Google Unites Gmail And G+ Chat Into “Hangouts” Cross-Platform Text And Group Video Messaging App
Today at I/O, Google rebranded "Hangouts" as a new unified, cross-platform messaging system. It lets people text, photo, and group video message across Hangouts' Android and iOS apps, plus its Gmail and Google+ site integrations. Hangouts rolls out today, replacing Google Talk [GChat] and G+ Messenger. While it doesn't support SMS yet, it could challenge Facebook Messaging and Apple's iMessage.
android
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Postable Offers An Alternative To The Handwritten “Thank You” Card, With Results That May Fool Your Nana
A handwritten note is becoming a lost art in the age of email, Facebook, SMS, and more messaging apps than you can count. But if anything, that rarity has only led to increase its value and perceived thoughtfulness, even as our penmanship skills decline. Today, a startup called Postable is bringing back the "handwritten" note with a service that allows you to type in handwriting fonts, then print to high-quality card stock.
facebook
nana
penmanship
postable
rarity
service
sms
thoughtfulness
ZipDial, The Missed-Call Leader In India, Adds Jungle Ventures To Seed Round And Launches In Sri Lanka
ZipDial, the company based in India that has turned missed calls into a business, has raised new funds from Jungle Ventures and launched its service in Sri Lanka. The company has clients like P&G and Disney, who have realized that the common social interaction of missed calls in India, are turning to ZipDial instead of focusing on driving likes to Facebook pages or chasing followers on Twitter. Basically, in a trend seen by ZipDial and others, people would communicate by calling one another and then hanging up. This is so that pre-paid cell minutes aren’t used up. For ZipDial customers who get their own numbers, consumers can call it, hang up and then receive an incoming text about the brand, which is free. When I met with its founder and CEO Valerie Rozycki Wagoner while visiting India, she made it clear that ZipDial was a company that could bring its learnings and services from India to new markets globally. With new funding from Jungle Ventures, the service has launched in Sri Lanka, ...
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sri lanka
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Burn Note Comes Back With A Vengeance, Aims To Protect Your Private Messages With New Mobile Apps
Way back in January 2012, a service called Burn Note launched, aiming to protect your private messages by destroying them after a certain period of time. Right around the same time, the concept of ephemeral messaging caught on with mainstream users with the launch, and mini-controversy, of Snapchat. While Snapchat allows you to send photos and videos that self-destruct, something that was copied executed quickly by Facebook, Burn Note is back and it’s still focused on the straight-up messaging aspect of communication. Today, Burn Note is launching new iOS and Android apps that have some really interesting features that limit the viewing area of messages to further protect them from getting screenshotted by the recipient. While this might sound overly paranoid, there is absolutely a useful place in the world for technology like this that has nothing to do with sexting. I spoke with Burn Note’s creator, Jacob Robbins, and he explained the new “Spotlight” approach to viewing a message, ...
android
back
communications
conversation
devices
facebook
intimacy
ios
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robbins
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Mediafed's Qrius Wants To Make RSS Subscriptions Easier, Give Publishers A Better Way To Distribute Their Content
The end of Google Reader is just a few weeks away, but RSS, the protocol that makes Reader and many other news readers tick, is alive and well. With its Qrius syndication service and the web and mobile news reader Taptu, Mediafed wants to help independent publishers to increase their distribution and make subscribing to news feeds easier. Currently about 130 out of the over 2,000 premium publishers that use Mediafed to monetize their feeds use Qrius and starting today, the service is also open for independent bloggers who want to use it on their sites. Besides making news feed subscriptions easier, Qrius also includes a number of social features that allow users to share feeds directly with their friends on Facebook, Twitter and by email and SMS. Mediafed also plans to work with premium bloggers to help them monetize their feeds. Given that Mediafed also owns Taptu, the two are closely linked together right now, but as Mediafed CEO Ashley Harrison told me earlier this week (before Google ...
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