Facebook Messenger takes aim at email, texting

Facebook Messenger, a new standalone app launching this week, allows users to send group messages or share photos with a single tap of the touchscreen.

Facebook announced today that it would roll out a new standalone app called Messenger, which will allow users to send and receive messages to friends directly from their mobile devices. Messenger is simple, in the extreme: A list of buddies, and a point-and-click way to reach them. The app is available on iOS and Android devices; you can download it over here.

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"More and more of us rely on our phones to send and receive messages," Facebook's Lucy Zhang wrote on the company blog. "But it isn't always easy to know the best way to reach someone on their phone. Should you send an email or text? Which will they check first? Did they even get your last message? We think messaging should be easier than that. You should be able to write a message, click 'Send' and know that you will reach the person right away."

Messenger also includes some photo and location sharing functionalities, as well as a group chat function.

So what's the big idea behind Messenger? Well, for one, it keeps users in the Facebook ecosystem for longer, which is good news ? in the longterm and short ? for Facebook and its advertisers. Moreover, Facebook is clearly hoping that Messenger will supplement or even supplant traditional email among some users, increasing the number of eyeballs on the site. Again, good news for Facebook.

Over at Macworld, Lex Friedman thinks that Facebook may be "feeling the heat from a little social networking upstart." That upstart? Google+, which launched earlier this year, and has continued to attract users at a robust clip. As Friedman points out, Messenger actually bears a quite striking resemblance to Huddle, a chat feature already available on Google+.

"Facebook?s new app ? only its second foray into the App Store ? hews quite closely to Google+?s Huddle," Friedman writes. "Messenger allows for group correspondence between friends you specify, and can optionally include location data for chat participants, too. Participants in your conversation who lack smartphones can still send and receive Messenger messages through traditional SMS instead, if they first confirm their mobile numbers with Facebook."

Used Messenger? Drop us a line in the comments section. In the meantime, for more tech news, sign up for our free weekly newsletter, which arrives every Wednesday.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/iw4gzwfLTtk/Facebook-Messenger-takes-aim-at-email-texting

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Travel Insurance A Necessity That Doesn't Have To Value A Fortune ...

If you are planning to take a holiday or business trip then travel insurance could be a necessity that you have to take into consideration and permit for in your budget.

Travel insurance is insurance that?s intended to cover financial and other losses incurred whereas traveling, either among one?s own country, or internationally.

Travel insurance specifically could cowl a traveler?s vacation value against cancellation and interruption whereas conjointly providing medical, lost or damaged property and travel delay coverage.

Travel insurance will offer you coverage for medical expenses, trip cancellation/interruption, baggage damage, and a lot of more.

Travel insurance can be an easy insurance policy to arrange and usually can fall into one amongst the following classes, single trip insurance, annual travel insurance, backpackers insurance or ski insurance. Travel insurance will sometimes be arranged at the time of booking of a trip to cover precisely the duration of that trip or a a lot of in depth, continuous insurance will be purchased from most travel agents, travel insurance corporations or directly from travel suppliers like cruiselines or tour operators.

Cover

Travel insurance cover could embody typically, trip cancellation because of terrorism and alternative named unforeseen events, trip delay, lost baggage, medical emergency, and different issues related to travelling. It is always advisable to test the travel insurance corporations policy wording and terms to totally guarantee that you?re lined for your own specific requirements. Your travel insurance policy can be arranged to hide the whole family on either one trip or annual travel insurance policy and you may be insured even when you are not travelling together.

Cover can be organized for many periods of your time and typically would range from five days to 3 months. An Annual Multi Trip policy will cover you for a 12 month period. Most policies cover a big selection of holidays from merely relaxing on the beach in Spain to bungee jumping in New Zealand. Again it should be said that policies can be adapted to your individual needs, you only obtain the cover you really need. Failure to disclose a medical condition might lead to hide being invalid.

Annual

If you travel a lot of than annually, check out annual travel policies, that offer insurance cowl for every trip you?re taking in a very 12-month period.

If you intend to require a lot of than 2 visits per year it some times is cheaper to shop for an annual vacation insurance policy than buy 2 separate single trip travel insurance policies. Within the United Kingdom there are a number of insurance firms that provide low cost vacation insurance and annual travel insurance for residents of the UK and Ireland.

Single

A single trip policy can be taken out for any obtainable geographic location and if you simply intend to require one holiday per 12-month period of time will additional often than not be the foremost economic travel insurance policy to consider.

On-line

Booking your holiday insurance online is fast and simple. Once you get a quote and are pleased with it, it takes just a few easy steps to buy online and find instant cover.

Travel insurance is an important part of your travel budget and its quite simple to get nice value travel insurance on-line, which offers competitive cowl and low costs that can additional usually than not be cheaper than some of the foremost insurance suppliers

Offer within the High street.

Tags: Doesn't, Fortune, Insurance, necessity, Travel, value

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Source: http://thevietnamtours.com/2011/08/travel-insurance-a-necessity-that-doesnt-have-to-value-a-fortune/

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How to build a website for your small business | DoodyCalls ...

Maintaining a strong online presence has never been more important in business than it is today. If you do not have a website for your small business, now is the time to get one started.

Building a basic website for your small business is no longer a difficult or expensive process. There are now scores of do-it-yourself website building tools available, many of which allow you to use their service for free. A few of the leading platforms out there today for websites/blogs are WordPress, Posterous, Weebly and Tumblr.

Of those four, WordPress is, by and far, the most popular. Last month, in fact, it was announced that WordPress now hosts over 50 million websites, from small businesses to prominent high-traffic blogs, such as TechCrunch, TED, CNN & the NFL. We use WordPress for all of our blogs and local franchise websites, including this one you?re reading now.

All four of the platforms mentioned above provide users with standard design templates to use free of charge. For those who want an even more customized look for your site, it?s not too hard to find a solution.

One option is to have a design template custom built, which is what we did for our local franchise blogs. The best place to find a WP designer these days is a site called Sortfolio.

Another option is to buy a pre-made premium theme. ThemeForest is a website that has thousands of beautiful themes/templates available at very reasonable prices (around $10 for many).

At DoodyCalls, we provide all of our franchise owners with turn-key blogs just like this one to help them dominate local search engine rankings; increase their online presence; communicate current and relevant?information?to their clients and vendors; and decrease their dependence on paid services such as Reach Local.

Here at DoodyCalls, we?re fully committed to providing every franchise owner with the systems, training and support they need to get their business off the ground and picking up clients. With more than 10 years of experience under our belt, we know what it takes to build a thriving local pet waste removal business, and one of the greatest components is a strong focus on Marketing. With that said, we?re thrilled to announce our?2011 Commitment to Marketing?

Source: http://franchising.doodycalls.com/?p=929

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Portal 2 Music Video Contest Winners: The National's 'Exile Villify' Gets A Sad Sock Puppet Video

A few months back, The National did a song exclusively for the Portal 2 video game. Sure, you wouldn't exactly expect that of The National, but that's what makes it awesome.

The track, "Exile Vilify," was familiar, much in the way every National song is, but new and exciting because -- it's a new National song!

It didn't stop there, though. Portal 2 then held a music-video contest for the song (with a guitar, and the glory, as a prize) and weeded through 320 fan-made videos. Weeks passed, and it finally came down to two. That's when the going got tough.

According to Valve Software, the game's developers:

After a few more weeks of fruitless debate, we realized there was a group who could help us crack this seemingly intractable stalemate: The United Nations. When that didn't pan out, we turned to another group: The guys who'd made the song, The National. They managed to pick a slim favorite, but weren't comfortable leaving the #2 video in the dust. So after a few more days of hard words and hurt feelings, we finally decided to award a first place winner followed by a mathematically imperceptibly close 1.00000000001th place winner. Both will receive the same great prize package, the only difference being that place #1 will include a guitar and place #1.00000000001 will feature an Aperture Science messenger bag signed by the Portal 2 Team.


Looking at the two -- it's easy to see why the first place winner won. How could you say no to a sad sock puppet?

WATCH the videos. Do you think the sad sock puppet deserved to win?

First Place Winner


1.00000000001th Place Winner

Oh yeah, and here's the second (third?) place winner, who was robbed of any glory:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/portal-2-national-music-video_n_922822.html

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Johnny Cash's sideman Marshall Grant dies in Ark. (AP)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. ? Not all pioneers know exactly where they're going, and that was definitely the case for Johnny Cash & The Tennessee Two.

Cash, guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant ? the last surviving member of the group who passed away Sunday morning at age 83 in Jonesboro, Ark., after an aneurysm and stroke ? changed the future of American music and popular culture with their distinct boom-chicka-boom beat.

Grant fell ill after rehearsing for a concert to raise funds for the restoration of Cash's boyhood home, said Cash's daughter, Roseanne Cash.

Grant always freely admitted the soon-to-be historic trio had no special insight as they shaped that universal beat ? a sound that launched a million imitators with songs such as "I Walk the Line," "Folsom Prison Blues, "Ring of Fire," "Big River" and "Cry Cry Cry."

"Our inability had more to do with our success than our ability did, and I'm not ashamed of it," Grant once said in an interview.

That statement pierces the heart of just why Cash, Perkins and the steady ? both in rhythm and in life ? Grant were so special.

Grant and Perkins were auto mechanics in Memphis, Tenn., who practiced together at the shop when their co-worker Roy Cash introduced them to his brother, John, in 1954. They quickly realized all three couldn't play acoustic rhythm guitar, said John Rumble, senior historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.

So Perkins, who died in 1968 from injuries suffered in a house fire, borrowed a Fender Telecaster with volume controls stuck at wide open, Rumble said, and Grant bought a Kay bass. The resulting sound ? The Johnny Cash beat ? was both simple and driving, and there from the start.

"Luther played the way he did because he couldn't really play any way else," Rumble said. "That very sparse, plowing rhythmic sound was something they just fell into. They didn't just sit there and work on it for weeks. That's pretty much the way they started out."

After initially failing to impress Sun Records producer Sam Phillips, the trio passed a second audition and began recording in 1955 on a roster that included Elvis Presley and other proto-rockers such as Carl Perkins. They earned modest success quickly and built on it with appearances first on the Louisiana Hayride and eventually the Grand Ole Opry.

In time, that simple rhythmic pattern would infiltrate everything. To a young Marty Stuart, that sound coming out of the radio as he grew up in small-town Mississippi was an invitation to dream.

"I think the word that comes to my mind is originalty," Stuart said. "They were pure American originals, all three of them."

And though Cash's name was out front, there was never any doubt where that sound that helped launch rock `n' roll and modernize country music came from.

"The Johnny Cash sound was created by the three of them equally, you know what I mean?" said Rosanne Cash, Johnny Cash's daughter. "There was none of that `boom chicka boom' without Marshall. You can't separate the three of them at that point when it all started. It was one thing. You know, they're united again, the three of them."

Rosanne Cash spent the last days of Grant's life at his side in Arkansas, she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday afternoon. They reconnected last Wednesday at rehearsals for a Johnny Cash Festival appearance that served as a fundraiser to help restore the late singer's boyhood home in Dyess. Johnny Cash, born in Kingsland in south-central Arkansas, died in 2003.

Rosanne Cash said Grant, who lived in Hernando, Miss., fell ill while in Jonesboro and the Johnny Cash Festival was held Thursday night without him. It attracted country music stars George Jones and Kris Kristofferson.

Grant played bass with Cash until 1980 when he began a career in management, handling The Statler Brothers until they retired in 2002 and later writing the autobiography "I Was There When It Happened." Grant and Perkins were among the first inductees into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2007.

Not only did the trio almost singlehandedly spawn rockabilly, a rich vein of rock `n' roll that's mined today by stars such as Jack White and Brian Setzer, it helped popularize rock and modernize country music.

That sparse sound was perfect for rock `n' roll, Rumble said, and eventually became part of the DNA of country music, a genre Cash would revolutionize, then symbolize for 40 years.

"It was a highly influential sound," Rumble said. "You had the standard 2/4 beat, the Ray Price shuffle and the Johnny Cash beat, and between those three that covers a whole lot of ground in country music."

Through much of that time, Grant was by Cash's side. Rosanne Cash argues that without Grant, you could forget about most of it ? no rockabilly, no "Man in Black," no legend.

"He wouldn't have gone where he did without Marshall, and therefore this lineage not only of me but of the next generations of roots and rockabilly and country musicians would've disappeared," she said. "An entire generation of those musicians owe something to Marshall."

Arkansas State recently acquired Cash's boyhood home and sponsored last Thursday's concert to benefit its restoration and the establishment of a museum in the Dyess Colony.

Johnny Cash was born at Kingsland in southern Arkansas and grew up at the Dyess Colony, where during the Depression the government offered to support Delta farmers by funding homes and hospitals in return for their working the surrounding cotton fields. The experiment faded by the 1950s as the post-war boom attracted farmers to the cities.

Part of the 2003 movie "Walk the Line" about Johnny Cash was filmed in Dyess.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110808/ap_en_mu/us_obit_grant

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Online Relationship: Ways To Make Online Dating Work For You : www ...

Posted on | August 8, 2011 | Comments Off

With the sharp enhance within the variety of web users, on-line dating has likewise continued to thrive. Online relationship is at present occupying the biggest proportion of paid up commercial on the web. With greater than a thousand relationship sites obtainable in the present day,competition for matchmaking has turn into an all vital aspect of the large gamers in the market. It?s imperative to notice that when a giant participant in finance, expertise units sight on on-line relationship, then there is cash to be made.

Initially the idea of dating on the internet was associated with alot of social stigma.It was considered an approach for social misfits to meet. Come the 90?s and following the release of the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan box workplace hit ?You?ve got Got Mail?,online dating started being considered an efficient and intelligent way for folks to fulfill and even begin relationships. Online relationship develop into a favoured methodology especially for busy profession individuals who had little time to socialize. With time it has caught on not solely as a matter of necessity to fulfill people but additionally as a trendy factor to be involved in. In traditional dating persons are restricted to talking to people current in their social setting and people who one has no idea about their likes and dislikes or even their private compatibility. On-line dating offers the aspect of selectivity the place the customers are in a position to browse their potential companions profiles earlier than actually communicating with them. There may be additionally the advantage of not having to struggle with breaking ice as an easy hello normally typically serves the purpose. There?s additionally the choice of selection, as there are literally thousands of individuals to decide on from.

There are, nonetheless, some apparent dangers related to online dating. The most typical of those are false profiles resulting in misconceptions and disappointments about potential companions and security issues corresponding to date rape and kidnapping upon meeting individuals initially met on the internet. This does not make on-line dating an unsuitable selection as the identical dangers if not worse are encountered by those who stick with the traditional modes of dating.

All said and finished, this quick rising courting method has brought a revolution to the world of courting as we know it.

If you would like additional information with regard to how to kiss drop by Hilary Kleildeling?s internet site without delay.

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Source: http://www.3blog.info/2011/08/08/online-relationship-ways-to-make-online-dating-work-for-you/

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