Group Texting Gets Easier

Credit: Joi Ito

By Jamal Andress

It’s the latest, all-inclusive trend in texting. If you’re looking to text groups of people, the easiest way to do it is though GroupMe. It allows texters to include everyone in the conversation–no matter what type of phone they use.

The company says it’s, “the best way to chat with everyone you know. It’s absolutely free, whether you are talking to a group of friends, or texting with one person. Best of all, it works on nearly every phone.” – GroupMe

Obviously the company is biased but from a straw poll of my peers I don’t know too many people who would disagree. GroupMe allows you to text a whole group regardless of what phone they have, what plan they’re on, or what company they have. Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci started the company in the Summer of 2010, inspired by a project conceived at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon.

After just a year, GroupMe caught the interest of Skype. In August of 2011 Skype paid $80 million to acquire GroupMe and it seems to be paying off. During the time Skype paid for GroupMe, there were roughly 100 million messages being sent.

The president of Skype, Tony Bates said “This acquisition is another step towards our vision to provide a global multi-modal and multi-platform communications experience. It complements our existing leadership in voice and video communications by providing best in class mobile text-based communications and innovative features around group messaging.”

Here’s how it works: It’s a free app that works on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows phones. You can set up phone groups and message or set up conference calls with the group. It uses SMS to send the messages across phone type and service carrier.

So, if you want to talk to all of your friends at once, dialing in to GroupMe may be the way to go to get connected.

That Pinterest Thing Everyone’s Talking About

By Samantha Kubota

If you’re ever sitting in a college lecture hall, take a look at the computers in front of you. Some will be taking notes, some will be on Facebook and still more will be surfing Pinterest.

Oh Pinterest, a heaven for those interested in pretty pictures, why doesn’t anyone understand you?

So I’m here to explain how Pinterest works and how to avoid any accidental copyright violations.

Pinterest is basically a virtual bulletin board, where you can collect pictures and – hopefully – links to the originals. The idea is that your boards will serve as a way of collecting projects or pictures or interesting, visual tidbits, with links back to the original site where the image is posted.

It looks a bit like this picture, with different “pins” showcasing different things.

When you click on a pin, it expands to look like this.

You can click on the actual image, and that should – key word should - take you back to the original site with that content.

If you come across this pin somewhere on Pinterest and want to save it for your own use, you have two options. One, is to “repin” which saves the picture and link to your own board. The second is to “like” a pin, which essentially is the same thing, but to see them again, the pins are not collected on YOUR board, just a list format you can access by clicking your “likes.”

But wait! If I’m just copying these images over onto my own boards, isn’t that sort of like stealing images? The answer is yes and no.  Sites with original content have the option to block pinners from posting their content to the web. Of course, as you might imagine, there are ways around that, but most people aren’t looking for a lawsuit and will avoid doing so.

Many websites have the Pinterest “share” option next to the Facebook and Twitter options, so if you click that, the pin should be set up to avoid any copyright infringement. Make sure the pictures you pin are credited.

Another way to avoid copyright infringement is by simply posting your own original content.

Some final words of advice? If you see your friend post a picture of San Francisco  – a great picture of the bay with the fog rolling in – and she lives in Columbia, Mo. and you had lunch with her yesterday, she probably didn’t take that picture. If there’s no photo credit, don’t repin!

There are a lot of kinks to be worked out in terms of the legality of the whole Pinterest website and for more legalese, feel free to check out some stories online.

Next iPhone Going Liquid

By Nick Adams

There’s good news for iPhone users tired of cracked phones and bulky cases. Apple is looking to liguid–or, liquidmetal–to beef up the phone’s armor.

Rumor has it, the next step for Apple is to create an iPhone completely covered in liquidmetal.  So why is this important? Well first off, this will be the first time it will ever be done.  It is also more durable than the iPhones on the market today.  According to Newslite.tv, 42 percent of people use iPhones with a cracked surface.  The liquidmetal design is suppose to decrease the iPhone’s fragile surface and limit cracked screens.

Credit: chickenandrice.net

Apple signed an agreement with a liquidmetal company in 2010 called Liquidmetal Technologies.  Liquidmetal is currently used in sim cards, but not in great quantities.

The past two versions of the iPhone had the same basic exterior layout.  Apple is hoping this new technology will separate itself from other competitors, such as the Android.

Credit: Getty Images

According to DailyFinance.com, the pros of liquidmetal include superior strength to weight ratio, high corrosion resistance, and high yield strength.

Here’s a video on how the technology will work.

Courtesy: Youtube.

The new iPhone is also expected to have better battery life and a more sophisticated Siri. So, watch out for the next iPhone, this time with a tougher skin.

Fashion Gets Techy

By Emily Allen

Courtesy: suttonhoo.blogspot.com

There are three types of people I follow on Twitter – journerds, friends and fashionistas.  It’s an eclectic bunch to say the least.  These fashionistas are fashion bloggers, designers and fashion magazines and they are pioneers for fashion in social.  Here is a list of my favorites for those of you with an insatiable appetite for fashion:

1. Sydne Style (@SydneSummer) – She tweets pictures almost every day with new looks to try for less.  She is also constantly out on shoots and attending shows and tweets live updates with what designers are doing.
2. LiveRunway.com – Sadly, I have never been to New York Fashion Week but this nifty site makes it easy to stay in the loop.  You’ll have to wait until the next fashion week rolls around to give it a shot.  Get this – it live streams runway shows.  Plus, it goes back stage and posts videos of interviews with models, make-up artists, etc.  Make sure you knock everything off your to-do list before entering this site – it’s hard to stop watching!
3. Cathy Horny (@CathyHornyNYT) – I started following her on Twitter after reading Social Media Delivered’s “Top 20 Twitter Fashion Account to Follow.”  She is a writer for the New York Times’ Runway blog so she does a great job of reporting on shows and weighing in on the season’s new looks.
4. Fendi YouTube Channel – There are a bunch of Designer YouTube Channels – Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Prada, etc. – that have been popping up over the past couple of months.  They post videos of interviews with the designers and models backstage.  If you like the show “How It’s Made,” there are a bunch of videos on how some of their shoes are made by hand and it’d interesting to watch.

5.  Women’s Wear Daily (@Womensweardaily) – Social Media Delivered describes it as “just like a newspaper on Fashion.”  It tweets about the fashion business as well as trends.  It’s a pretty hefty price for an annual subscription to Women’s Wear Daily but readers can still get a lot of information from following them on Twitter.

Instagram Extends its Reach

By Christian Bryant

Fuax-photographers using Android phones can finally rejoice: Instagram has made its way to Android operating systems (versions 2.2 or higher). Instagram, a digital photo-sharing app that allows users to apply various filters to normal photos and then post and share them with friends, was made available for Android on Tuesday, April 2. According to Mashable, Instagram’s co-founder Kevin Systrom first made the announcement of the app’s availability to Android at SXSW in March.

Top 5 March Madness Apps

March Madness is technically underway, but Thursday the action really heats up and If you want to follow along with all the action as it happens, these apps are must haves. The NCAA is charging for watching all the games online, something it hasn’t previously done, so some of these apps offer free alternatives to follow along during the day.

1. NCAA March Madness Live

If you’re like me and decided to go ahead and pay the $3.99 to watch all the games live on your computer, you will also be able to watch on your smart device with the same account used on your computer. Watching the games is great, but this app also features the ability to listen to radio coverage, check the box score, and follow live tweets about March Madness and all the teams playing at that time. The app also allows you to manage your CBS bracket and check the whole bracket as the tournament progresses. The grand prize winner in the CBS Bracket Challenge is four tickets to next year’s Final Four and money for airfare and hotel accommodations for Final Four weekend.

2. ESPN Bracket Bound 2012

This app allows you to follow along with all the tournament games with video highlights, twitter feeds and more. You can also pick your favorite team (The Missouri Tigers, of course). This app takes the bracket manager to another level. You can manage any of your brackets filled out for ESPN’s Bracket Challenge, but you can also check some celebrity brackets including ESPN personalities and what ESPN has dubbed “Barack-etology” – President Barack Obama’s bracket. The grand prize winner of ESPN’s Bracket Challenge is a $10,000 Best Buy gift card.

3. Yahoo! Tourney ’12

This app features many of the same things as the first two. You can manage your bracket if you filled out one for Yahoo!’s Tourney Pick ‘em 2012. The app lacks some of the features like twitter feeds and such, but the prize for Yahoo!’s competition is so great, you not only need to fill out a bracket on their website, you need this app to keep up with your perfect bracket. If you fill out a bracket that correctly picks every game in the tournament you will win $5 Million. The best bracket entrant wins $10,000.

4. Thuuz

Thuuz app uses algorithms to rate games as they progress, according to an excitement scale of zero to 100. Thuuz lets you select your favorite teams so you can see how exciting all of your their games are and notifies you when there is a game you won’t want to miss. It even lets you know where and when to tune in for that game.

5. FanCake

This app allows users to compete against one another about the game action as it happens. You can connect with facebook and compete for medals and points rewarded for picking certain outcomes during the game. I’m really looking forward to using this one after my brackets are all busted Thursday.

Honorable Mention

Bracket App

This app is available for Android and allows you to enter all your different brackets from different websites into the app and easily scroll between them.

ESPN ScoreCenter

This one is a must have for any sports fan as you can check scores, news, videos, and pretty much anything else ESPN.com has to offer right on your smart device.

Groceries Gone High Tech

By Dan Greenwald

Here’s a look at the newest technology for an old chore: grocery shopping.

Just imagine a world where there are no bar codes.

A new scanner in a grocery store in Japan can recognize several types of food including different types of apples. 

But not everyone is a fan of the new technology. Many say it’s slower than a human checker. And they say if the technical problems with it are worked out, it may replace checkers all together

Grocery Shopping on Your Phone

A new app on the iPhone allows you to shop and pay on your phone.

It’s a simple system. Each customer scans his or her loyalty card (the card they have at the store). The app loads in the person’s information so it knows the shopper’s purchasing preferences.

You scan each item while you shop. After you are finished shopping you bring your loyalty card and your form of payment to a self-checkout counter to complete your purchase.

You can watch the app in action in this video from Massachusetts.

Your Shopping List IN Your Shopping Cart

A similar advance in technology also puts your shopping list in your shopping cart.

Whole Foods is testing a special shopping cart. The cart follows the shopper around the store, scans items, and keeps of track of each item on the shopping list.

But, Whole Foods has no immediate plans to bring the new cart into stores.