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Update all the social sites

HootSuite for iOS lets you sign in to your Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare accounts from a single application window. While the app may not be versatile enough for the most active social media personalities, it is a convenient option for frequent users of these three social networks.

The first thing you should know about HootSuite for iOS is that it's nowhere near as powerful as its browser-based sibling. While the desktop version lets you sign in to and post from no fewer than nine different networks, the iOS app is limited to the three mentioned above. That said, the … Read more

Troubleshooting printer warnings after updating OS X

Many people use OS X to share the services from one system with others on a network, which is particularly useful for small work groups for creating centralized backups, file-sharing locations, and print services. Apple's Server variant of its Mac operating system makes this relatively easy to set up. However, the problem with centralizing services is that if something goes awry then all users will be affected.

Sometimes computer outages such as a reboot or hardware upgrade or a network error can break the connection between clients and services, but at other times a configuration problem from a software … Read more

Apple hiring iOS engineers for Siri development

According to the descriptions of recent jobs posting on its Web site, Apple is looking for iOS engineers to join its Siri development team to help implement user interface (UI) design for the voice-activated assistant included on every iPhone 4S.

The primary objective of the first position would be to help develop the look and feel of the conversational UI elements while using Siri. This includes a variety of tasks, as the post explains, "we [Apple] take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application's UI in a theme fitting with … Read more

Facebook's most-shared articles of 2011 shows babies, banks, and brats

As the year draws to an end, Facebook is revealing the news articles that grabbed the most attention on the social network in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the wrap-up spans a range of subjects from celebrity deaths to weather disasters, and even a few viral videos that you may have forgotten.

The most shared article on Facebook this year came from The New York Times, which published exclusive satellite photos of the Japanese tsunami disaster back in March, along with the subsequent nuclear fallout in the months following.

A different story from Yahoo's Lookout Blog also made it into the top 10, but equally memorable footage shows a shivering dog refusing to leave another injured canine stuck in the rubble; a follow-up article on CNN documents the same dog's rescue from the shores of the Miyagi prefecture.… Read more

Report: 39% of Twitter photos come from an iOS device

According to a report at The Next Web, Apple's iOS devices, including iPhones and iPads, account for at least 39 percent of the photo traffic on Twitter. Photo search engine Skylines has constructed a breakdown of the various platforms and clients that post photos to Twitter, showing that despite iOS 5's relatively young lifespan it is already the seventh-largest Twitter client.

Combining the 5 percent of photos that come directly from iOS 5 with statistics from Twitter for iPhone at 21 percent, and Instagram (an iPhone-only photo sharing app) at 13 percent, the 39 percent figure is reached. … Read more

Instagram CEO hints at video posts coming soon

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt in Beijing, hinted at a future addition to the popular image-sharing service that would include video posts.

Systrom's talk at the Disrupt event also included thoughts on international expansion for Instagram and how social media should be approached in places like China. But, the real gem was his backstage comments about video.

"Our job and our vision is to allow you to tell the story of your life, and whatever tools that may be for video, we'll end up making them," he said. "I'm not sure … Read more

The 404 937: Where we shoot the Courier (podcast)

Today's show begins with a history lesson on the fate of the Microsoft Courier tablet and its possible reincarnation with a modified version of the Windows 8 operating system.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1564: Molly's new iPhone 4 is no Halloween trick (Podcast)

In the tech news this week, Stephen and Brian bust me for buying an iPhone 4 on eBay to tide me over until there's a phone I really want--or until my Verizon contract is up. Nicole Lee joins us to talk about Nokia and Microsoft's new baby, the Lumia 800, and Sony's plans to get serious about making smart phones. Plus, stock advice from the gang, the coming nightmare that is the Stop Internet Piracy Act, and Computer Love.

Hey, book authors! Has Hyperink got a deal for you!

San Francisco-based Hyperink, a self-publishing company, is capturing the attention of wannabe authors. It's also got the attention of Lerer Ventures, a seed stage venture capital fund founded by Kenneth Lerer, the chairman and co-founder of The Huffington Post.

In the beginning, Huffington Post editors combed top search-engine terms and stories on politics, celebrities, media, and other trending topics. They then had their bloggers retell the stories (in most cases, better than the original version) in the punchier, HuffPo style.

Hyperink is similar. The startup, which launched today, aims to publish books about obscure and niche-specific topics, like "… Read more

Has content become advertising for advertising?

Since the advent of the Web, online publishers have had to create unique content to attract premium ad rates. Over the past few years, however, a flood of subpar content has seemingly taken over the Web, driven by high-growth sites such as Demand Media and the AOL-owned Huffington Post.

These types of sites have enjoyed surging traffic by creating relatively simplistic content, repurposing and "aggregating" premium content, and gaming Google's search algorithm. But this strategy faces a growing backlash and as a result may have hit its natural ceiling, and that could create opportunities for new online-media … Read more