Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer popped up on Twitter tonight, and, if this really is his account , it looks like it hasn't taken long for his loyalties to start shifting. Two out of his first four tweets have been sent from an iPhone.
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-- For more information read the original article here.
Americans have gotten used to rearview cameras, which make driving in reverse easier and safer and will be required on all new cars by May 2018.
Now, Nissan is taking the next step forward, adding the benefits of a camera to the rearview mirror.
The "smart rearview mirror" looks like a standard mirror, but when the driver flips a switch, a much clearer view of what's behind the car is shown, piped in from a camera in the rear windshield.
No more struggling to see past tall passengers, headrests, and piles of suitcases. Fantastic.
The mirror itself meets federal regulations and is available if the camera ever fails, or if the customer prefers to go old school. But we're guessing that once drivers get used to the LCD screen mode, they'll stick with it.
U.S. customers will get their first in-person look at Nissan's mirror at the New York auto show (open to the public April 18-27).
We made a GIF to show you how it switches modes, using a flip on the back of the mirror. Nissan filled the trunk of the Rogue with balloons to show off the benefits of the camera:
SEE ALSO: Rolls-Royce's New $300,000 Car Is Absolutely Loaded With Technology
Pinterest does not have close to the reach of Instagram or Twitter, let alone Facebook. But the demographics on the site make it particularly attractive to marketers looking to target a high-income, female-heavy audience.
Moreover, the site's photo-rich design give brands a very strong canvas to show off their products and engage with users.
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we looked at the demographic breakdowns of the major social networks, as well as each one's unique characteristics. Pinterest has a high-income user base that's very interested in using the site for shopping inspiration.
Here are some of the top statistics on Pinterest's users:
- The scrapbooking social network skews especially toward higher-income consumers, and especially women.
- Over two out of five U.S. Internet users who are between the ages of 18 and 50 have used Pinterest.
- Pinterest is extremely popular among iPad users, meaning brands have a strong canvas to showcase their offerings. Pinterest users already account for 48.2% of all social media sharing on iPads.
- What exactly are they sharing? Well, food and drink-related content accounts for 18% of all items shared, the most of any category, according to the classification scheme devised by ShareThis.
- The best time to post on Pinterest is either between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. or 8 p.m. and 1 a.m., but you'll want to avoid the late afternoon between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., when many suburban families are sitting down for dinner and watching the nightly news.
Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>
In full, the special report:
- Analyzes gender, income, and age statistics for each social network
- Breaks down the best data for Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+
- Includes 16 charts and datasets that provide an in-depth picture of demographics on each of the major social networks
- Discusses mobile activity on social media and its relative weight on each of the platforms
- Looks at daypart statistics to gauge how demographics drives daily activity peaks on each of the networks
- Examines how international the user bases of each social network have become
Amazon's business is thriving, while Sears' is flailing.
But if Amazon acquired Sears, both retailers could stand to benefit, industry expert Robin Lewis writes on his blog.
He names a few reasons why Amazon acquiring Sears would be a smart business move.
1. Amazon would gain Sears Holdings' 2,400 Sears and K-Mart retail locations. "The acquisition becomes Bezos' answer to omnichannel and the proven revenue synergy of consumers' ability to shop online and off; the convenience of proximity for pick up and returns; and facilitation of even greater delivery speed," Lewis writes.
2. Amazon could get an incredible bargain. The cost of buying Sears would be less than building the same number of distribution centers, Lewis writes.
3. Sears still has attractive brands. If Amazon acquired Sears, it would get some great brand names. "Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools, and DieHard batteries are iconic brands that can be resurrected," Lewis writes.
4. Sears has an e-commerce presence. Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert has built a considerable e-commerce presence for Sears. The online business would thrive even more with Amazon's capabilities.
Lewis also suggests that Amazon should get rid of the Sears and K-Mart brand names.
"The Amazon brand name is simply more powerful today, and I suggest even more so among the younger generation, well on its way to becoming the largest consumer segment," Lewis writes.
He says that while many American consumers might be sad to see the brands go, an acquisition by Amazon could be the best option.
"If Sears and K-Mart aren't discarded in this kind of a deal, at some point in the very near future, they will end up in the trash bin of history," he writes.
SEE ALSO: J. Crew Took Out A Full-Page Ad To Respond To One Customer's Open Letter
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As far as movie sidekicks go, it's hard to find one as invaluable as Star War's R2-D2 was. That little droid was always in the right place, at the right time, with the right tool to save the day. And that now includes your kitchen with this R2-D2 measuring cup set that helps ensure your baking ingredients are always perfectly proportioned.
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-- For more information read the original article here.
The Heartbleed bug has made April into a difficult month for Internet users, as we scramble to change our passwords and protect ourselves from the most pervasive security threat in ages.
But if you've set up your own virtual private network (VPN), which gives you a secure channel back to your home network even on insecure public networks, you don't have to worry, right? Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true.
OpenVPN is an open source service that makes up the backbone of many independent VPN servers, including the one I built for a ReadWrite tutorial. Since OpenVPN uses OpenSSL as its default cryptography library, it can be vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug. That means a dedicated hacker could conceivably steal the master key that encrypts all connections to a particular OpenVPN server, essentially shredding its security (although doing so doesn't sound particularly easy).
Users that followed our ReadWrite tutorial probably aren't vulnerable to Heartbleed, and in fact, may be safer than the average user. That's because:
- We published our tutorial published after the discovery of Heartbleed, so anyone who followed it should have installed the Heartbleed-patched version of OpenVPN.
- We used a TLS-auth key, considered by some VPN builders to be an unnecessary security step. Generated in step eight of the tutorial, the pre-shared hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) key doesn't just ward off DOS attacks, but also any bad actor who doesn't know your private key. Even the OpenVPN wiki page on Heartbleed says the a TLS-auth key can make you less vulnerable.
Still, there are many reasons it's a good idea to check your VPN for Heartbleed vulnerability, just in case. Fortunately, one programmer, Stefan Agner, has already developed an open source program that tests OpenVPN for you. You can access Agner's code on GitHub.
Here's how to download his program and test your OpenVPN-powered VPN for the bug:
1) First, you need to access wherever your VPN lives, whether that's on your computer, a server, or a Raspberry Pi like in the tutorial. So in my case, I used SSH to access the Raspberry Pi where my VPN was built.
2) Once you're in, the first thing you need to do is make sure you're using the right version of Python. This script requires Python 2. So type:
python -V
If it results in a version that starts with a 2, you are set. If not, you'll need to install the latest version of Python 2 with:
sudo apt-get install python 2.7.3
3) Now you need to clone the Heartbleed test GitHub repository. Obviously, you need git installed. You can type “which git” to check if you have git already installed, and if so, which version. If it isn't already installed, you can type:
sudo apt-get install git
As long as it's the device on which your VPN -- For more information read the original article here.