Mashable: Latest 7 News Updates - including “Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Could Be the Ultimate Gaming Mouse [PICS]” |
- Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Could Be the Ultimate Gaming Mouse [PICS]
- 9 Ways to Connect With Santa on the Web
- Holiday Tweet Drive Brings Toys and Food to Disadvantaged Kids
- Bank of America Blocks WikiLeaks Payments
- 23 Free, Web-Based Tools SMBs Are Asking for Now
- Weight Watchers Can Make Your Holiday Recipes Healthier With an iPad App
- 5 Unusual Ways to Use Dropbox You Might Not Have Thought Of
- Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week [CHART]
| Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Could Be the Ultimate Gaming Mouse [PICS] Posted: 18 Dec 2010 04:15 PM PST      Look out hardcore gamers — the Razer Naga Molten Edition Gaming Mouse is almost here. You’re probably already familiar with the Razer Naga Expert MMO Gaming Mouse released a year ago, but I’ll bet you haven’t seen it in its latest Molten Edition livery, glowing like a cinder from hell, emitting a deep red glow that’s certain to psych out even your boldest opponents. If you’re not familiar with the Naga series, this $80 mouse is one of the finest, most precise mice I’ve ever laid a hand on. It’s thick and thin in just the right places, and its scroll wheel gives you just the right amount of resistance and feels butter-smooth. Its left and right mouse buttons have the perfect click-feel, and its silky surface welcomes even the sweatiest palm. But that’s the same form factor as the current Naga mouse with its blue backlighting. This Razer Naga Molten Edition aims for the scary red look, and you can’t tell it from the pictures, but that molten lava-looking midsection glows as if it’s a breathing beast, its light fading up and down like it’s alive. While it looks hot as a two-dollar pistol, it feels cool to the touch. Enough about its appearance, what about its functions? In addition to its two extra thumb buttons on the top left, notice the 12 macro keys right where your thumb resides, programmable to the nth degree. Figure out what you want to have them do, and then record your actions, complete with pauses. Nothing new there, except it just works exceptionally well. If that’s not enough, download its custom interface add-ons or integrated in-game support for MMO games such as World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and City of Heroes. Why would you spend $80 on a mouse? In this case, a good reason is because the Razor Naga delivers precisely what its maker says it will: ergonomic form, maximum comfort, and the ultimate customizability. Bravo, Razer. Available January 5, 2011. Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Razer Naga M Configuration Screen More About: gaming, Macros, mice, MMO, mouse, Naga, Razer Naga Molten Special Edition Mouse, video games, WoW For more Tech coverage:
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| 9 Ways to Connect With Santa on the Web Posted: 18 Dec 2010 03:16 PM PST   You don’t have to head to the North Pole to hook up with Santa this year. There’s a sackful of online options that will let your little ones connect with the Claus from the comfort of your own home. Whether you want to write to Santa online, receive personalized video messages and calls or prove the man in red is real, we’ve found nine sites and services to help you out. So if you’ve got kids, or you’re just a big kid yourself, get in the Christmas spirit and have a read below to find the sites that will sort your online Santa needs this festive season. 1. E-mail Santa This is a great online service, as you get results right away, which anyone with impatient little ones will know can only be a good thing. Fill in the blanks of a standard “Dear Santa” letter, and moments later you’ll have a personalized reply from the big man himself to read on screen or print. 2. Send a Call From Santa With Google Voice After a relatively quick Q&A session asking the name, age, choice of gift (with some amusing answer options in the drop-down menus), this Google-backed service will generate a quality-sounding “call” for the rugrat(s) in your life. In reply, they can leave a message for Santa via a toll-free number. 3. Personalized Santa Video You do have to register for this Disney service, but it’s worth it, or will be when you see the look on children’s faces as their names and photos show up on Santa’s monitor, as he checks to see if they are on the nice list. They are, of course. 4. Smilebox’s Dear Santa Video Card Smilebox’s “Dear Santa” download makes your youngster the star of the show. You can customize the clip with personal info and then add adorable footage of your child cutely lisping through his or her Christmas wish list. Sharing options make the video easy to send to adoring grandparents, aunts and uncles too. 5. Santa’s Good List Interactive Quiz It’s the elves in the spotlight here as they take children through 12 questions to ascertain whether they’ve been good enough to get on the nice list. The service is password protected so you’ll need to hand over your e-mail to get a “key,” but once you do you can check in again anytime to make sure your child’s name is still on the nice list. 6. Portable North Pole Personalized Santa Video Another personalized video message from Santa, the PNP offering takes you through some comprehensive questions for a fully featured clip tailored to toddlers or older children and, yes, even grown ups too. The Santa is magnificent with a rather splendid beard and an authentic kindly manner. Recommended. 7. Visit the North Pole Ideal for rainy (or snowy!) day activities during school vacation time, this site is chock-full of Santa, elf, reindeer and North Pole-themed interactive stories and educational games for online fun. There are recipes, craft ideas and print-outs for offline holiday activities to amuse the kids too. 8. NORAD Santa Tracker Thanks to NORAD and Google, you can track Santa’s journey around the world on Christmas Eve, something guaranteed to get the children very excited indeed. This long-running tradition has been given a new lease on life in recent years with Google’s involvement, adding a little bit of map-based magic to millions of Christmas Eves around the globe. 9. I Caught Santa Photo If you’re in need of some “proof” that Santa exists (and don’t have the Photoshop skills to create your own), then for a fee you can upload your own photo and paste on one of I Caught Santa’s Father Christmases. It’ll cost you a penny under $10 via the site or from $0.99 via the iPhone app. More Holidays Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ilona75 Reviews: Google, iStockphoto More About: Christmas, Holidays, Kids, List, Lists, santa claus, trending For more Entertainment coverage:
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| Holiday Tweet Drive Brings Toys and Food to Disadvantaged Kids Posted: 18 Dec 2010 02:09 PM PST   The 2010 Holiday Tweet Drive is underway, harnessing the power of social media to gather toys and clothing for less-fortunate children. The three-week event started December 6, and will continue through Thursday, December 23. It’s happening across the country, and is organized entirely using Twitter. At each local Tweet-up, participants are asked to donate a new toy or new article of clothing in exchange for an evening of networking and holiday cheer. If you can’t attend a Holiday Tweet Drive, or if there’s not an event in your city and you still want to help, find out more @TweetDrive2010 or donate to a local Toys for Tots drop-off point. If none of this appeals to you, there are hundreds of other ways to do good with social media this holiday season. The easiest we’ve seen is this Google Chrome browser extension that automatically spurs Google to donate to one of five charities of your choice, the amount accumulating with each additional tab you open. Want additional choices? Here are 75 more ways to do good with social media. Reviews: Google, Twitter More About: 2010 Holiday Tweet Drive, charity, Christmas, Disadvantaged Children, Toys for Tots For more Social Good coverage:
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| Bank of America Blocks WikiLeaks Payments Posted: 18 Dec 2010 01:18 PM PST   Financial giant Bank of America has added its name to the list of institutions dropping support for WikiLeaks, announcing that it has stopped handling any payments to or from the whistle-blowing website. Said the bank in a statement to the Charlotte Observer, “This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.” As the huge American financial institution confidently declared Saturday that it was standing against the website headed by controversial figure Julian Assange, his WikiLeaks organization fired back a Twitter post urging consumers to stop doing business with Bank of America. “We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America,” pleaded the WikiLeaks tweet. Bank of America’s action is certain to tempt hackers who’ve named themselves “Operation Payback.” These supporters of WikiLeaks have been launching denial of service (DOS) attacks against institutions trying to thwart WikiLeaks for most of this month. However, Rich Mogul, an analyst with the security firm Securosis, told Yahoo Finance, “Bank of America, I can guarantee you, is one of the top targets in the world.” He added that the bank is likely to have strong defenses, but couldn’t guarantee Bank of America could fend off any attack. Even though the bank has lots of experience dealing with DOS attacks, today’s statement could result in a new wave of attempts at a security breach. Could this be a “bring it on” moment for the BoA? Reviews: Wikileaks More About: bank of america, BoA, hackers, security, wikileaks For more Business coverage:
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| 23 Free, Web-Based Tools SMBs Are Asking for Now Posted: 18 Dec 2010 12:52 PM PST   This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. In an informal Twitter poll, we asked our friends working at or running small and medium-sized businesses not what they could do for the Internet, but what the Internet could do for them. We heard responses that ranged widely, running the gamut from social media marketing tools to internal team communications. Here’s a list of great resources for SMBs that meet some of the most pressing needs you experience as a business owner or entrepreneur. Best of all, every single one of these tools can be used free of charge (some have paid options for larger businesses or for those that need more features). And all of them are web-based; that means you won’t have to install software, worry about cross-platform compatibility, take up any of your own system’s resources or have to leave work when you leave your own PC. If you have other tools you love using that you think other SMBs could benefit from, please let us know about them in the comments. 2 Internal Chat Tools
When you want to get your employees or clients together to brainstorm, make decisions or simply run your business, instant messaging can be a huge time-saver — especially if you’re working with a distributed team or out-of-town clients and vendors. While we love programs like Skype for business chat and conference calls, it may not be installed on every machine you have to use. These web-based group chat programs solve that problem. Zoho’s web-based chat client allows you to create and chat with groups. You can easily share your desktop with co-workers, and you can integrate your calendar for quick appointment or meeting scheduling. Best of all, Zoho’s IM service also supports all kinds of IM clients, including Yahoo and AIM. Another good online group chat service is Gixaw. With this service, you can create a unique URL for chatting with your group. You can share files, create multiple “rooms” for different projects or departments, and even search through chat history. 2 Task Management Tools
As your business and number of employees grow, you may need a central place for delegating tasks, monitoring progress and ensuring everything gets done correctly and on time. HiTask is a free, web-based task management tool perfect for SMBs. It has a user-friendly, easy interface for your to-do lists and for team or project management. With HiTask, you can work on recurring events, make assignments, sort tasks based on priority and more, all within a simple drag-and-drop UI. Another great task management tool is RememberTheMilk. Don’t be fooled by its homemaker-ish name. This web app has been widely acclaimed over the past several years, and it works for individuals as well as small teams. RTM integrates with Gmail and Outlook, and the service has mobile apps for Windows, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. 8 Social Media Marketing and Monitoring Tools
One of the categories SMBs ask for the most help with is social media. You need to quickly and easily keep an eye on what people are saying about you; more importantly, you need to participate in the social media conversation yourself, without drowning hours upon endless hours bouncing around various websites. There are three great tools we’d recommend for pushing out updates to a variety of sites at once. All three have free, web-based services, and they’re great for working with teams, too. Depending on your specific needs and tastes, you could try out Hootsuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck. If you want to see what people are saying about your company, your product, your location or your vertical in real time, try searching for relevant terms on Collecta or SocialMention. You also have options for network-specific monitoring tools. To see how your tweets are performing, try CrowdBooster. And remember, Twitter’s official analytics product is coming soon, too. For Facebook, use that social network’s Insights dashboard for your business’s Facebook Page. 3 Bookkeeping Tools
When it comes to keeping your finances straight, there are also several free, online tools just right for SMBs. You can try Numia.biz, accounting software made just for recording and processing small business transactions, including accounts payable, accounts receivable, bank balances and more. It also gives you forms for invoicing, purchases and bank reconciliation and allows you to set up customers and vendors. The desktop version of QuickBooks is a standard feature of many SMBs. This web-based version of QuickBooks is free and perfect for the new or smaller business. You can use QuickBooks Online to create invoices, pay bills, track expenses and more. Finally, MoneyTrackin’ is a free web app for simply and quickly tracking your revenue and expenses. You can also share budgets and collaborate with many people together on the same account. MoneyTrackin’ lets you control as many accounts as you need to and tag your transactions; the service is also available as a handy mobile web app. 5 Cloud-Based File Hosting Tools
For sharing and storing large files, Google Docs will allow you to share a wide range of files — including PDFs, spreadsheets, images and much more — free of charge for the first 1024 MB. And believe us, it can take quite a while to get to 1024 MB of content. Google Docs files are easy to keep private and easy to share with others, including clients and team members. Plus, you’ll have a relatively stable company on your side, which isn’t necessarily the case when the startup hosting your files gets bought by Facebook and shuts its doors, for example. However, if you’d rather go the small-web-company route, there are lots of options for moving large files around the Internet. If you just need to e-mail a large file to another person, try YouSendIt, which lets you e-mail a link for downloading files up to 2 GB. If you’d like to permanently or semi-permanently store rather than just e-mail your files, you could try Esploded, which lets you create a free account, upload your files and create groups for sharing files. There’s also Dropbox, FilesAnywhere and Box.net, all of which offer free and paid memberships, just depending on your business’s size and needs. 3 Hiring and Applicant-Tracking Tools
Last of all, as you grow, finding and hiring great new staff members becomes increasingly important and requires more of your attention — and likely greater organization. Zoho Recruit is free for one person to use. It lets you schedule interviews, add and manage candidates, store resumes and publish job openings from within a simple but robust dashboard. SmartRecruiters is hiring software that helps users create job ads and post them all over the web, including major job boards and social networks. You can consolidate all your applicants in one place, prescreen them online, share the best candidates with your co-workers or executives, schedule interviews and even rate the candidates all from within the app. iKrut is an interesting free recruitment system. You can build your own recruitment microsite quickly; from there, you can list all your current job openings on this new career portal. Candidates visit the microsite to upload their résumés and cover letters for you to review. This all also allows for interview scheduling and organizing references. Microsites can be branded to match your own website, and the system has built-in messaging. More Business Resources from Mashable:
Images courtesy of Flickr, in order of appearance, by danox, inlinguamanchester, esther17, tsevis, nhankamer, takashi, socialisbetter. Reviews: Android, Box.net, Dropbox, Flickr, Google Docs, HootSuite, Internet, Seesmic, Skype, TweetDeck, Twitter, Windows, aim, gmail More About: applicant manager, bookkeeping, business, Business Lists, chat, cloud database, free online tools, hiring, List, Lists, online tools, small business, smb, social media marketing, social monitoring tools, task management For more Business coverage:
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| Weight Watchers Can Make Your Holiday Recipes Healthier With an iPad App Posted: 18 Dec 2010 12:12 PM PST   Sorry to bring this up right before the annual holiday eating binge, but Weight Watchers has a new iPad application. Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion is an attractively designed app that helps you cook lower-calorie recipes every step of the way, interactively timing your recipes, helping you follow along with checklists and showing you videos of cooking techniques while you’re actually preparing the recipe. The free version of this Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion iPad app is limited, giving you 10 featured recipes and letting you save up to 10 of your favorites. However, if you subscribe to Weight Watchers Online ($17.95 + $29.95 sign-up fee) or use eTools (included with Weight Watchers meetings), this application integrates with thousands of Weight Watchers recipes. In the unique Recipe Building feature, users can add their own recipes and have the app show how to reduce its caloric content with a PointsPlus system. Research has shown that when you specifically record the amount you eat into a journal, you can more successfully lose weight. Keeping that in mind, you might want to consider this iPad app to help you with that inevitable New Year’s resolution you’ll be making in January.  More About: app store, cooking, health, ipad apps, iphone apps, Obesity, weight loss, Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion For more Tech coverage:
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| 5 Unusual Ways to Use Dropbox You Might Not Have Thought Of Posted: 18 Dec 2010 11:02 AM PST   Dropbox has just been upgraded to version 1.0, so we thought we’d take a look at some great ways to use it that might not have occurred to you. A free Dropbox account allows users to store up to 2GB worth of files and access them from any other Linux, Mac or Windows machine running the Dropbox application. Or, those files can be accessed from any browser. In fact, the new 1.0 version of Dropbox is so tremendously useful, I decided to invest the $9.99 per month to increase its capacity to 50GB. Dropbox can perform some slick tricks. Here are my five favorite examples: Chat Logs Many chat programs let you change the location of the chat log. Clients such as Pidgin can be modified to save those chats wherever you’d like, so point to a folder within the Dropbox for complete portability. Muitiple chat client Digsby is especially useful when you save its chat logs in Dropbox, and there was a portable version available until just a few weeks ago. It’s still possible to make this happen, but it takes a bit of hacking. If you’re so inclined, it might be worth it — it lets you save all your Facebook, AIM and Google Talk chat logs in the same place. Gaming SavesMost games let you designate where you’re going to save your progress, so why not put that saved game data in Dropbox? Then, no matter what computer you’re using (as long as you have the game installed there), you can pick up where you left off. Documents Folder Have a group of documents you’re always working on and adding to? Place them all in a Dropbox documents folder and you can modify them at home, work, and on the road. This works especially well when you’re writing with a team, allowing you to see when someone else has begun working on a document. TeamworkWe like to shoot videos, and it often works out where one of us is shooting and another is editing. One of us drops the unedited video clips in a shared Dropbox folder, while the other picks them up and edits them as soon as they’re synced. Then, someone else can share the finished videos on YouTube. This works especially well if you spring for the 50GB upgrade. Any App With a Watch FolderAny application that lets you create a watch folder is fertile ground for Dropbox. Here’s an idea: if you’re a Photoshop user, create a watch folder in Dropbox, leave your powerful PC running Photoshop at home. Then, when you drop a photo into that folder when you’re on the road, it’s automatically processed to the dimensions you designate back at the mother ship. You can also use this idea for BitTorrent, dropping torrents into a watch folder and having them download on your home machine while you’re at work. We’ve grown to adore Dropbox over the past year, and now that it’s reached version 1.0, its subtle improvements make it even more appealing. To see for yourself, download it here, and find out more tips and tricks here. Reviews: Digsby, Dropbox, Facebook, Linux, Pidgin, Windows, YouTube, aim, google talk More About: Dropbox, file sharing, file storage, how to, software For more Tech coverage:
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| Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week [CHART] Posted: 18 Dec 2010 08:37 AM PST   Soccer hits number one yet again this week, and everyone’s favorite South Korean 13-member boy band Super Junior returns to the Twitter stage at number two. More sports news rounds out the top trends, with a big UFC Welterweight fight taking the bronze, a death among the annals of baseball snagging number four, and our viral captivation with Minnesota’s Metrodome collapse sending that trend into the number five spot for the week. For all you single guys and gals, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds are getting a divorce, so be sure to shower in case you cross paths with either of these Hollywood heartthrobs. A wave of Internet snark propelled this trend to number six. And in one of the more compelling news items of the past week, tweeters watched intently as independent Senator Bernie Sanders took a stand against the compromise proposed by President Obama and congressional Republicans that would extend Bush-era tax cuts, most controversially for some of the wealthiest Americans. Though technically not a filibuster, as there was no voting scheduled that day, Sanders spoke for eight and a half hours on the Senate floor, attacking the proposed bill. Tweeters followed along, discussing, cheering and jeering. He even earned his own hashtag, #FiliBernie — a social media honor normally reserved for the most illustrious Canadian pop singers. For the full list of top trends, check out the chart below, compiled by our friends at What The Trend. Because this is a topical list, hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart. You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section, and read more about this past week's trends on What The Trend. Top Twitter Trends This Week: 12/11 – 12/17
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ricardoinfante Reviews: Internet, Twitter, iStockphoto More About: entertainment, football, List, Lists, nfl, soccer, social media, sports, Super Junior, Top Twitter Topics, trending, trends, twitter, twitter trends, U.S. Senate For more Social Media coverage:
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