Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. You can make use of them without spending a dime. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here.

Add Your Website Here!

PDF To Flash Page Flip – Do you like reading ebooks but still miss the feel of a real book where you can flip through the pages with your fingers? Now you can experience it with the help of a handy tool called PDF-To-Flash Page Flip provided by Codebox. It lets you convert any PDF file (ebooks, documents, presentations) into a flippable flash book format. Read more: PDF-To-Flash Page Flip: Convert PDF To Flash Flip Book

		WWWizer – Do you have a website with a naked domain problem? This happens your website doesn’t work, unless the user adds the “www” prefix to the domain name. This can be quite a cause for concern since most web users are used to the conventional domain names that do not require the “www” prefix. WWWizer is a web service that allows you to solve this naked domain name problem easily. With the WWWizer, you can automatically redirect your non-www domain to its corresponding www domain for free Read more: WWWizer: Free Non-WWW to WWW Redirect
		Video Customizer – Content is shifting from static text based pages to dynamic flash and video segments. To help you fully utilize the power of video, Video Customizer lets you create video ads as well as video emails online without any hassle. You can upload your own video to customize or choose from thousands of existing templates. Read more: Video Customizer: Create Video Emails & Video Ads Online
		Instant Blueprint – If you are a web designer, you will know how inconvenient it can get to create and manage template frameworks again and again. Instant Blueprint is a new tool that creates a web project framework for your new project with all the valid HTML and CSS standards so you can be up and running within seconds. Read more: Instant Blueprint: Create A Web Project Framework In Seconds
		LikeFM – Imagine a website that tracks the music you play and makes it playable from anywhere. Additionally the site gathers music suggestions from friends and lets you share your favorite songs on social networks. LikeFM tracks the music you play through a desktop application and a browser add-on. Read more: LikeFM: Track The Music You Like & Play It Anywhere

 

Add Your Website Here!

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.
Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.

 

 

More articles about: cool web apps
Similar articles:

• makeuseof extra #27 (171)
• Finally Stick To Your Resolutions With StickK (107)
• Cool Websites and Tools [September 9] (51)
• Cool Websites and Tools [September 9th] (90)
• Cool Websites and Tools [September 8th] (62)

Read more posts on MakeUseOf.com »

For the latest gadget news, visit SAI: Tools. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

By Jenny Finke A study by Child’s Play Communications found that 40% of moms bought something based off a Facebook recommendation. It’s no secret that Facebook is worth its weight in PR gold, but it does require some nurturing. A neglected Facebook Fan Page shows the world that you don’t care about your online reputation. [...]

For the latest media news, visit The Wire. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Colin Powell's Former Chief Of Staff: "Let Me Waterboard Donald Rumsfeld!"
• Condoleezza Rice: Saddam Hussein Was A Threat To The United States
• Chris Matthews: Releasing The Bin Laden Photos Would Have Cost Lives

…Last week’s toppy behavior in gold following Fed’s press conference tells me that we might have had a solid trigger the bear market for bullion. Any decision to boost interest rates may bring about a correction. I never thought we would have such loose cash for this long. This market is astounding, anyone who missed it is banging their heads.

Fortunately enough for those who missed out we now live era of transparency. We actually have some form of time table for when to expect a correction. Come June-July when QE2 ends marks a return to reality, here are some short gold plays you might want to consider. Hiddenlevers helped me identify three of the most well-correlated equities with gold…

To see the full article, go to SeekingAlpha

Read more posts on HiddenLevers »

For the latest investing news, visit Money Game. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

A frequent question we at Strategic Growth Concepts receive from small business owners, or potential small business owners is “How do I know if I can do this?  Do I have what it takes to own my own business?”.  And we have a lot of answers that we give in response that take into account [...]

Sunflowers. I love them. Years ago when my daughters were young, there was a route we traveled to visit with family that took us along vast fields of sunflowers...farms for harvesting sunflower seeds for the huge market of those folks who love to eat them. One of the idiosyncrasies of the X-Files character Fox Mulder, was that he ate sunflower seeds. As a member of Fine Art America [FAA] - one of the many artists with portfolios there - I've been administrator for a contest titled The World of Sunflowers. The idea was for FAA members who have done paintings...

Since the tragic passing of hook-specialist, Nate Dogg, there have been a few tribute mixtapes to surface, but none really stood out as anything more than just a few songs thrown together with a cover. As a Nate Dogg fan, I already own most of his catalogue, so there’s really little-to-no value in most of [...]

Rising gas prices hurt most small businesses, but sometimes they help others. Pat Caruso expected his waste removal company to suffer a little pain from rising gas prices. He was wrong. It's suffering a lot. Because of the trend, the CEO of Associated Refuse Haulers has had to shell out thousands of dollars in extra daily expenses, and watch his profits take a beating. "I groan a lot," said Caruso, "and I say, 'Oh my God, when is it going to stop.' "

Prince William's bride-to-be Kate Middleton, whose sartorial style will be closely scrutinized by fashionistas once she's officially a princess, is already getting credit for bringing one style stateside -- the precariously-perched feathered "fascinator." The fascinator is a particularly ornate hair accessory that can feature feathers, beads, flowers and other fancy trimmings. Kate seems to favor the feathered variety and has been photographed wearing a variety of them.

Back in the '80s, Dan Zanes, the frontman of the Del Fuegos, was rocking venues packed with teens and young adults. Now it's parents and tots.And Zanes, 49, has never been more successful. Zanes' foray into children's music has catapulted him to the top of the burgeoning multimillion-dollar 'Kindie' rock business. Kindie rock is simply indie music for kids that also appeals to adults.

Russell Simmons, business mogul, activist and best-selling author, has a message for small business owners. He's a small business owner, too, and getting rich is a lot easier than people think. That might be hard for most to believe. Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Recordings and the Phat Farm clothing empire, successfully sold those companies for more than a hundred million dollars apiece years ago. He now heads up Rush Communications, a holding company for his financial, media and fashion businesses.

I own several fast-food outlets, and I'm also an investor "Internet companies. Put one and one together, and you get curious. Since I'm in both spaces, I wanted to dig into the whole group buying daily-deal craze and see if it's as much of a win for merchants as it is for consumers. "To test this out, I took one of my outlets and did a Groupon for it, and then did a deal through rival site LivingSocial. Let me tell you right now: It was night and day. Working with one company was a great experience. With the other, it was a mess."

Cat fights between the bridesmaids? Cold feet for the royal bride? Fashion emergency involving that much-speculated-about dress? Whatever happens in the final hours before the royal nuptials, Kate Middleton is counting on the Goring Hotel to forever hold its peace. The staid hotel where Prince William's bride-to-be is spending her last night as a singleton and commoner is notable for its utter Britishness, from its wood-paneled interiors to its endearing old values, including a disposition for discretion.

Ask Matthew Dunn what his job is, and he'll tell you he's "chief explainer." Dunn is the co-founder of Say It Visually, which makes animated videos that companies use to introduce products online. Dunn spent a chunk of time at Microsoft and later worked as an intellectual-property consultant; his partner, Jordan Schaffel, with whom he had worked years earlier at a tech startup, was in software sales. Both found themselves translating complex concepts.

As the weather warms up, experts predict a bedbug epidemic to sweep the U.S. These 7 companies with unique bedbug-fighting solutions are itching to solve the problem.

Instead of seeing competitor businesses as rivals, view them as a great opportunity to get to know like-minded people and help each other out.

17 Vote(s)

Dimbler is a free meta social sharing tool that boosts your presence on FaceBook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Digg. Read the review.

17 Vote(s)

The following is a guest post from Matt Krautstrunk – Content Coordinator at Resource Nation, a company that offers free tools, tips, and purchasing advice for business owners. Mobile payment technology is generating about as much buzz as a typical Apple product release lately. NFC and mobile payment info is such a sexy topic, that [...]

7% 7% 0

So it doesn't sound as though Greece is about to ditch the Eurozone.

But the obvious has been acknowledge. What has been tried so far in Greece has failed.

The bailout has failed, and austerity has failed.

Speaking this evening in Luxembourg, Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker admitted that Greece "does need a further adjustment."

But he said it was stupid to talk of a Greek exit, according to Bloomberg.

So here we go again. Another attempt at avoiding restructuring, which will be discussed at the next Eurogroup meeting later this month.

Click here for more background on today's wild day of Greek rumors >

For the latest investing news, visit Money Game. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• BOMBSHELL: Greece Threatens To Quit The Euro, Emergency EU Meeting Tonight
• Former IMF Official Calls Europe's Bailout Program A Pyramid Scheme
• Greece Requests Another Bailout Loan Extension, As Restructuring Chatter Continues

The Left Coast loves Piers Morgan.

Twice this week, the show was the top cable news program during the Midnight ET hour, also known as West Coast prime-time.

Morgan, who interviews potential Presidential candidate Rob Lowe Friday night, had 483,000 viewers in the A25-54 demographic and 948,000 total viewers during the time slot Thursday night, beating Rachel Maddow. (Fox News did beat Morgan, but it aired the Republican debate.)

The show also won the midnight hour on Monday night.

Sean Hannity prevailed Tuesday and Wednesday night.

Fox News continues to dominate the 9 p.m. hour, with Hannity winning all four days. Morgan sits solidly in second place with Maddow coming in third.

For the latest media news, visit The Wire. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Rob Lowe For President?
• Chris Matthews: Releasing The Bin Laden Photos Would Have Cost Lives
• Rachel Maddow Tells Jon Stewart: People Who Need To See Picture Proof Of Dead Bin Laden Belong To A Country 'I Don't Recognize'

By Adam Levin

By now almost everyone I know (and millions of people I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet) has read or heard about Sony’s announcement last week that its PlayStation network was hacked and that the Personal identifying Information (PII) of potentially 77 million individuals worldwide has been compromised.

Then, earlier this week, Sony notified us that there’d been a second breach. This one involved the accounts of 25 million members of Sony Online Entertainment, which hosts the popular online game EverQuest, among other diversions. That means that the PII of more than 100 million Sony customers is now twisting in the wind. And now, a law firm in Canada has filed a class action lawsuit against Sony for more than $1 billion in damages on behalf of nearly one million Canadians.

It is a reasonable assumption that many minors inhabited both of these Sony networks. The stolen PII included names, dates of birth, email addresses, physical addresses, user IDs and passwords and at least some credit card information. Further, children or their parents might unwittingly give up additional information (or expose their computer to malware that would turn their home network into a broadcast vehicle for their financial account numbers and passwords) to a “phisher” pretending to be a legitimate Sony representative following up on the breach. Were they to give up their Social Security number, for example, someone could do quite a bit of damage, especially given children have no reason to check credit information for many years to come. Perhaps the fact that the breach was so large, and involved kids, explains why in a week that saw mile-wide deadly and horrific tornados, a US president publicly releasing his birth certificate, and precious metals prices reaching all-time highs, the PlayStation breach made the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

[Related article: As Breach Worsens, Sony Leaders Say They Knew of Security Problems]

Here’s why: While, the compromise of children’s identities isn’t new, it certainly is a big story when it happens. It has been estimated that more than 400,000 such incidents occur each year and that number has been growing for some very good reasons. First and foremost, however vigilant most adults may be about their own identities, rarely do parents think about monitoring their children’s status. A thief thereby gains something very important—precious time before any discovery of the felony occurs. Secondly, a child is very likely to have a dormant Social Security number, which presents a clear field for account creation and manipulation. Again, should the perpetrator of a phishing attack succeed in obtaining a SSN, the damage he could do setting up new, fraudulent credit accounts could go undetected for years.

Frankly, I’m not surprised that Sony was hacked. Major data breaches, many of which have been the subject of several of these columns, are occurring about once a week these days. Surely one cannot reasonably believe that Sony—or for that matter its competitors, Microsoft and Nintendo—could be immune.

To say that Sony’s response to this breach has been understated is itself a huge understatement. In a press release that the company sent out this past weekend, almost two weeks after the breach happened, they outlined the steps they were taking to deal with their “oops” moment (I am being gentle here), and then tried to make amends in a manner befitting a clueless corporate monolith (ok, forget gentility). They’d like to welcome their users back to the network with the following:

“All existing PlayStation Network customers will be provided with 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service. Current members of PlayStation Plus will receive 30 days free service.

Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity subscribers (in countries where the service is available) will receive 30 days free service.”

They are also offering some unspecified, free downloads, in addition to some yet-to-be named freebies. Be still my heart! Thirty days of access to Playstation Plus and all you had to do was open the doors of your home, your office and your life to identity thieves. What a great deal! And, in case their customers are actually concerned about the integrity of their identities, Sony was kind enough to provide a few self-help tips on protecting yourself and a short list of government and credit reporting agencies to whom you can turn in the event of a personal compromise.

Hacking the System

I have always believed that all of the gaming networks, and other kids’ sites that have an e-commerce component, are the most vulnerable repositories of any large caches of PII, for a few very simple reasons. It is undeniable that although the universe of avid gamers and the galaxy of talented hackers aren’t congruent, there is a rather substantial overlap. Many of our children are light years beyond our technological prowess. Smart kids have been responsible for some of the most famous hacks of history, involving compromises of both government and industry computer networks, many of which were “innocent” pranks—done for thrills rather than financial gain or more nefarious purposes.

Remember when, a decade ago, the recording industry announced the development of the “copy-proof” music CD? The idea was to prevent the uploading of music on a physical disk to one of the file-sharing sites like Napster or Kazaa where the music could be freely traded (and traded for free). A good friend of mine who had a large company that distributed physical CDs informed me that within a few days the elaborate and very expensive protection system was defeated by kids around the country using only a felt tip pen!

More importantly, youthful online gamers often exist in a culture that seems to make hacking more socially acceptable, perhaps even socially esteemed. There is a “cheat site” for virtually every popular game—just Google the name of the game followed by the word “cheat” and you’ll see what I mean. Sure, this kind of cheating is victimless and really doesn’t constitute any type of crime, but it’s worth considering why little Johnny, who gets straight A’s in school and would never cheat on his math test, probably has no problem using the cheat sites or even contributing to them.

The worst unintended consequence of this culture seems to be the false sense of anonymity and invincibility kids tend to feel when they’re online. They don’t cheat in school because there’d be consequences if they got caught. But I sense that many kids feel that cyber-hacks, regardless of their severity, occur in an online vacuum and are free of real-world consequences. To take it one step further—because of this assumption, young people tend to be more cavalier about the sensitive information they share publicly.

If you think about it, the Sony breach merely underscores something obvious. The gaming networks and similar sites are delicious targets for the “because I can” crowd. Although the hackers themselves may not be trying to open a phony bank account with your child’s newly acquired PII, there are others, most likely older and much more venal, who would love to get their paws on that data for just such a purpose.

Beyond this, there is another type of currency available uniquely on the gaming networks—access to the accounts and special permissions related to a gamer’s skill, highest play level and acquired “spoils of war”—all of which have value on the Internet black market. That’s right, the youngest hackers are probably stealing identities because they are looking to make General in Halo Reach without having to do all the work themselves to rise through the ranks. (For those of you who are older than 15, Halo Reach is a video game in which players earn military-style ranks for successfully completing missions and shooting stuff.)

Regardless of the motivation, it is harmful on several levels that this information is now airborne. And as all readers of this column must know by now, once the data is airborne—it’s out there!

Sad reality check—we need to be as careful with our kids’ PII as we are with our own. Limit the amount of data your child makes available to anyone online. In fact, an effective countermeasure may be to fudge the data a bit. Does the gaming network really need to know any child’s street address (frankly, do they really need to know yours)? From the moment your child is born and assigned a Social Security number, you’d best monitor it, perhaps not every minute but certainly at least once or twice a year. And you should be sure to instruct them to pass it along to no one (employers aside). Bottom line—don’t allow your child’s zeal for vanquishing extra-terrestrial invaders, terrorists or street thugs alienate them from the benefits of a sound financial beginning as they come of age.

Adam Levin is the chairman and cofounder of Credit.com and Identity Theft 911. His experience as former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs gives him unique insight into consumer privacy, legislation and financial advocacy. He is a nationally recognized expert on identity theft and credit.

This post originally appeared at Credit.com.

For the latest gadget news, visit SAI: Tools. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Who knew being a fallen Lehman bro could be so beguiling to the opposite sex?

Last night at an event called Fashion Meets Finance, one former Lehmanite explained to Dealbook how he "capitalize[s] on his firm’s crisis-era misfortune":

“I break a lot of ice with the Lehman thing,” Mr. Maras said. “Women love my story.”

It's true. Having worked for a bank that spectacularly collapsed in front of the whole world, and is essentially the face (facade?) of the financial crisis, it means you always have an interesting story for the first meeting.

In fact, apparently the financial crisis isn't a deterrent at all because, according to one young equities trader, "Most of these girls don’t even know what happened in 2008. It’s like, oh, subprime mortgages? They just nod their heads."

A statement that, no doubt, will get many a girl -- including this one -- very riled up.

For the latest finance news, visit Clusterstock. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Former Goldman Client Explains How Goldman Treats Clients Like They're Dumber Than They Are
• UPDATE: First Goldman, Then Deutsche Bank, NOW CREDIT SUISSE... Is The U.S. Government Just Going To Go Down The Line?
• The Story Behind Credit Suisse's SEC Subpoena: A $1 Million Loan To A Stripper

Imagine you could register the www.url.anything domain name.

This week the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and Internet held a hearing on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) proposal to launch at least 200 and, potentially, an infinite number of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) (.COM and .NET suffixes are examples of gLTDs).

Setting impressive acronyms aside, what this means is that potential internet url suffixes are about to increase from 21 currently approved gTLDs to a potentially infinite number of truly "generic" Top Level Domains.

Now Congress wants to know how ICANN, the private entity responsible for governing the internet, intends to prevent the inevitable flood of trademark infringement. Business owners, who stand to see their valuable .COM addresses diluted with new .XYZ and other suffixes or, even worse, directly infringing suffixes (think www.google.google) should want some answers too.

Currently, trademark owners have two remedies against users who register confusingly similar domain names which could potentially divert consumers to online "knock-off" websites of major trademarked brands:

1) Sue infringers in Federal Court, per the Anticybersquating Consumer Protection Act, for money and an injunction forcing the infringer to turn over the registered domain to its rightful owners (e.g., America Online, Inc. v. AOL.org); or

2) take the infringers to arbitration via ICANN's uniform domain-name dispute resolution policy where, after a short and relatively inexpensive process, ICANN's arbitrators would force the domain name registrar to re-register the domain to the rightful trademark owner.

Even with the less expensive option #2 -- relative to the expense of full-fledged federal litigation -- business owners must spend a few thousand dollars to prevent internet infringers from free riding on their brands.

Fortunately, under the current gTLD system, there are only one or two popular alternatives to the .COM suffix that business owners need worry about policing because suffixes other than .NET and .ORG do not carry much credibility with the fairly sophisticated internet crowd. ICANN's proposal to expand the gTLD could change that.

A virtually infinite variation of url suffixes may, and probably will, alter internet culture with regard to suffix legitimacy. Imagine companies starting to use suffixes as well as prefixes to point to their most popular services (e.g., local.google.places or instant.netflix.movies). Such novel customizability could easily end the virtual street cred associated with .COM and .NET suffixes, making it that much easier for infringers to convince unsuspecting consumers that my.facebook.bestfriend points to a legitimate Facebook service rather than some infringing knockoff or, worse, an adware/malware den.

Hoping to allay such fears, ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz testified that new gTLDs will have significant, robust rights protection mechanisms that do not presently exist in current gTLDs. Specifically, "mark holders will have the opportunity to register their marks in a single repository that will serve all new gTLDs, the Trademark Clearinghouse."

Under the Clearinghouse plan, new gTLD registries would have to offer a pre-launch period during which registered trademark rights holders will have the opportunity to register their existing names in the new gTLD prior to general registration. Pritz added that "a Trademark Claims service will notify rights holders of domain name registrations that match marks in the Clearinghouse for a period of time at the beginning of general registration."

While ICANN's protection mechanisms seem reasonable for wealthy companies (read: Google and Facebook), smaller business would worry about their financial capacity to buy new domain registrations whenever a new, potentially infringing gLTD is offered by the registries.

But Pritz notes that economic studies do not support this fear. According to a study conducted by economists Michael Katz and Gregory Rosston of more than 200 top brands, current brand holders do not register names in all available TLDs, instead choosing to focus their investment on the .COM and .NET suffixes.

In other words, says Pritz, "abusive registrations do not occur at the same rates in newer gTLDs because they do not return value to the abuser." So business owners need not worry about buying "defensive registrations" in every new gTLDs because abusers are unlikely to register those names anyway.

Unfortunately, ICANN's diminishing returns theory is based on today's culture where .COM and .NET suffixes maintain credibility as gTLDs for official existing brands. As discussed above, introduction of a virtually infinite number of new suffixes could very well change that culture, thereby leaving businesses with the same old litigation/arbitration options for protecting their trademarks plus an added bonus of having to police against hundreds if not thousands of brand infringing url variations.

ICANN's proposals will be ready for final approval on June 20, 2011.

For more articles on internet business and intellectual property law, subscribe to the Handal & Morofsky blog, "Marks & Secrets" at www.handalglobal.com.

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Best Apps For Windows Phone 7
• 10 Best Practices For Raising A VC Round
• Everything You Need To Know About China's Biggest Social Network

A statue of Kate Moss in a yoga-esq pose is on display outside of Christie's auction house and is going up for auction May 12.

The statue is expected to bring in $800,000 to $1.2 million.

British artist Marc Quinn has an entire series of Kate Moss statues, some in original bronze, and others bronze painted white.

This statue, completed in 2006, is part of a Post-War and Contemporary Art Auction.

The Ballerina

Artist: George Condo

Auction price: $250,000-$350,000

Love Red/Blue

Artist: Robert Indiana

Auction price: $2 million-$3 million

Beatle Boots

Artist: Andy Warhol

Auction price: $600,000-$800,000

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For the latest lifestyle news, visit The Life. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See Also:

• EXCLUSIVE: Inside The Massive Fake Handbag Market Of Chinatown
• A Deep Dive Into China's Growing Lust For Luxury Goods
• GETAWAY OF THE DAY: Spend A Night At The Luxurious Dubai Armani Hotel For Only $420

 

RenRen, a Chinese social network, just had a very successful IPO that raised $743 million for the company on shares priced at $14 (the high end of what many analysts anticipated). Currently, the stock is trading at $16.76 per share, giving the company a valuation of $6.5 billion on revenue of $67.5 million in 2010 - up 64% from 2009 revenues.

There's certainly value in the network, but we have to go against the many media outlets who've promoted RenRen as "the Chinese Facebook." It's not.

Fortune notes some of RenRen's similarities to Facebook: a social network that started by targeting college students before expanding to everyone, members using their real identities to connect with people they know, a platform for app developers, popular social games, a Connect system with partner websites. There are definitely a lot of similarities, but it's the differences that account for why RenRen =/= Facebook.

1. Facebook is a big deal outside of the US, RenRen is only big in China

And according to their mission statement

"we aim to define social networking experience and to revolutionize the way that people in China connect, communicate, entertain and shop"

(emphasis, ours) they have no ambitions to change that. China is obviously a good market to be number one in, but so is the US. If Facebook had only focused on growth in the US, they wouldn't be anywhere near where they are today. Facebook is Facebook because they're the number one social network in the UK, in France, in Germany, in Canada and many more countries. Sure, there are plenty of countries where Facebook isn't the top social network - notably Brazil, South Korea and Japan.

But as lucrative as the Chinese market is - and it's certainly lucrative, being number one in one country just doesn't equal being number one in 20 (sizable) countries.

2. When it comes to active users, there's not a clear leader in China

RenRen claims 117 million registered users, but of that only 31 million are active. Percentage wise, that's slightly more than 1/4th of registered users. No social network is immune to abandoned accounts, but worldwide Facebook claims more than 500 million active users, with 50% logging in daily. At an advertising event in February of this year, Facebook's head of US Agency Relations broke out some country specific numbers. In the US (Facebook's home country), there are 149 million active American users, 70% of whom log on daily. {TechCrunch}

Since Facebook doesn't release registered user numbers (at over 500 million active users, it's kind of  unnecessary) there's no definitive figure to compare that with, but Google's ad planning tool estimates put the number of absolute unique US users to Facebook in March 2011 at 190 million. If we assume all of those users have a Facebook account, that would mean almost 80% of Facebook's US users are active, and 55% of their total registered user base - not just those who are active - visit the site every day.

RenRen's active user numbers aren't close. Add to that, even though analysts say competitors like 51.com are declining, they still maintain an equal or higher number of active Chinese internet users. {SAI/BusinessInsider} So RenRen isn't exactly losing the fight when it comes to Chinese social networks, but there's a way to go before they're declared the winner.

3. Facebook is an internet presence outside Facebook

For a while, some people saw Facebook as the new AOL: a walled garden service that would eventually crash as people began to decentralize and move to sites on the open web. Then Facebook released widgets that allowed for the easy addition of Facebook social features to almost any site on the open web. Almost overnight, it made Facebook a force beyond Facebook.

The 'Like' button is officially a year old as of April 21st, and 10,000 sites are using it. RenRen Connect, which launched in October 2009, has 600 partner sites.

It's not an apples to apples comparison, but probably one of the clearer examples of why our first two points matter.

4. User growth is beginning to plateau

RenRen is still growing, but percentage wise, user and revenue growth is slowing. {BusinessInsider} Facebook's overall percentage growth may not be as rapid as it was in the past few years, but that's because it's pretty hard to keep up 100% year over year growth in every market when you have 500 million active users.

5. There is no RenRen ecosystem

Part of the reason Facebook has been able to raise so much money at eye-popping valuations is the fact that it's an ecosystem that has the power to not only create revenue for itself, but cottage industries as well. Sure, Facebook owes some of its popularity to companies like Zynga, who create games and apps that keep people on the site; but Zynga also owes a good part of its multi-million dollar value to Facebook. Then there are companies like NorthSocial and BuddyMedia, who provide brands and companies with tools that help them manage their presence on the site.

Even Twitter, who still hasn't completely figured out how to capitalize on the value it's creating, has managed to create an ecosystem that other companies can be built on.

While Chinese game developers have had hits, RenRen just isn't in a position yet to create industries specifically around RenRen.

---

While it's highly unlikely that RenRen will ever equal the success of Facebook, it doesn't have to to be successful. As of April 2010, ComScore estimates that 38% of Chinese internet users visit social networking sites, compared to 81% of US internet users. That means there's still plenty of room for growth in users and revenue to satisfy investors. Add to that the fact that it's notoriously difficult for Western consumer tech companies to succeed in China without partnerships, and RenRen certainly has a chance at becoming a significant Chinese internet company. Just don't compare it to Facebook.

5 Reasons Why RenRen Will Never Be a Facebook Equivalent by YM Ousley originally appeared onSignature9

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Every company goes through growing pains, and Facebook looks like it's getting its first round now: employees are complaining about new layers of middle management and are cashing out their pre-IPO stock options and moving on to new ventures, or just taking a break.

So in a bid to keep engineers engaged, Facebook has created a new internal program called Hackamonth.

It's similar to Google's fabled 20% time, but broader and more ambitious. Any Facebook engineer who has spent more than a year on a particular team can sign up for a new project on a completely different team for one month. At the end of the month, the engineer can decide to stay with the new team or go back to his old job.

The company sponsored three pilot Hackamonths over the last year, and some of them grew into successful products like the Facebook mobile Web site and Deals program, which launched last month.

Starting in May, it's going to become a formal monthly program. Facebook hopes to have about 10% of its employees working on Hackamonth projects at any given time.

Now, check out: Photos Of Facebook's New Campus.

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Truth Is, It's Impossible To Manage Facebook Engineers
• 24-Year-Old Father Posts "Bout To Kill Ma Kid" On Facebook 2 Minutes Before He Actually Does
• Here's Why My Friends Keep Quitting Their Facebook Jobs

Modern men don't think about sex once every seven seconds: more like once every hour.

And they think just as often or more about food and sleep.

These were findings from a study of freshmen at Ohio State University -- presumably a very hormonal group -- according to LiveScience. The average man thought about sex, food and sleep 18 times during the day. (The average women thought about each of thing 10 times during the day.)

Behavioural Psychologist Jo Hemmings tells MailOnline: ‘There tend to be more trigger mechanisms to thinking about food. The sights and smells associated with eating, as well as simple hunger or thirst, tend to be more commonplace in everyday life than the trigger mechanism for thinking about sex, so inevitably we think more about it.'

Now check out 24 stimulating ads >

For the latest career news, visit War Room. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• How Beer Companies Turned A Minor Holiday Into America's Favorite Mexican Drinking Day

Are you bored with the weekend already?

That boredom is good for you, according to a paper presented at today's British Psychological Society Conference. Although unpleasant, boredom represents a sense of dissatisfaction that is a nascent stage of pro-social behavior and creation.

Dr. Wijnand van Tilburg tells the Guardian:

"Boredom can paradoxically be a very strong motivator for people to seek out unpleasant yet meaningful tasks, such as blood donations, against meaningless but pleasant behaviour," he said. "It does not promote engagement in meaningless yet pleasant behaviour

"Boredom makes people long for different and purposeful activities, and as a result they turn towards more challenging and meaningful activities, turning towards what they perceive to be really meaningful in life," said Van Tilburg."

Of course boredom is a double-edged sword. Bored people often exhibit enhanced feelings of aggression, anger and hostility, according to van Tilburg.

Was Thomas Edison a bored man? Check out the 10 greatest inventors in history >

For the latest career news, visit War Room. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• See How Smart You Are And Solve These 15 Impossible Brain Teasers
• Left-Handed People Are More Easily Frightened Than Right-Handed People
• Bill Clinton Was A Ridiculously Good Networker At Age 22

Will Apple pull the old chip switcheroo again, and embrace ARM CPUs on its Macs instead of Intel silicon? You bet it might, say new rumors, because it could mean your MacBook lasts pretty much all day on a charge.

Only a handful of years ago, Apple abandoned its long relationship with IBM and the PowerPC line of processors for shiny new Intel silicon. The switch from G5 to Intel caused an upheaval of epic proportions among the user community and for the people who code for Apple software--and even required Apple to nursemaid the transition with special dual-mode compatibility code in its OS X for years. But Apple's never looked back, and thanks to a few early-access treats from Intel, and special treatment like the unique one-off processor designed to make the original MacBook Air such a paradigm-breaking machine, the two have kept working together. That may, according to a new and surprisingly emphatic rumor, all be about to change.

SemiAccurate, a publication that was previously correct in predicting Apple would swing away from using Nvidia GPUs, is the source of the latest rumor. It's based on some insider information, and some smart deductive work: In just a few years, ARM is expected to transition its CPU design to full 64-bit addressing, which would significantly boost the computing power, while retaining the core light power requirements that's a characteristic of ARM's design. A transition to ARM CPUs in two to three years would enable Apple to quickly make use of a whole new class of super-powerful chips that eat batteries much less quickly than competing chip architectures. And it would come just a short while after Apple takes its first steps in incorporating lessons from iOS devices like the iPhone (which runs on an ARM chip) back into its computing operating system OS X, with the latest update into OS X Lion.

And don't forget Apple already has lots of ARM design expertise in-house, thanks to its acquisition of PA Semi for close to $300 million in 2008.

With two more generational tweaks to OS X, and continued development of iOS, Apple could easily make OS X work on ARM chips instead of Intel's. This would also align how code is written for pretty much every device Apple makes. Supplying an emulation system, like it did for the transition to Intel chips inside Macs, wouldn't be difficult, and the fact that Mac apps are now slightly cheaper to buy (thanks to the Mac App Store, and halo effect of the iOS App Store) would mean users wouldn't feel hard done by when, in say four to five years, Apple stopped supporting Intel x68-only software for its ARM-based Macs.

But there's one big reason Apple would want to pull off this trick, which would be timed to the A15 ARM generation: Mobile computing. There's an undeniable move away from desktop PCs that was initially driven by advances in laptop tech, boosted by the netbook phenomenon, and is now being rocketed into the stratosphere by the tablet PC paradigm. Users now expect ever-more powerful portable machines. And though Intel has teased its next-gen low-power 3-D chip solution, the main reason it's currently shut out of the tablet market is that its chip architecture simply can't compete with ARM chips in terms of power consumption.

The iPad works for around 10 hours on a charge, while the new 11-inch iMacs run reliably into four hours of usage, and Apple's existing bigger MacBook Pros can go up to 7 hours with the Wi-Fi on...all with existing tech. Imagine in 3 years' time, with evolutions in battery design, screen technology (so they consume less power when lit) and solid-state memory advances, a MacBook sporting a low-power-consumption, super-fast ARM chip. Hypothetically, that Mac could run for 18 hours or more on a single charge.

If Apple's desktop Macs ran ARM chips, too, then perhaps they'd need much less cooling--leading to quieter, more efficient power needs. And who wouldn't like to run apps on a top-end Mac Pro with four ARM CPUs aboard, sporting up to 32 separate processor cores?

[Image: Flickr user junesey]

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Most Innovative Companies 2011: Apple.

Christina Norman told the audience at our Innovation Uncensored event last week how she was visibly unsure about joining OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network as its CEO. Even a star-powered, deeply funded network is a lot like a small startup, full of twists and turns. In the latest twist a week later, Norman herself has been let go.

Photo: Brigitte Sire

Now that Oprah Winfrey herself has announced she'll be turning her full attentions to her OWN network and plans to bring along her new show, Oprah's Next Chapter, in Jan 2012, she's overseen the network's first big staff move, too: dismissing CEO Christina Norman. The dismissal comes after the network has failed to outperform the channel it replaced, Discovery Health, Brian Stetler reports today on the New York Times' Media Decoder blog. Peter Liguori, chief operating officer for Discovery Communications, takes over immediately--at least through the rest of 2011.

Norman just told us last week about how her first big visit with Oprah was a flop. Oprah had to cancel--her dog died. In case that wasn't a bad enough omen, a second meeting went horribly, Norman said, adding that she was visibly ambivalent about the opportunity.

[video_twistage 1]

Norman was so bad in the interview, she said she remembered Oprah saying, "I thought you needed hormones or something." Norman also admitted: "This is not the kind of job, the kind of person you half-ass it for." She let the bad interview pass but later came to her senses. "I called everybody I knew to get back in it," Norman told her panel's moderator Linda Tischler. But months later, she heard Oprah was still on the hunt for a CEO. So she threw her hat back in the ring. She landed the position.

Until today. Norman never seemed to be kidding herself about the challenges she faced at the network. It is very much a startup, Norman told Fast Company last week, after, it's now being reported, the OWN board had already made the decision to dismiss her--but before the news was announced. "Is it going to work, is it going to fail?" Norman asked about the network. "It's going to be a roller coaster, and how do you sort of lead and navigate through that?"

[video_twistage 2]Video editing by Adam Barenblat

Micro-finance is terrific in concept. All it's missing is a winning platform. In this installment of Work Smart, John Ferber of Microgiving.com describes the important differences between loansharking and micro-giving and lending that's estimated to have helped a billion people in need. Plus, learn about a few micro-lending and giving sites, including a Google-style search site for micro-finance services--proven to do good. 

 

Add more -ing to your business plan, to build your business faster and smarter.

Business plans take many forms. To a bakery owner, it might be a 50-page document detailing the company's financial plans for the next five years. To a programmer, it might be a drawing on a napkin, an idea, or prototype. Or, it might exist only in concept: For many tech start-ups right now, business plans are considered a waste of time—they're even downright uncool. After all, Facebook didn't have a business plan at the beginning. Bootstrappers tend to shun business plans, too. We're not raising money, they reason. So why spend our energy writing a plan?

This way of thinking isn't necessarily wrong, but it's not for everybody. I run an organization that helps entrepreneurs launch their businesses, and I've seen a lot of people, who decide to just do it, get into serious trouble. I met one woman, who wanted to build a website and an e-mail newsletter about religion. She and her friends loved the idea. She poured tens of thousands of dollars into building a fancy website, but after working on it full time for a year, she got frustrated by her lack of progress and approached me for advice. I asked a few basic questions: Is your primary revenue source ads in newsletters or on the website? What does it cost you to acquire a subscriber? What brands want to advertise, how much will they pay, and how much traffic do you need to get them interested? How many subscribers do you need to break-even? All I got were blank stares. We eventually got her on the right track, but her oversights cost her a lot of time, money, and aggravation.

Then there are those business owners who spend months writing their plan. I had one client—let's call him Lenny—who had a 40-page business plan complete with text, charts, footnotes, and numerous appendices, not unlike a college term paper. When we met the first time, Lenny walked in with a swagger, and dropped a spiral-bound tome on my conference table. When I tried to ask him a few questions, he simply said, "It's all in there." I explained to him that I didn't have time to read it and asked him to explain his business. Lenny tried, but had trouble keeping it clear and quick, and left out many important topics. He had spent four months writing a document that nobody wanted to read and that didn't help him articulate his ideas.

So, what is a business plan, if neither of those two things? It's the process of planning a business. It's about thinking through a business idea and sharing those thoughts clearly.

When thinking through your idea, try your best to be objective. Quiet the voices in your head that say, I just know it will work. And don't rely on just your research and analysis. Get out and talk to potential customers. Reach out to people who understand your type of business. Share your thoughts, and ask for advice and introductions.

Once you've analyzed and vetted your ideas, and you're confident that you're on the right track, shift into pitch mode. Prepare to share your ideas in a persuasive, clear, and compelling way in order to attract partners, employees, advisory board members—and investors if you need them.

The best way to share your ideas is through conversations. If you're great at making presentations, you could conduct those conversations with spoken words and a few visuals, like a product demonstration and a few drawings on a white board. But most people find it easier to keep business planning conversations on-track with the aid of a short PowerPoint presentation. Of course, this is business, and there are numbers involved. Unless you can count cards like Rain Man, you'll probably want to run the numbers using an Excel spreadsheet, and paste a few high-level charts into your PowerPoint deck. Finally, you've got to land meetings to have the conversations, so you'll want to have a one-minute elevator pitch and a one-page summary.

So when planning a business, save time and trees by ditching the 40-page term paper. Spend just a few weeks thinking through your ideas and creating a short, compelling pitch. Then buy yourself a beverage as a reward for being smart, and use the napkin as a coaster instead.

Stowe Boyd writes: [Researcher Charles Walker] contrasted solitary activities — like singing alone, cooking alone, gardening alone — with their social analogues — joining a [...]

I always look forward to seeing what the new design will be on the elementary school Field Day shirt every year. Some great, some average and some blah. At first, I thought this year’s “Field Day is good” was bland. I knew it was a play off “Life is good,” but it didn’t captivate me. [...]

Who delivers a message is sometimes more important than the message itself.

Convincing the media that you are an expert takes much more than brash self-promotion -- it takes a smart strategy and a good pitch.

I never used to pay very much attention to my equipment -- I knew what felt right and what didn't, and that's all I cared about. Not anymore.

More than ever before, women are being inspired to start companies that combine motherhood with entrepreneurial aspirations.

With the bank's board of directors under his thumb and institutional investors blase as usual about corporate governance, Lloyd Blankfein was in a jokey mood at the company's annual meeting.

Comcast has introduced a new 4G/3G Mobile Hotspot capable of connecting up to five devices to a wireless network up to 30 feet away. The Comcast Intenet2Go 3G/4G hotspot is a Novatel MiFi (branded by Xfinity) that can deliver some pretty impressive download and upload speeds (up to 6 Mbps down and 1.4 Mbps up [...]

Barry Slayford, the inventor of the arson-proof mailbox in the UK, has spent the past 12 years working on a center that will help bring inventors together so they can innovate. It is destined to become a one-stop place for inventors to receive advice, support, and the space they need to innovate. Mr Slayford said: [...]

Welcome to this week’s roundup of events, conferences and webinars for growing companies and entrepreneurs, brought to you every other week by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com. Whether you are looking for a local event, a webinar you can watch …

Read More

From Mike Michalowicz:

We live in a world of questions. In business, we are inundated with them. Think about all the questions you ask in a day—this may be exactly where you are going wrong.

Whether or not your questions will actually do anything to help you over a hurdle or take your business to the next level depends a lot of the questions you are asking yourself. You can’t just say whatever crosses your mind and expect that the universe is going to bring you a good answer.

Go

Are you maximizing your online marketing efforts for your business model? What sets you apart from your competitors? What have you done for them to easily locate your business? We live in a digital world with a prominence in technology. One thing that is crucial for any business whether brick and mortar or virtual is a website. A website is key to your target audience and provides viability for your company.

There are several new loan programs for businesses under Small Business Administration (SBA) The Small Business Administration (SBA) has launched a new toolkit for those lenders (http://www.sba.gov/for-lenders">www.sba.gov/for-lenders) that specialize in servicing small businesses. The kit is designed to streamline the lender’s procedure in helping small businesses in the loan process

Prompted by Barry Moltz's recent OPEN Forum article -- "10 Business Books to Read this Summer in 140 Characters or Less" http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/lifestyle/article/get-smart-10-business-books-to-read-this-summer-in-140-characters-or-less-1">

Al Jazeera English's newsroom in Doha, Qatar. Photo courtesy of CMDavid on Wikipedia. CoolGlobalBiz, May 6, 2011 THE NEXT REVOLUTION will be found where the new breed of global media is the most active. And the epicenters are growing in the Second and Third Worlds, where modernization and raw forms of self-rule and semi-democratic governance will take shape with each non-violent protest. As the global economy spreads, it's only a matter of time before similar youthful and middle-class revolts surface in Asia, Russia and Latin America. In the current Columbia Journalism Review, Lawrence Pintak explores the role of the Al Jazeera media network and the Arab media in the recent Middle East uprisings: "Before there was Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or even Al Jazeera, there was Hama, Syria. It was 1982 and an anti-government protest was put down with ferocious violence.The Syrian government simply destroyed whole sections of the city, leaving...

This week, a proposal to tax cars by the mile seemed to take the country by surprise. But, yawn, it's actually so 2009.

My kids and I have a new game we play while driving around Manhattan:  spot the dirty restaurants.  It's easy.  You just look for the large letter grade posted on the restaurant storefront.  If it's an "A", it's usually prominently displayed on the front door, next to the menu.  The "B's" are typically on a side window.  The "C's" are the most challenging to find -- and thus, earn the most points in our game.  Last week, I spotted one on a restaurant's side window, behind a planter, posted at the eye level of a toddler.