The Good NET Guide

The good NET guide, is here to the sole perpose of helping everyday uses get the most out of the internet. We all know there are billons of pages, and more infomation on tap then ever before. But its not always as easy to find as it should be. The aim of thegoodNETguide is to make it simpler,  from useful links to helpful tutorials.

The news, the jargon, the trends and all things internet

Not sure how much exactly this cost Firaxis, but the Governor of Maryland has named September 21st, 2010 to officially be Civilization 5 day.

View original here: 
September 21st Officially Civilization 5 Day

With the debut of Groupon personalization, I have little doubt that the daily deal site will double the number of deals (and double its revenue run rate) in just a few months.

According to CEO Andrew Mason, the service is churning out 75,000 transactions per day. Through personalization, Groupon will be able to offer 20, 30 or more deals per city per day. Assuming the current growth rate in subscribers — in the last four months the site has more than doubled to 12 million registered users— 2x is likely a prudish estimate.

It’s hard to fault a company that is making money hand over fist; however, as a user, I do have one piece of advice: loosen that death grip on the daily deal mantra.

According to Mason, the personalization system will give a user one deal a day based on their preferences, their purchase history and their profile. Although there will be several, simultaneous deals in any given area, a user will only be able to access one main deal from his/her account. However, if the user finds a link to a different deal from a friend, a blog, or a daily deal aggregator, that link can be used by anyone. (In the early stage of the personalization program, Mason says, Groupon users may see multiple deals but eventually Groupon will turn that off.)

Thus, all the local deals are theoretically open to every subscriber but Groupon is playing air traffic controller in order to maximize the number of deals they can offer (aka cha-ching) and to ensure a nice distribution of users for their advertisers.  It’s easy understand Mason’s rationale here, at just one deal a day their hands were somewhat tied, unable to fully absorb the number of interested advertisers. In turn, Groupon’s limited inventory has directly benefited the “army of clones,” who have swooped in and picked up impatient retailers.

“We believe in the deal a day model, but we were running into a problem where the demand for merchants to be featured has been absolutely overwhelming,” Mason says. “We have something like 35,000 businesses lined up that want to be featured, 97% of the businesses that we feature want to be featured again, so the problem is only getting worse. And what it means is for every business we’re featuring, we have to turn away 7.” (See video above.)

Understandably, Groupon is trying to optimize the bottom line and enhance the consumer experience with personalized deals, but this structure also potentially creates a frustrating user experience. Under this system, a user knows that there could be 20, 30 deals floating around but s/he can only automatically access one. Thus, if a user doesn’t want their preselected deal of the day, she will have to scour the web and ping friends in a cyber goose chase. Of course, this search will be eased by the plethora of daily deal aggregators— but that doesn’t seem like an ideal solution for Groupon either. Why encourage users to jump off your website and spend more time on independent aggregators, where their wallets will be exposed to competitors’ deals.

From the launch of Groupon, Mason has adamantly defended the model of one deal a day, a structure that has obviously served his company well (and its army of clones) and catapulted Groupon to a billion-dollar-plus valuation. However, I believe the massive demand in the market indicates that there’s some flexibility in the business model. The data suggests that consumers can stomach several deals a day— maybe not hundreds— but certainly more than one.  From the vantage point of a user, I would like to see Groupon send just one personalized deal a day to my inbox because I think there is real value in that spotlight. However, on Groupon’s website, I also want the option to log-in and access all (or at least several) of my local deals in one simple repository, perhaps ranked according to my tastes and profile.

Groupon, consider this my 700-word comment card. However, regardless of how you tackle the challenge of personalization, I get the feeling you’ll probably do just fine.

Mason dropped by TechCrunch TV on Wednesday and we got a chance to discuss the new personalization campaign (above) and Groupon’s early days. In the second video (below), he discusses the key moment when Groupon kicked into second gear.

Despite their clear commitment to the hardware version of the Kindle, Amazon continues to make the Kindle apps that run on the iPad and iPhone better. Today, version 2.2 of the app brings a full dictionary with it. This matches the functionality of Apple’s own iBooks app, but the Kindle implementation is even a little better.

Now in the Kindle app when you highlight a word, a definition will automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. And that’s not all — there you’ll also find links to further investigate the word on Google or Wikipedia. Though this dumps you out of the app and into the iPhone/iPad web browser, it’s a pretty nice feature.

The feature also includes a link for the “Full Definition” of the word. Clicking on this will take you to the new Oxford American Dictionary that is automatically downloaded with this 2.2 version of the app. This dictionary contains some 250,000 entries, Amazon says.

As I said, this dictionary functionality matches that of Apple’s own iBooks app. But those definitions are an extra click away (you highlight a word then select “Dictionary” which bring up the definition in a pop-up).

The latest iPad version of the Kindle app also allows you to search inside a book for the first time. This too matches iBooks functionality. (The in-book search for the iPhone has also been improved with 2.2.)

Other small improvements include better line spacing on the iPad version, and fast-app switching for iOS 4 devices.

If your inner tree-hugger cringes every time you get a single book or knick-knack wrapped up in enough packing materials for ten, then this is for you. Oh, and you have to live in Seattle. Amazon has started a program in which you can get your packages delivered to the Seattle area in these cute reusable tote bags, which they seal with tape (and a kiss) and pick up the next time they come by.

Originally posted here:
Save Packaging By Getting Your Amazon Deliveries Via Reusable Tote

Not content just to “kind of” look like Apple devices, QingTing AKA Dragonfly has basically ripped off Apple wholesale, stealing the design of three of its “flagship products” – shown here is the Q Pro – as well as their web design. Who says China can’t compete in the marketplace of stolen ideas?

Original post:
QingTing: Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

We’ve just received official word from Google confirming that they are not currently blocked in China and that a server issue was most likely the cause of their dashboard misread. One month ago, Google put up their watered-down engine to avoid being shut down completely in Mainland China. Because the Chinese government did not like the auto redirect to Google Hong Kong previously in place, the new degraded version at the center of all today’s confusion simply links to Google Hong Kong.

From Google, in an email today:

Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.

Please also note that the dashboard is not a real time tool.

The email also suggests that an error in measuring what turned out to be a small amount of blockage was responsible for the false alarm. The fact that the dashboard does not update in realtime is probably what lead to today’s mixed reports as to whether or not the service was working. When asked what specific issue caused the blockage, Google responded that they had nothing more to add.

Image: Bramus!

At Google I/O in May, the search giant indicated that they were about to take their commitment to location to the next level. Sure, Latitude had been around for a while, but everyone knew that Google could do more in the space. The announcement of some new location APIs seemed to a big part of the solution. And now comes the fun part.

Today on their Geo blog, Google is announcing that they’re beginning to open the Places API for business. The first developers getting access? Those working on check-in services.

Here’s what Google has to say:

We are going to focus initially on check-in applications. These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience.

So does this mean the end of Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and all the rest? Well, no. All this means is that it should be a lot easier for startups to build the next versions of those types of services. Of course, if you listen to Foursquare talk about it, they’ll say they’re already moving on to bigger and better things beyond simply the check-in.

Google is pointing those who wish to get access to this API to fill out this application form found here. Again, the focus at first will be on check-in apps, but they promise to expand the API to other uses once they feel it is up to speed.

They are also accepting check-in apps for this API built in conjunction with the Buzz API as well.

Just prior to I/O, Latitude manager Steve Lee hinted that some sort of check-in functionality was likely in the future for the service. At I/O, the Latitude API made it possible for others to build such functionality. But this new Places API will allow for location services built on top of Google’s data but independent of Latitude.

Panasonic announced today that it will buy out two of its subsidiaries, Sanyo and Panasonic Electric Works, for $9.4 billion.

Sanyo is the largest lithium-ion rechargeable battery producer and 11th-largest solar cell producer in the world with a quickly-growing solar panel manufacturing arm according to company statements.

Panasonic Electric Works makes a wide range of electrical products including temperature, lighting and motion sensors and controls.

Last year, Panasonic acquired a 50.27% stake in Sanyo for $4.4 billion.

The pair of acquisitions should help the company best known for its Panasonic plasma TV, camera and other consumer electronics expand into energy technology.

Panasonic aims to become the “No. 1 green innovation company in the electronics industry” by 2018.

I honestly laid in bed last night thinking about the Chevy Volt’s $41k price tag. Seriously. When I got the press release shortly before it crossed the wire yesterday, the price seemed about right for a first-gen Voltec vehicle. The $350 lease program looked even better. I was already totally sold on the Volt after driving an early mule over a year ago and the price tag didn’t even bother me one bit. It’s not like I planned on buying one, but I could see where GM was coming from.

Then my post went up at 12:00 pm yesterday and quickly filled with commentors railing against the $41,000 price tag. That was followed by nearly every national news program claiming the Volt’s price invokes a bit of sticker shock. I thought, “Did these people really think the Volt was going to be the same price as a Malibu?” Apparently.

But then Rush Limbaugh opened-up on the Volt today and two things became clear. One, many people including Rush (and previously Letterman) do not fundamentally understand the Volt’s capabilities. I believe most consumers expected the Volt to be a mass-market vehicle and an instant hit in a sort of iPhone way. Yeah, that’s just not how the auto industry works.

Sure, it doesn’t have nearly as many sizes of this and that as your regular suitcase-sized tool box, but it makes up for that in cuteness.

See the rest here:
I Love This Tool Box