guide to the top new features here.

Even before the phone was announced, iPhone owners began to sell their phones on sites like Gazelle and Glyde. According to those sites, iPhone sales have been at an all-time high over the last few weeks as people prepared to buy the new phone. Analysts predict that Apple could sell as many as six to 10 million iPhone 5s before the end of September.

Apple and the cellular carriers will begin selling the phone in stores on Sept. 21st at 8 a.m. ET. And in typical Apple product launch fashion, lines are expected.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

3G Nexus 7 said to arrive in around six weeks

The Nexus 7 is pretty much the best Android tablet available in the market right because it does so much for so little. But in order to reach that low price point some compromises had to be made, which included having no 3G connectivity at launch.

But it seems that will soon be remedied, as apparently a 3G model of the Nexus 7 is on its way. According to Paul O’Brien at MoDaCo, a 3G version of the Nexus 7 will launching in six weeks from now. The rest of the specifications are said to be identical to the current Nexus 7 tablet.

He did not have any information regarding the pricing and the launch date for the 3G model. It’s also unknown which markets this model will be released in, that is, if it will be limited to a single or multiple US carriers only. Hopefully, Google won’t do what they did with the Verizon Galaxy Nexus because that did not turn out well for anyone.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Guidelines on Advanced SEO Techniques To Increase Business

In the internet dominated modern society we live in today, it is imperative for a company to have a strong online presence in order to succeed in business. Most of the traffic to any site, at least initially, is generated by search engine results. Hence it is paramount to design the site in such a way that it ranks among the top one or two pages for any relevant search result. To achieve this goal, SEO techniques are implemented. Although many people are aware of the basic SEO methods, there are some advanced techniques that can really boost the amount of traffic to a marketing blog or a business site.

Set your content apart from the crowd with Author Markup

Author Markup is the latest offering by Google that attempts to bring all the content written by a writer under a single author profile. A Blogger or writer using author markup appears differently in Google search results with his profile picture, link to his Google+ profile and link to access more of his content. This immediately attracts the attention of the user increasing the chances of him clicking the marked up result significantly. It can be a little tricky to implement author markup but there are several good tutorials available over the net that can help setting up an author markup profile.

Know More about your audience with double-click Ad Planner

Getting to know what the target audience of your blog are currently interested in can be the biggest advantage in creating a successful blog. Posting a relevant URL to Google Double-click Ad Planner instantly generates a large list of websites pertaining to the same topic. Participating in those sites actively can give you more than a fair idea about the current trend of the moment and you can create contents for your blog according to that information. This is a very useful tool for creating appealing contents for you marketing blog.

Use hi-res images for increased traffic

According to a 2011 report by Technorati State of the Blog, almost 90% of the blogs across the web have some kind of media content in them and images are the most popular among all media formats used. Using attractive high resolution photos in your blog can actually generate more traffic and backlinks than you thing its worth. This is evident from the success of Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog that was chosen as one of the best blogs of 2011 by Time. So find relevant and high quality photos to accompany your blog content and see the traffic increase slowly but surely.

Think beyond facebook and Twitter

When it comes to marketing their blogs on social networking sites, many people are unable to think beyond Facebook and Twitter. But there is a large community of niche sites that provide the users with relevant blog posts and URL’s according to their preferences. Sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Pinterest and Tumblr dish out billions of page views every month. Participating in such sites can not only generate some extra traffic for your website, but similar to Ad Planner, you will also get a fair idea of the trending interests and topics of the moment.

Incorporating the appropriate SEO techniques in the initial stages while you design the website makes it easier to implement them effectively. At this stage, the meta-tags, title tags, URLs etc that are significant for better ranking can be handled to generate the maximum possible traffic.

Author Bio – Jerry Lawrence is an Article writing professional specializing in SEO and targeting the most effective and up-to-date online marketing techniques with a keen interest in the Link Building strategies.

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 Student Edition will hit the shelves of select retailers tomorrow

In order to get a piece of the currently ongoing “back to school” sales frenzy in the United States, Samsung has released a Student Edition of its Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 slate. Set to go on sale in select retailers tomorrow, the tablet’s special edition bundle includes $100 worth of free accessories and an exclusive glossy white color.

The abovementioned free accessories include a keyboard dock and USB adapter, which supports USB flash drives, as well as peripherals such as USB mice. The price of the tablet has not been changed. Samsung is still asking the highly acceptable $249.99 for it.

While many will say that this is Google Nexus 7 money, keep in mind that Samsung’s offering features a microSD card slot, which might make a lot of difference for students. You can check out our review of the slate here.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com