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Businesses

Submission + - Twitter Users Can Now Buy Followers

Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that uSocial, a social media marketing company based in Australia, has launched a paid service to find followers for Twitter users for a fee of $87 for a block of 1,000. The company finds potential followers by searching through Twitter to discover areas of common interest to match people more closely. uSocial then send these potential followers a message, alerting them that there is someone on Twitter they might want to follow and the potential follower then decides whether or not to follow that person. "A woman who runs yoga classes is one of our clients," says Leon Hill, chief executive of uSocial,. "So are some religious organizations including one man that just wants to get the word out about God. Twitter started as a way for just friends to keep in touch, but as with any social media site once they get big, every business or marketer jumps on the bandwagon. It's an excellent marketing medium." Some commentators have expressed concerns that this sort of practice could lead to an increase in "Twitter spam", as users are bombarded with irrelevant tweets. "As a Twitter user, I only want to follow people whose tweets I like, and only expect to be followed by people who find my tweets worth the time," writes Harry McCracken, a technology expert. "I know that I'd rather have fifty engaged followers than 5,000 whose attention I had to pay for.""

Comment Re:i would, but data plan is risky & incompreh (Score 1) 384

Murky and Incomprehensible: Can anyone surf one of the Android sites and figure out WTF plans you actually need to run these phones and what it will cost per year? It's worse than buying a house. I'd rather try to figure out the federal deficit.

Do you go to symbian.com to find information about plans for smartphones running Symbian? If you want to know you should go to the carrier's website, not the phone OS's website or the phone manufacturer's website. If you have a problem with the carrier's website that's alright, but no need to blame Android for that. It probably sucked before Android.

Risky: I keep reading these stories about people who traveled and came home to discover a phone bill larger than my annual salary. Sorry, but I am not going to risk my financial well-being to own a whizzy phone..

This can happen with any smartphone. If you roam and use the data connection it gets expensive. There is an option in the phone called 'Disable Data Roaming.' It has been there since day one, and anyone who racked up huge charges obviously did not check this box before they left the country.

Moon

NASA Wants Fast Moonbuggies and Solid Lunar Lander 117

coondoggie writes "NASA may have its eyes on the Sun and Mercury this week but it is clearly focusing on the moon for the future. NASA is soliciting proposals from the scientific and aerospace communities for design ideas for its next lunar lander. NASA officials said the Altair spacecraft will deliver four astronauts to the lunar surface late during the next decade. According to NASA Altair will be capable of landing four astronauts on the moon, providing life support and a base for weeklong initial surface exploration missions, and returning the crew to the Orion spacecraft that will bring them home to Earth. And while they won't be flying to the moon but rather flying around the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., the space agency has set April 4-5 as the dates for 'The 15th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race'. The race is for high school and college teams where they build and race their lightweight, two-person lunar vehicles. More than 40 student teams from 18 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and India have already registered." My proposal just features a domo-kun mouth and giant pink ears attached to an El Camino. Money please!
Portables

Submission + - Best Linux Laptop

kcbanner writes: "I have been waiting to purchase my next laptop for quite some time now and have been wondering: What is the best brand/model of laptop to run Linux? This would mean all the devices are supported by the stock Linux kernel, without any ugly binary blobs needed. I am also a game developer, so it would need to have a fairly recent nVidia graphics card with generous amounts of RAM. It doesn't have to have Linux preinstalled (in fact I would prefer that it didn't). So whats the best laptop for Linux?"
Google

Submission + - Google Unveils TiSP

martinelli writes: "Google has finally unveiled TiSP, a "a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines." Hopefully, this is not another Google Labs project that gets flushed down the drain. http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html"
Movies

Submission + - TRON movie withdrawn by DHS

sincewhen writes: According to an article on kuro5hin, copies of the movie TRON are being withdrawn at the request of the DHS.


Reports are emerging from members of the movie industry that the Department of Homeland Security has designated the 1982 film TRON as "sensitive", and ordered Walt Disney Studios to turn over all copies of the film in its posession. Retailers are also receiving notices to remove all copies of the film from stock shelves and turn them over to Federal officials. The reports have industry insiders bewildered and outraged.

Since the article is dated 29th March, this is NOT supposed to be an April Fools item.
Graphics

Nvidia To Recall Every 8800 GTX/GTS Card 134

SlashRating©
42
slashdottit! tm
Bill Stubbs writes "NVIDIA has admitted to a killer bug in all GeForce 8800GTX/GTS cards, and will recall all affected cards and replace them. 'An NVIDIA engineer, who wishes to remain anonymous, has just clued us in on the whole deal. This engineer claims that while allegations of poor gaming performance are correct, the reason is not really poor drivers. Brace yourself for the truth: Right after the G80 was taped out, NVIDIA discovered a bug in the vertex shader that causes the GPU to generate slightly incorrect geometry transformation data. The difference was minimal enough to escape attention but it was significant enough to render a scene incorrectly.' The article also links to a secret website which will allow gamers to purchase Nvidia cards at cost."

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