You know that Google Alert you set up to ping you every time someone mentions your name on the internet? Don't worry, that wasn't self-centered or anything, you were just protecting your online identity. Google today is encouraging the growth of vanity Alerts with its "Me on the Web" feature, a new segment of Google Dashboard dedicated to managing your online identity and finding out what people are saying about you on the global bathroom wall that is the world wide web. The feature makes it easy to set up alerts with your personal information and includes links to tools for identity management and content removal, because the seven billion other people on this planet don't need to know exactly what happened at your office's last Christmas party.

Google helps you manage your online identity, justify those vanity Alerts originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So you've got this hot new "super app" off BlackBerry App World, and want to share it with a friend? You could message them the name of the program, but that's so 2010. Soon, BlackBerry's going to have its very own "Gift This App" functionality through BBM, which will let you take advantage of that handy new carrier billing to debit the cost of the item and wing it to your recipient. RIM envisions the functionality used by parents who want to limit their children's access too, by taking full control of their purchases and subscriptions from their own remote handset. Now, we'll just sit back, relax and wait for RIM to ping us with a release date. PR after the break.

Continue reading RIM adding BBM app gifting to BlackBerry App World

RIM adding BBM app gifting to BlackBerry App World originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Living in the digital-world definitely has its downsides, often resulting in you losing patience with delivery men when they fail to deliver mail within the allocated window. Here's how to rig your mailbox for sending iPhone alerts. [Make via BB] More »

It looks like Apple’s musical social network — Ping — is getting integrated with an actual social network, Twitter (burn). Via a post on the company’s blog, Twitter announced that users of Ping and Twitter would be able to link their respective accounts from within iTunes. Once linked, users have the ability to alert their followers of songs, artists, or albums they like or review. As Twitter explains, activity on Ping will “be tweeted to your Twitter followers” and include “playable song previews and links to purchase and download music from iTunes.” The new feature is available in all 23 countries where Apple’s iTunes Music Store is offered.

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When Apple announced Ping back in September, some heralded it as another brilliant move from Apple that would keep people immersed in the iTunes experience and bolster music sales. Most people, however, didn’t seem to care. Ping is Apple’s social network focused on music — described by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as “Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes”. It allows users to follow friends and artists to see what they’re listening to. More importantly, it allows users to then buy the tracks shared by those they follow with minimal effort. We don’t personally know anyone who uses the service however, and it looks like we now know why. Apple sent out an email to iTunes users today in an effort to remind them, well, that Ping exists. The email states that Ping “already has millions of users” and that it’s “growing fast”, but we don’t recall receiving emails like this when Apple has launched successful products and services in the past.

We've heard that Apple launched Ping without Facebook support because the two companies couldn't agree on some terms, but today AllThingsD explains that Apple actually ignored the fact that negotiations failed and incorporated Facebook's API—until Facebook blocked things. More »

Apple certainly took its sweet time releasing iTunes 10 yesterday, and we're beginning to think it's because the company was making a last-second change to its new Ping social-network-for-music: the removal of Facebook Connect for finding friends. Seriously -- although an option to find friends via Facebook was conspicuously present during Steve's keynote demos, it's not there anymore. Oddly, the option was there at the very beginning -- several Engadget staffers definitely saw a Facebook button when they signed up for Ping last night, and there's a whole thread on Apple's support site of people who also saw it and are now wondering where it's gone.

Just to make things even more confusing, Kara Swisher at All Things D got two very different statements from Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller at the event yesterday: Schiller was enthusiastic about finding friends via Facebook, while Jobs said Zuckerberg and co. were demanding "onerous terms" that Apple refused. We're assuming Jobs was talking about something deeper than just finding friends via Connect, but it's still all very strange -- and as it stands, finding friends on Ping right now requires a fair bit of guesswork and searching, so we're hoping this all gets sorted soon. Check the video of Phil Schiller talking about Facebook and Ping after the break, as well as a snap of it (sort of) working from last night.

Continue reading Why did Apple take Facebook Connect out of Ping?

Why did Apple take Facebook Connect out of Ping? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Call us crazy, but it seems as if the FCC has been earning its keep of late, and the toiling continues today with an effort meant to address "bill shock." For those unaware, bill shock is a phenomena on par with bitter beer face in terms of significance, and it typically occurs when you accidentally roam internationally, text well beyond your monthly limit or burn through your minutes within the first week of your billing period. 'Course, some would argue that you -- as a functioning human being -- should keep tabs on how often you use your own mobile, but we wouldn't kvetch with a heads-up here and there so long as these alerts are cheap and easy to implement. As of today, the Consumer Task Force is listening for solutions, and while some carriers already ping you when you leave the country and are about to incur severe roaming charges, that practice is far from uniform. Too bad such a service would essentially nix your ability to play the ignorance card when you get back from that jaunt to Mexico, eh?

Continue reading FCC task force seeks to squash 'bill shock,' give you the 411 on impending overages

FCC task force seeks to squash 'bill shock,' give you the 411 on impending overages originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have been working to update the current version of Window mobile Phone locator.

Our main vision with this software is for it to be a very light weight program that you can keep running in the background, and that will take up very few resources.

Additionally a small footprint will allow us to keep battery usage down as well as minimize the need to power on either the GPS radio, or the Cell radio- as each are tremendious drains upon ones cell phone battery.

Some main features we hope to incorporate:

- Ability to send a emergency txt/sms to your lost / stolen cellphone, that would trigger it to send back a gps location or to keep trying until it can get a gps signal.

- Ability to set the “ping� interval - thus controling how often your phone reports its location to this site under normal usage.

Again the key here is to make a free, lightweght program that allows us Window Mobile users to have some kind of premitive tracking abililty with out phone, with out slowing down the acutal phone or killing the battery life.

keep checking back for more info! or contact us below if you have any questions / suggestions.

tks