Want to watch the big budget Super Bowl commercials, but can’t wait till Sunday or don’t care about football? Facebook and USA Today have just launched Ad Meter, a Facebook app where you can watch many of the TV spots right now. Then from kickoff until Tuesday night you can vote for your favorites. Traditionally an offline poll done live with handheld meters, USA Today has finally brought Ad Meter online so you can judge ads both in real-time and post-game.

Facebook tapped Involver to build the app, and has secured early previews of roughly 20 commercials. The rest of the ads will become available through the app at game time. Last year Facebook let you watch

Several Internet companies have plopped down the big bucks this year in an attempt to court the mainstream. Arrested Development’s Gob plugs Hulu, and Teleflora.com touts the lovin you might get if you use it to send a Valentine’s Day gift. Etrade, Careerbuilder.com,

Investing in Super Bowl ads makes more and more sense for web services as the general public becomes more internet savvy. They should tread cautiously, though, considering past ads from Salesforce, Groupon have been voted most disliked and caused PR crises. Let’s hope no one gives our industry a bad wrap this time around. Oh wait, GoDaddy’s ads filled with body-painted models and angels in the cloud are just as sexist as ever.

The amount of stuff we trust to fly in and out of our smartphones is astounding. Just look at what happened when a couple of reporters got access to an unwitting (and rather unlucky) Apple employee’s iMessages alone — within days, they learned more about him than most people know about their closest friends.

Now, imagine all the stuff that could fly in and out of a government official’s phone, or that of a highly-ranked member of the military. Forget saucy texts and booty pictures — we’re talking about state secrets, here.

Looking to keep their secrets underwraps while on the go, the U.S government is working on a build of Android custom-tailored to meet their security requirements.

Word of the project comes from CNN, who notes that U.S. officials/soldiers aren’t currently allowed to send any classified data over their smartphones. If they need to transmit anything that might sink ships (so to speak), they currently need to find a secured (generally meaning hardwired) line hooked to an approved device.

Here’s the gist of the project:

Most of the project’s details are still underwraps, but this is all still rather interesting. What hardware might they use? If DARPA makes any substantial security improvements to Android’s kernel, might that work make it back to the official branch? Might this work eventually be monetized (remember, Siri was born as a DARPA project) and offered to enterprises looking for a locked-down version of Android — and what does that mean for RIM/BlackBerry?

Most popular mobile sports apps are trying to feed you scores and news, or show you fantasy numbers. OnSports, by HitPost, is in a smaller class of apps that’s focused on users running the discussion themselves. And now, ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday, viral growth and featured spots on the Android Market and the iTunes App Store are helping it step up against larger competitors.

The app, which lets users make their own reports and polls with professional photos, is now #2 on the Android Market free sports app section, and climbed to #13 in the iTunes version of the category since yesterday. This has translated to around 50,000 daily active users, chief executive Aaron Krane tells me, with 60% of new users returning within 24 hours. He says the app, which makes it easy to share activity to Facebook and Twitter, is generating 30,000 posts to Facebook each day, and 300 tweets per hour on Twitter. OnSports is also sending about 3000 SMS messages per day.

Some of these metrics are of the vanity variety — and they’re certainly not of the scale of social mobile games — but they all indicate an engaged group of core users, in an immature category of mobile usage.

Most significant sports apps, including ones from ESPN and major sports leagues, are focused on broadcasting scores and professional news to users; while they may have social features for commenting and sharing, the focus is not as heavily about user interaction. However, Bleacher Report and SB Nation — two web sites that rely on user-generated content — also have mobile apps. The influx of user web content into devices makes them more immediate competitors.

OnSports is notably sticking to the thesis of being mobile first… that users will want to do to more and more of their social activity on the devices they carry around with them rather than their computers. The company has been trying to figure out exactly how to make this idea materialize over the last year or so. With the new visibility to users ahead of the biggest sporting event of the year, it could be on its way to winning in the big leagues of consumer mindshare.

Tumblr is introducing a new feature today that lets its users pay a dollar in order to have their post featured on the Tumblr Dashboard. The option is called “Highlights,” and it’s now available right from the new post page on Tumblr. With Highlights, you can choose a special icon that will appear next to the post along with an optional message that points out why the post is important.

“Every now and then, a post comes along that’s meant for big things. It could be pulling the wraps off your new project, promoting your next show, raising awareness for a cause, or just sharing a truly incredible photo,” wrote Tumblr’s David Karp on the company blog this morning.

In typical Tumblr cutesy style, the Highlights option includes six icons: a lightning bolt, caution sign, heart, megaphone, unicorn (!) or cheeseburger (uh…what?).

There are also dozen of messages to choose from, like “help!,” “urgent!,” “watch this!,” “cool!,” etc. Some messages pertain to events (“save the date!”) while others refer to news (“today only”), products (“buy this!”) or even questions (“answer this!”).

In addition to being marked and annotated, the highlighted post is slightly larger and has bigger font, too.

Before publishing a post with a Highlight, you’ll be prompted to fill in your credit card info or make the $1.00 payment via PayPal. Whether or not the option really brings in more eyeballs and clickthroughs remains to be seen, especially since the low barrier to entry could see the feature used so regularly that Tumblr users end up with Highlight-blindness.

But for now, the trick is working. (Oh hey, BuzzFeed has an awesome new iPad app? Brb).

Online accounting software maker Xero has raised $16.6 million in new funding from existing investors — including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, whose most famous investment, Facebook, just filed for an IPO,

Thiel first invested $3 million in New Zealand-founded Xero back in 2010, with the aim of fueling expansion in the United States. The company says that’s also the reason for the latest round. This time, Xero also notes that it recently doubled its US team, from three employees to six, and hired Jamie Sutherland (formerly vice president and general manager at Sage Software) as the president of US operations.

Other investors in the round include Sam Morgan and MYOB co-founder Craig Winkler. The company says it has 60,000 paying customers and 240,000 users. It partners with Yodlee to bring automatic bank feeds into the service, with 5,000 feeds in the US.

“Xero transforms the way small businesses handle their accounting,” Thiel said in the press release. “Where conventional accounting software is cluttered, slow, and anchored to a desktop, Xero’s cloud-based services and intuitive design simplify an impressive suite of financial tasks. We’re excited to see Xero grow throughout the U.S.”

Dropbox has no shortage of fans or users these days — their stellar wins at the Crunchies are proof of that — and now the cloud storage service is leaning on them to test an experimental new build of the Dropbox Android app.

While the thrill of being on the bleeding edge is probably enough for some people to take the plunge, the real meat of the experimental build comes in the form of the new auto upload feature for photos and videos. It’s pretty much exactly what the name implies: as soon as you snap a photo or take a video with your Android device, it automatically gets uploaded to your account. And in usual Dropbox fashion, it just works.

I was actually a bit surprised to see how well the feature worked right out of the gate. Once you breeze through the app’s new splash screens and start taking pictures, it takes only seconds for your shots to start trickling into your account. The 180MB file size limit has been given the axe too, so that Oscar-worthy film you’re putting together on your Galaxy S II should make the transition just fine too.

So what’s in it for you, aside from the ability to immediately shove your media into the cloud? More free storage, that’s what.

For every 500 MB of photos or videos that gets uploaded, another 500 MB will be added to your Dropbox account. Provided you stick with the process long enough, you’ll eventually walk away with 5GB more space than you had coming into it. Not bad Dropbox, not bad at all.

Dropbox just kicked off a similar campaign on their forums to test their slew of desktop clients, but motivated users shouldn’t bother trying to double-dip in attempt to snag 10 GB of storage. If you’re content to do a spot of beta testing in exchange for some nifty features, feel free to download the .apk right here.

Leads360, a consumer sales automation and telephony platform, announced today it has completed a $15 million round of new funding. The round was led by Volition Capital and saw participation from existing Leads360 investor Rustic Canyon Partners.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its product lineup, pursue strategic relationships and raise awareness about its platform.

Despite how the name sounds, the company doesn’t actually sell leads – it sells software and services to manage the leads an organization already has. Founded in 2004, the L.A.-based startup has now managed over 40 million prospects for over 2,000 clients, including many among the Fortune 1000.

Over the past three years, Leads360 reports seeing 40% to 50% revenue growth, and claims to do a better job than CRM systems with specialized customizations at managing consumer sales. With the Leads360 software, businesses can set follow-up reminders, track appointments, manage new leads alerts, prioritize quality leads, and track key performance metrics in order to calculate ROI by lead source.

In addition to its standalone software, Leads360 also offers Leads360 for Salesforce, which integrates into Salesforce’s existing CRM system, and Leads360 for iPhone, which lets you manage leads in real-time, while on the go.

I’ve spent some time on this blog dispelling the myth that all clients are good clients. The truth is that not all customers are good for your business. A bad client can cost you time, resources, energy, sanity, and most importantly, money. That’s why I advocate firing your bad clients. Let them go. Think you can’t survive without their money? Fire them and spend that extra time working up a plan to attract A-list clients. Trust me, it will be worth it in the long run.

But how exactly do you fire a bad client? I’ve fired more than a few clients in my day, so I’ll share some tips with you based on my personal experiences.

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Have you fired any bad clients? How did you do it? Share your experiences by leaving a comment below.

Article by Tech Nova

Microsoft SQL is a relational database management system that is widely used in organizations to store data for customers and for accounting etc. MS SQL Server database is designed around the tables, each having several columns. SQL Server uses MDF file to save the records, views, triggers, primary keys, foreign keys, indexes and other SQL database components. But at clocking, operating system errors and hard drive failure like events might prevent you to access this registering containing various records and other related information.

SQL server data loss tin occur at a number of different levels. The first level of data loss starts with the storage device. The next level of data loss starts with the file system level. The information about where data files are on the volume can also get damaged or corrupted. The last level of data loss tin occur within the file itself as the MDF files are prone to corruption because of its complexity. The internal structure tin get corrupted at any point of time and makes the table data inaccessible.

Everyone knows the fact the data that resides inside an organizational database is valuable. For the smooth functioning of the organization, information stored in SQL server is so crucial that SQL server or SQL database corruption compel every organization to find out the solution that helps in getting back the data stored in the SQL server. Common MS SQL server error messages pop up when the database recording containing MDF file gets corrupted: “Server: Msg 8942, Level 16, State 1 Table error: Object ID O_ID, index ID I_ID, page P_ID. Test (TEST) failed. Slot S_ID, offset 0xADDRESS overlaps with the prior row”"Server can’t find the requested database table”"The file *.mdf is missing and needs to restore”"Index ‘%ls’ on ‘%ls’ in database ‘%ls’ may be corrupt because of expression evaluation changes in this relinquish. Drop and re-create the index”"The process could not execute ‘sp_replcmds’ on server”"Server can’t find the requested database table.”The jarred occurred in database ‘db_name’, table ‘table_name’, column ‘column_name’. The statement has been terminated’”Internal error. Buffer provided to read column value is too small. Run DBCC CHECKDB to check for any corruption”

These error messages are indication of data loss, if timely and appropriate measure is not taken. One tin restore the information from the latest database backup. But sometimes, it is not feasible to restore complete information from the backup. At this point of SQL corruption, many SQL recovery software’s are widely available, the only need is to find the tool that is cost effectual, reliable and ensued oriented.

After performing wide market analysis, I come across SQL recovery software, one of the renowned software designed to recover SQL database components that includes triggers, records, views, table data, primary keys and every other SQL database component. I downloaded its free to evaluate version and performed SQL recovery process. The SQL recovery with this process is extremely easy that can be performed easily by anyone.

I would like to suggest SQL database recovery software in the time of SQL database corruption crises as this tool is best in all the aspects including cost effectiveness, recovery percentage, reliability and simplicity.

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Article by Brian John

Not many people know what hosting actually mean; Hosting is simply a term used for storing web pages on a web server. Every time you open a web site, the web pages for that particular site are downloaded from a web server. Generally most websites have many pages and are stored on the web server, so that users can view your website. So web servers are basically large data centers that store web pages for different websites. So the first step in planning to build a website would be to find a good place to host the site. A company that provides the web servers to host your website is called web hosting provider.

Web hosting providers can host thousands of sites provided they have many web servers that are connected to high speed internet lines. One such hosting company is Justhost, which is a web hosting company. Our justhost review reveals that it is very cost-effective solution compared to other web hosting providers. Justhost coupons are also available with which you can get good hosting offers. Web servers need to be safe and reliable in order to protect the websites, also there need to be 24/7 connectivity to these web servers. Hence it is important that the data centers that house these web servers to be physically secure and connected to a high speed internet line 24/7.

There are different types of web hosting solutions depending on your needs and the amount of money you are willing to spend. Two of the most popular types are:

Shared Hosting

Dedicated hosted

Shared hosted: Shared hosting, also known as virtual hosting, is a form of hosting where many sites are stored on the like physical web server. These web servers can host hundreds to thousands of sites that are usually high end computers with extremely good processing capabilities to handle many sites. Therefore the performance of these servers won’t be slowly. However if these servers are overloaded they would get slow, netting hosting companies usually monitor their web servers performance and make sure that the servers are not overloaded and are working at optimum performance.

Dedicated hosted: Dedicated hoisting, unlike sharing hosting, is a web server which is specifically allocated to ane particular customer, who is free to use the server as per his choice. They can host single or multiple websites or modify the configuration of the software or allocate bandwidth to different sites on their server. This type of hosting is usually more expensive than sharing hosting as it requires one dedicated server. Therefore it is mostly used to host authority sites which generate high amount of traffic.

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Facebook is testing a new photo viewer layout that mounts engagement buttons and comments to the right rather than beneath images. See, Facebook doesn’t want you to just view comments, it wants you to start a conversation. Apparently the company doesn’t care about being accused of copying Google+, since the viewer’s layout is very similar to that of its competitor.

The fact is that this is good design, though, so it makes sense for Facebook to integrate whether or not it has appeared elsewhere. Currently when Facebook users view photos, they see a big blank space on the right but can’t see the comments below with scrolling past the fold and away from the image. That makes users more likely to leave the photo viewer before engaging. The blank space is better filled with comments that lend context to a photo, as a small percentage of Facebook users are now seeing.

Facebook hasn’t been shy about taking inspiration from other products. In the months since Google+ launched, Facebook has added features found in Google+, including an asymmetrical Subscribe option, video chat, enhanced friend lists, and near-infinite post length. Facebook’s goal is the best user experience, and Google got a lot of that right. Google+ certainly wasn’t shy about using Facebook’s design as a starting point.

Facebook employees have repeatedly assured me that product teams aren’t thinking about ad revenue when they design products. Still, convenient repercussion of the tested photo viewer design may be an increase in ad clicks. Rather than displaying ads beneath photos, the tested design shows them more prominently in the comments sidebar. Finding these types of synergies between business and user experience will be key to Facebook honoring the interests of its future investors.

So why does this small change matter? First, encouraging conversation aligns with Facebook’s goal of driving connections between people, such as friends of a photo’s owner who might interact in its comment reel for the first time. Second, these comments drive notifications for all other commenters, which inspire more return visits and time on site. I bet the test will show increased engagement, and Facebook will implement some version of side-mounted comments.

[Thanks to our anonymous tipster for the screenshots]

Article by Marry Parker

Devoted Hosting Services involves leasing outside your host definitely not intended as utilised by anybody else. Running the actual host can be achieved with the patient’s own personnel or perhaps the host offers full-time directors to perform your hosting server with an extra price. Dedicated servers can help reduce your corporation’s expense costs as well as improve investment come back. There’s two standard types of hosting, that is handled in addition to hosting. Dedicated Servers Web hosting is perfect if you wish to defend your computer data. This sort of web servers normally have packages to safeguard coming from trojans as well as normal verification can also be completed. Addititionally there is computer software to protect versus cyber-terrorist in addition to . Determing the best website hosting is vital if you want to make the most out of an avid server.

You need to if you’re finding the right Dedicated Hosts for the dedicated host service? There are most companies that provide hosting companies also it can be difficult along with perplexing to determine which organization may very best suit your needs. You’ll find diverse provides distributed by devoted number assistance businesses to suit distinct wants. So that you can pick the right business, you should very first determine your needs. Some Dedicated Servers Hosting focus on smaller than average moderate organizations while many accommodate largely to be able to huge companies. Additionally it is imperative that you choose from the managed hosting server with an one particular.

The internet is a good location to search for the top firms offering Devoted Hosts. You can easily assess different charges as well as the providers contained in the package deal. Taking a look at previous customer reviews can assist you see whether a firm will be worth your time and efforts and money or otherwise not. Go for a company which offers ensure on his or her providers along with assurance on their products. One other thing take a look at while looking for the particular Dedicated Hosting Services will be the convenience of their technical support. You would like to make sure that you can certainly get in touch with the assistance crew in the event that some thing goes wrong with your devoted sponsor server or if you’ve got doubts about the actual machine.

On this page we intend to maintain attorney at law on how advantageous it is to get an agreement dependent Server colocation Hosting. Normally, find that a lot of businesses that are usually consistently producing as well as expanding into different groups of the marketplace do not prefer to get fused with an agreement centered devoted hosting services. Whereas, conversely, companies running having an established routine mostly choose to take care of any hosting deal. Even so, in order to go beyond this kind of knowing, why don’t we take into consideration a bit more elements standing up with and in opposition to contract hosting support.

Devoted Hosting Services is actually polite if, an individual appreciate are afflicted by help to make once simply repayment. There isn’t any issues related to paying for much more solutions, added assistance, and so on through time. In the case if you wish to proceed, simply pay in the beginning of the year and remain just about all for the whole 12 months. Furthermore, this kind of plans mainly offer lower price up to if you opt to go for a lasting program. Furthermore, one could simply include features and also options to their service and acquire rid of those that they just don’t demand. You can easily keep an eye on one’s site’s requirements and earn adjustments consequently. Moreover, within Web site hosting Hosting as well as top quality assistance as well as a higher level associated with support, most agreements describe the features they feature to their customers. Nevertheless, this is not all. Together with a number of the extremely profitable positive aspects mounted on using dedicated hosting companies, we also have handful of down sides with similar. Naturally, Devoted Hosts affordability takes on an extremely crucial role in an enterprise as a consequence of that, many organisations still find it more affordable to stay with a plan indicating prepaid. In case there is failing to get a part of any agreement the requirement of paying a small charge along with great deal additional charges minimizes fully

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Yammer grew like crazy last year. How crazy? Product VP Jim Patterson just tweeted out the Yammer 2011 Year in Review infographic below with the comment: “Pretty much everything tripled.”

Paid seats went from 300,000 to 800,000, total users went from 1.6 million to 4 million (2.5X growth), and employees went from 80 to 250. Also, all told, 200,000 companies are using Yammer, including 85 percent of the Fortune 500 (and TechCrunch). We just can’t quit you (although we’ve tried).

Some of these stats CEO David Sacks already shared with us earlier, and he also told us that sales tripled. But the 800,000 paid seats number is new.Yammer is in the process of raising a large $40 million round.

In case you happened to be the victim of a day-long coma yesterday, it was a very exciting day for Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley, and that quaint little social network we’ve all come to know, love, and be terrified of. Facebook filed its S-1 yesterday with the clear intent to go public on a market near you very soon, and will be raising $5 billion ahead of its IPO at an expected valuation of between $75 and $100 billion.

The company’s filing revealed some significant (or perhaps mind-melting) stats, including the fact that Facebook is seeing 845 million users every month, half of whom are daily users, and half of whom are mobile users.

In fact, there was so much excitement and noise around Facebook’s IPO yesterday that the volume of visitors looking to check out Facebook’s filing succeeded in crashing the SEC’s website. Hitwise tells us that SEC.gov apparently saw a 15 percent increase in total visits, compared to the day before and 42 percent compared to previous Thursday. And guess who was the number two source of traffic for the site? That’s right, TechCrunch.com, less than 3 percent behind the top source, Google.com. Thanks to you, readers, we gave the SEC all the traffic they could handle. And apparently more.

Today, Heather Dougherty, Director of Research at Hitwise shared some stats that provide a great follow-up to yesterday’s IPO madness. Yes, a $75 to $100 billion valuation is enough to marinate on, but just how much traffic — and what kind is Facebook.com actually seeing? While this data is from January, many readers may already be familiar with a lot of this, but it’s just further evidence of how colossal Facebook’s share of the market has become — both at home and abroad.

For starters, Hitwise found that Facebook.com is now seeing one out of every eleven visits in the U.S., and one out of five pageviews online in the U.S. takes place on Facebook.com.

Furthermore, in terms of engagement the average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes, and breakdown of male to female in Facebook’s visitors, shows that the social network is more popular among women, as 57 percent of its traffic for the last 3 months, ending January 28th.

Meanwhile, the ages of Facebook.com visitors shows that the breakdown of its its visit share by age compares favorably to the online population, as you can see in the graph to the right.

As Erick said yesterday, Facebook managed to report $1 billion in profits for 2011, which is a fairly exact number, considering all of the variables at play. It could be that Zuckerberg managed accounting to come out at this round, even number, a sign to investors that the company has everything completely under control. Investors love predictability.

And on that note, beyond the average of 20 minutes users are spending on the site, 96 percent of of visitors to Facebook.com were returning visitors in January 2012. Hitwise’s numbers also show that, in terms of reaching affluent users, Facebook’s size allowed the site to win 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group, ahead of YouTube at 223,732,591 visits and Twitter at 15,166,795 visits.

Further adding to its accolades, when it comes to search, “Facebook” happens be the most searched term in the U.S., with Facebook-related terms accounting for 14 percent of the top search clicks. is the most searched term in the US and Facebook-related terms account for 14% of the top search clicks.

Internationally, Facebook.com remains in the top market in every country aside from China, due to the influence of China’s Facebook and Twitter competitors, Sina Weibo, Baidu, and Renren, which are the largest generators of traffic. The social network’s largest web footprint is in Canada, where it captures 12 percent of all visits in the market.

With all the excitement around Facebook yesterday, it really comes as no surprise that Facebook.com is, according to Hitwise, “the largest website in the U.S. and a top performer in numerous international markets.” The loyalty, engagement, and sheer number of monthly users proves that this company is, simply put, a freak of Internet nature. The social network has spread across the Web with its sharing functionalities, Facebook Connect, and is bringing social to just about every industry imaginable. Zuck’s proposed goal of making its social graph portable and fundamental to the fabric of the Web has certainly been realized, as it played an integral role in the rise of Zynga, social gaming, is making eCommerce social, music, and on and on.

For more on the Hitwise data, check out the post here.

Article by Adam Johnes

Which means that your web site or internet business has become so large that it is time to result in the progress from shared enviroment to some dedicated server. It’s a smart decision, but which makes it is just half the battle. After that you will need to opt for what you wish from the dedicated server; and whether you would similar full hosting or specific serving hosting. The differences involving the two are quite big, and you will probably need to understand them and how they tin assist your online business, before deciding what one you require.Whole website hosting by way of a dedicated server occurs when just one single server can be used. That certain web server holds every one of the providers on the internet data and software package like web software, the email software, data inquiry software, and all other computer software the fact that company needs because of their website. Full netting hosting service with a dedicated server is generally a great way for smaller or medium sized companies that have a good volume of website visitors to the website, however it’s still enough whatever particular one server are designed for it. Full internet hosting on there also benefits smaller firms as there is merely 1 physical machine, while specific serving hosting requires several devices.This is because with specific serving hosting 1 web server, a treadmill unit, is needed for everybody style of software. Because of this the e mail software is maintained one server or quite a few servers, in support of database inquiries software packages are held on another, entirely separate, server. While all of these servers operates in line with their unique computer software, ladies band together to do 100s, thousands, or an incredible number of tasks each day. The one restriction there’s regarding the amount of servers you will get with specific serving hosting over a dedicated server is how much space there may be for each physical server.

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