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Backup and Sync Your iPhones and iPads in Anticipation of iOS 5 [In Brief]


Whether or not Apple will officially release iOS 5 at their special event tomorrow is still unclear, but in the event they do and you want to upgrade it's prudent to get everything backed up in anticipation. Why? In general, it's good practice to back up your iDevices before an update but iOS 5 also brings plenty of new wireless syncing options that could go horribly wrong. You can now sync with iTunes over Wi-Fi or to the cloud with iCloud. Additionally, iTunes Match—the feature that matches your iTunes Library with online copies for easy proliferation throughout your many machines and portable devices—could come with potential bugs and wipe out songs (or the entirety of) your music collection. It's unlikely that anything will go wrong and there's certainly no need to panic, but this is new technology we're talking about and it never hurts to be prepared in case something does happen. If you're looking forward to upgrading ASAP, spend a little time tonight getting ready so you'll be able to recover swiftly in the event of a problem. More »


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PhoneGap to become an Apache project as Adobe acquires Nitobi


Adobe has entered an agreement to acquire Nitobi, the startup behind PhoneGap. Alongside news of the acquisition, Adobe and Nitobi have jointly announced plans to donate the PhoneGap project to the Apache Software Foundation.

PhoneGap is an open source mobile development framework for building applications with standards-based Web technologies. The project provides a cross-platform Web runtime that allows application developers to reach multiple mobile operating systems with a single code base. It includes a custom API stack that enables platform integration and exposes device capabilities.

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TED Starts Search for Ads Worth Spreading



Can a compelling advertisement be as powerful as a remarkable idea? TED believes so. For the second year running, the idea-spreading non-profit is seeking the top 10 most fascinating advertisements worth spreading.

TED launched the “Ads Worth Spreading” challenge Monday and is inviting agencies, brands, producers and people to submit “work that expresses a clever, compelling or infectious idea” between Oct. 15 and Dec. 31.

The top spots will win online distribution in the form of air play on TED.com and YouTube. They’ll also be showcased to TED attendees. Plus, each finalist will receive a one day pass, complete with travel and lodging, to TED2012.

To ensure the highest quality submissions, TED has paired one TED speaker with one advertising industry expert to create six teams that will find and nominate dynamic ads in areas ranging from social good to storytelling.

“In our brave new interconnected world, the rules of marketing are changing fast,” explains Chris Anderson, TED Curator. “Ambush advertising is broken. We think there’s a better way based on sharing powerful ideas.”

TED will once again be teaming up with YouTube on the initiative. YouTube will feature the ad selections and create an art installation for TED2012, the non-profit’s annual prestigious conference to be held in March of 2012 in Long Beach, Calif.

Image courtesy of Flickr, PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

More About: Ads Worth Spreading, Advertising, TED

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Startup Provides Platform For Smart Political Debate, with a Secretary of State



Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has contributed opinion pieces to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Now you’ll find her in a less established forum, defending a recent op-ed on a brand new online debate platform called PolicyMic.

The site, which co-founders Christopher Altchek and Jake Horowitz launched in June, aims to give people — twentysomethings especially — a place for intelligent discussion of current events.

“After you leave college, there’s not a good place to debate current events,” Altchek says. “We started thinking about how everybody gets their current events from news sites, but nobody actually engages there … [Twitter and Facebook] are both great platforms, but they’re not built for meaningful exchange of ideas. On Twitter you are very restricted, and Facebook is hard to have back-and-forth debates that don’t get lost.”

PolicyMic removes discussions about the news away from news sites — where commenters are not exactly known for their insightful comments — and into a community that is somewhat self-curated. When a user first signs up, he or she is limited to 300 characters for their articles. Receiving more “Mics” (the equivalent of a Facebook “Like”) on his or her comments moves the user up the character-count-allotment totem poll. After 150 Mics, the user becomes a “pundit” and can publish articles of any length on the site. Pundits can also challenge other users to debates. So far, 450 of 1500 users have reached this level.

The site also brings in professors and other thought leaders to write guest articles. Sometimes these authors host “office hours” in which they discuss their articles with users. In Rice’s case, she responded to one question regarding the op-ed she published in the New York Times.

PolicyMic is not the only startup that’s set out to create a platform for intelligent discussion. TwoSides, Debate.org and Debatewise.com are just a few others. The general tone of the conversation on most of these sites, however, makes it unlikely that Rice will make an appearance.

PolicyMic has a big advantage: Its co-founders are well connected to thought leaders and intelligent young people who are aligned with both sides of the political aisle. Altcheck used to work for the Bush administration. Horowitz, who shares an alma mater (Stanford) with Rice, was a reporter for left-leaning advocacy site Change.org.

Together they’ve recruited the sort of community that will vote insightful comments to the top of the site and push down the crazies — producing quality free commentary. The question is whether such a system can scale.

“We do get the random crazy people who sign up for our site,” Altchek says, “but they get really frustrated because they have a small comment limit and nobody is giving them mics and allowing them to move up. They usually stop commenting.”

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

More About: Condoleezza Rice, PolicyMic

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Growl 1.3 now available on the Mac App Store


Growl, perhaps the most well-known and popular notification system for OS X, has just released version 1.3 as a Mac App Store exclusive. The previously free notification system has become a paid app with Growl 1.3. As Macstories points out, the reason the Growl team decided to make what was previously a free System Preferences pane into a US$1.99 app was so users would be provided with an up-to-date app utilizing the latest Apple technologies.

So what's new with Growl 1.3? Almost everything. Growl has been rewritten from the ground up using a new architecture, sporting a new UI, and adding lots of features previous iterations of Growl never had. But not to worry, Growl 1.3 still retains everything you loved about Growl 1.2, they've just added a lot of cool new features to it.

Among the coolest new features is a Notification Center-like Rollup window. The window, which is accessed from the Finder's menu bar (where you find Growl now), keeps a history of all your notifications that you've received from various apps that use Growl. This is especially handy when you're away from your computer and want to see what notifications you missed.

Growl 1.3 is $1.99 in the Mac App Store. Users also can still download the free System Preference pane version 1.2.2 here.

Growl 1.3 now available on the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sean Parker Is Now On Twitter: “Sorry Zuck”


parker

Sean Parker is getting a lot louder.

You’ve been hearing about him for a decade now — cofounder of Napster and Plaxo, founding President of Facebook, and most recently as an investor (and advocate) of Spotify. And he hasn’t pulled any punches during his conference appearances or interviews, either.

But now it looks like we’re going to be hearing directly from him on a much more regular basis: Parker just launched a Twitter account.

His first tweet, which you can see above, doesn’t need much in the way of an explanation (Scott Braun is a talent manager, who’s actually previously spoken at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC).

Zuckerberg probably won’t be getting too upset. Parker has recently posted some lengthy posts on his Facebook Page, for one (he’s up to 30,651 subscribers as of this writing). And Parker was responsible for giving Zuckerberg long-term control over Facebook using a novel equity structure. Something tells me they’re still on okay terms.

Obviously Parker’s tweet is part of a larger strategy (he’s also reportedly working on a blog). My hunch is that he’s eager to share his thoughts through channels that aren’t filtered by the press (as they are with media interviews).

Or maybe his agent just told him to.

 


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Yahoo and ABC News Join Forces


Yahoo and ABC News have announced an agreement to share content including stories and web videos.

Under the deal, announced Monday, Yahoo and ABC News will reach 100 million users a month and redistribute content including GoodMorningAmerica.com, which is now on Yahoo.

The two will also introduce original web video programming including Newsmakers, Around the World with Christiane Amanpour and This Could Be Big. The editorial teams from both will collaborate on co-branded content that will run on Yahoo News and ABC News sites.

The two companies’ traffic will be reported together. The two entities have worked together before. Since 2005, the two have had a video-sharing agreement.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, macida


More About: abc, Media, Yahoo

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