Leave it to Apple to completely avoid CES, yet be one of the largest stories surrounding its dates. Much like last year's invite to what would eventually be the introduction of Verizon's iPhone 4, All Things D has it on good authority that the folks in Cupertino are spending their first hours back on the job planning a "media-related announcement" for later this month. Contrary to earlier beliefs, we're told that this particular event won't be related to the next-gen iPad, and it's also "unlikely" to be connected to a "large-scale rethinking of its interactive television initiative."
So, knowing what it won't entail... what will be talked about? According to unnamed sources, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue is reportedly involved. For those unaware, Cue is responsible for a sizable chunk of Apple's media units, not the least of which include the App Store, iBookstore, iTunes Store and iCloud. Sadly, details outside of that are few and far betwixt, but you can bet we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for more -- even if it's smack-dab in the middle of a Sony CES keynote. Cough. Apple gearing up for 'media-related announcement' later this month? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | All Things D | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/02/apple-media-related-announcement-this-mont...
Google will officially announce its online information hub for political elections on Monday, a day before the Iowa Caucuses. It is the first website Google has dedicated exclusively to elections.
The new website has both Egyptian and U.S. editions. Google will post content from the later version on a large screens throughout the Media Filing Center at the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday.
That information includes news articles sorted by candidate and issue, links to voter resources such as the political calendar and YouTube politics channel and a trends dashboard that shows search trends, news mentions and YouTube views for each candidate.
“As Nov. 6, 2012, draws closer, the site will evolve into a robust election hub where citizens can watch, learn, discuss, participate — and perhaps even make an impact on — the digital campaign trail as it blazes forward to the election of the next President of the United States,” a Google spokesperson wrote in a statement to Mashable.
Google’s offline presence in Iowa will extend beyond its display of its online resources. From a sponsored section of the Filing Center, it will conduct live hangouts with journalists who are covering the 2012 elections. The company is also serving them food from local restaurants.
Surrounded by media and politics, Google will be quite at home at the Filing Center. According to Pew, the company is the biggest driver of traffic to top news sites. It’s also taken steps toward becoming not just a referrer, but a destination for political information with campaign tools, a dedicated YouTube channel and virtual town halls.
Will you be heading to Google’s new election site to learn about candidates in the 2012 election, or will you navigate directly to more traditional sources?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke
More About: 2012 election, Google, Iowa caucuses, Politics 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/02/google-launches-new-site-2012-presidential-ele...
Jindrich Liska is founder and CEO of Jobmagic, a leading social recruiting platform which enables employers to hire candidates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Jindrich has pioneered many social recruiting approaches which are now used worldwide by brands such as Disney, J.Crew and Compuware.
The 2011 job market is ending on a positive note. With unemployment shrinking to a mere 8.6% — its lowest level since May 2008 — and a steadily growing economy, businesses are planning on hiring and recruiting even more as their confidence in customer demand builds.
In this new, growing market, those seeking their next dream job should cultivate their presence and contacts strategically in places where employers will be on the lookout for the best talent. According to the MSU survey [PDF] of more than 3,000 companies conducted last month, social media has flourished as a burgeoning recruitment strategy, becoming a more mainstream approach for companies of all sizes and industries, even the most conservative. For job seekers, social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter have established new ways getting discovered by employers, as well as directly reaching recruiters and hiring managers.
Here’s the scoop on what job seekers should know in order to be successful in today’s digital job market.
Your Social Media Profiles Are as Important Your Resume (If Not More Important)
The MSU report asserts that 36% of companies surveyed are using social media for recruiting. In today’s competitive market, recruiters look for the most current information on candidates, which is readily and easily available on social networks. Job seekers should actively include links to their complete and up-to-date Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter profiles in their applications. When creating your profiles, do not just import your resume — it often contains too much detailed information. Rather, build your profile from scratch with a concise description of your prior experience to grab a recruiter’s attention. To make yourself more discoverable, search engine optimize your title and skills.
Be sure to use social news streams as a dynamic extension of your traditional resume. Employers are interested in candidates who are passionate about their work. Job hopefuls should share interesting and relevant news about your industries and areas of expertise, demonstrating their knowledge and establishing yourself as an essential player in the fields. While the social news dialogue ought to maintain a professional tone, you should also reveal yourself to be a fun, authentic individual.
80% of Success is Showing up
Social media enables us to stand out, to be more noticeable, to differentiate ourselves from the masses and to tell the whole story behind and beyond a one-page resume. When contributing to your news streams and profiles, choose current topics of interest, start participating in discussions about your professional field and industry trends, and share your own hands-on tricks of the trade. Many companies are now making use of Facebook Pages that are dedicated exclusively to careers and hiring. These pages are generally run by recruiters and talent acquisition professionals that are looking to attract and hire candidates. Savvy job seekers should make use of these pages and proactively ask questions about job openings, the specifics of a company’s interview process, or any upcoming career events. Responses are generally instantaneous, and you will quickly establish connections within the company.
Additionally, every field has its own industry thought leaders broadcasting on Twitter. You should follow the influencers in your field, contribute to the discussion and share it with others who might be interested. Take advantage of @-mention feature to keep participants engaged and include hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets.
You should also join LinkedIn Groups related to your field or moderated by a company you are interested in. Since hiring managers are always on the lookout for team players, you should establish a reputation by sharing your opinion, answering questions and offering advice in the group discussion forums. Join specific company groups to gain additional insight and keep up on the latest hiring news. Recruiters are very active in these groups, and taking steps to establish a positive LinkedIn presence will help to assure that you get a call.
Social Networks Enable Direct Interaction
There was a time when contacting recruiters on job sites and boards was difficult, and proactively reaching out to hiring managers was nearly impossible. Social media has created a culture of openness, and has all but eliminated the ‘black hole’ that resumes have fallen into for decades. Many companies even highlight their recruiters on job postings; not only can you contact a recruiter directly, but you can often view recruiters’ and hiring managers’ social media profiles before contacting them.
Job seekers need to connect to recruiters who are hiring in their field and location. If you don’t know them directly, subscribe to them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to stay current on all job openings, and work towards developing a positive relationship with them.
Your Networks Help You Find Jobs (and Help Employers Find You)
More companies than ever are cutting their job advertising budgets, opting to channel their recruiting efforts through referral hiring. The MSU report indicates that 44% of companies use referral hiring, and 49% tap into alumni networks in order to recruit. Companies are drawing on their employee’s social networks to share jobs and attract the most qualified candidates. The more extensive your personal network is, the greater your odds of encountering these unadvertised job opportunities.
Grow your networks by reaching out and connecting to people with whom you have either professional or personal relationships. If you don’t know the person well, begin by subscribing to their feed or ask a friend for an introduction. As in real life, opportunities can arise from any connection — a co-worker, a friend, a neighbor, etc. Many companies publish their job openings and career events on their Facebook Pages, so connect to the pages of companies that are of interest to you to start receiving active job openings in your news feed with little effort.
With the economy on the mend and hiring rates rising, job seekers should not hesitate to break into the social media sphere. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter offer an abundance of ways to connect with companies, foster your professional reputation, gain exposure to job postings, and ultimately, realize your professional aspirations. Establish your online professional brand and presence now. Your dream job is waiting for you.
Social Media Job Listings
Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!
More About: contributor, Facebook, job search series, jobs, profiles, Twitter 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/01/digital-market-job-seeker/?utm_source=feedburn...
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Small business and startup employees are constantly on the go. They need quick, mobile solutions for scanning, storing, organizing and sharing important documents.
Eager to empty that box full of receipts? Looking for an easy and secure way to send signed documents? We’ve found eight apps and tools that seamlessly scan and file your most important documents and keepsakes. Best of all, most of them integrate with proven file hosts Dropbox and Evernote.
What other tools have proved useful when scanning and integrating your own documents?
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/01/scan-documents-apps/?utm_source=feedburner&utm...
wiredmikey writes with word (and the following extract from a CNN report) that "Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, sent a letter to Twitter on Thursday asserting that the company is violating U.S. law by allowing groups such as Hezbollah and al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab to use its popular online network. ... In her letter, Darshan-Leitner noted that Hezbollah and al-Shabaab are officially designated as terrorist organizations under U.S. law. She also cited a 2010 Supreme Court case — Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project — which upheld a key provision of the Patriot Act prohibiting material support to groups designated as terrorist outfits."

Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
from Slashdot http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/31/0255237/is-twitter-aiding-and-abettin...
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "RipoffReport.com contained an admittedly defamatory posting, by one of its users, about a person who operated a Florida corporation providing addiction treatment services. Although the site was asked by the poster herself to remove the post, it refused. A Florida appeals court has ruled that the site is absolutely immune from suit (pdf), and cannot even be directed to remove the offending post, since under the Communications Decency Act (47 USC 230) 'no cause of action may be brought' against a provider of an "interactive computer service" based upon information provided by a 3rd party."

Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
from Slashdot http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/29/2320209/court-rules-website-immune-fro...

Advertising itself as a cheaper Dropbox alternative with a better feature set, Insync has been in closed beta for the last 15 months. Now, they're finally ready to launch with a service that tightly integrates into Google Docs. It's "8x cheaper" than Dropbox, according to their marketing; in fact, the core service is now free, and customers who paid for the service during the beta period will be offered a refund or premium service credit. The only cost for basic membership is the cost of Google storage.
Insync brings a number of novel features to the table, differentiating it from Dropbox's current service. For example, you can share individual files with more granularity -- not just as public links, but specifying read-write or read-only permissions. You can also revoke a sharing link, which isn't possible on Dropbox unless you move or delete the shared file.
All your files live inside your Google Docs account, but that doesn't mean you're limited to the supported Google file types; any file can be synced over, as long as it's less than 10GB in size (assuming you have that much room in your storage allocation).
You can nest sharing privileges so people have access to just part of a folder structure. You can also set re-sharing permissions, specifying whether those you share with can re-share that material or not. Share recipients are not charged against their storage quota.
Insync supports multiple Google accounts and uses Google's storage system. Google starts with 1GB free storage, and then moves to 20GB for $5/year up to 16 TB for $4096/year. Dropbox's pricing rates includes 2GB free storage, and then jump to 50 GB paid storage at $10/month. Dropbox's 50 GB will cost you $120/year compared to Google's $20/year for 80 GB. That's $0.25 per GB per year for Google Docs versus $2 per GB per year for Dropbox.
To use Insync, you sign in with your Google credentials and permit it to gain access to Google Docs. You then download and install the client software on your computer. From there, you launch, link the Google account to your machine, and you're ready to go. On OS X, all your Google Docs appear in a Finder window.
In its current incarnation, Insync feels a lot like Dropbox, including its menu bar widget and small status indicators next to files (both Egnyte and Box.com use similar UI conventions for their respective cloud sync tools). If you're used to Dropbox, then you already know how to use Insync.
Dropbox-for-Google Insync leaves beta, goes free and opens doors for business originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/30/dropbox-for-google-insync-leaves-beta-and-open...
Biscotti TV Phone Box
 Click here to view this gallery. A cookie-shaped, easy-to-use, $199 video-conferencing solution is impressive, but wrapping it up in packaging that resembles a mash-up between Apple’s design elegance and Henny Youngman‘s penchants for one-liners is an altogether different level of accomplishment.
Introduced last month at the Consumer Electronics Association’s annual New York-based CES Unveiled preview event (CES 2012 kicks off on Jan. 9 in Las Vegas), the Biscotti TV Phone is a home video-conferencing gadget that works with your HDTV. Each biscotti-cookie-shaped unit cost $199 and works with any other unit via Biscotti’s proprietary network. You can also chat with anyone on GChat (sorry, no Skype). That’s all pretty cool and I’ll be test driving shortly to see if Biscotti works as advertised.
In the meantime, though, let’s all spend a moment oohing and ahhing over this extremely well-thought-out packaging. As with the best packaging, there’s little wasted space. Plus, the colors and retro design—brown paper bag-esque covering, red and white printing– almost invite you to open the box. This is straight from the Apple playbook, and we’ve seen similarly well-executed packing designs from Amazon, Jawbone, and Barnes and Noble. However, Biscotti diverges with some surprisingly playful touches in the packaging copy.
On the front it says, “It’s like reality TV. But with normal people. Well, almost normal people.” The bottom lists the product contents, including the TV Phone,” “Remote Control,” “and “Lots of Love.” The back shows the product sitting atop a TV and promises, “It’s tiny!” The Biscotti TV Phone is created, the box notes, “by loveable scientists in Texas.”
Inside the box, Biscotti drops the humor, but maintains the deft packaging touch. All the accessories are neatly packaged and the “Get Started” instructions, which are on a rather thick, foldable card, are written and illustrated in the simplest way imaginable. Biscotti is hoping for heavy adoption from tech-averse consumers, especially grandparents who want to talk to and see their kids but might not be comfortable figuring out Skype on their computer. The packaging, minimal accessories, super-simple setup guide and little touch of humor could help them succeed.
More About: apple, HDTV, video conferencing For more Entertainment coverage: 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/12/29/biscotti-the-best-product-packaging-since-the-...
SOPA Track is a new website that lets you find out where your elected officials stand on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). The tool also provides contact information and links to the social media profiles of all officials who are active on a major social network, such as Facebook or Twitter.
Users of the website can look up elected officials by state or get more focused results by using a street address. After searching, the site displays a list of your Congresspeople in the Senate and House of Representatives.
SOPA Track will tell you if your elected officials have expressly stated their support or disapproval of SOPA/PIPA along with the amount of money they’ve raised from pro and anti-SOPA organizations. An office phone number and links to each Congressperson’s social media profiles are also included.

The site was designed and built by Randy Meech of Brooklyn, NY. According to Meech, he was following the SOPA story very closely on news sites and on Reddit. Meech found SOPA/PIPA and the deliberation in Congress surrounding the bills “upsetting.”
“The debate felt rushed, sneaky and forced,” said Meech.
Meech said he liked the idea of an app which showed where local politicians stand on the issues that citizens care about. SOPA Track does exactly that.
Will SOPA Track be expanded any further? Not yet.
“The site’s basically done until a vote happens,” said Meech. “It’ll be a pivotal moment, and it’s been interesting to be a part [of it].”
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DHuss
More About: congress, SOPA, SOPA Track, stop online piracy act, US Congress 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/12/30/sopa-track-app/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medi...
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