Google aired a particularly long Google+ ad during a Thanksgiving day NFL game. In deep contrast to loud football fans cheering on teams while guzzling beer, the ad has a relatively dull tone, dragging on for two minutes.The ad is part of Google’s efforts to promote Google+ as a competitive player in a social space dominated by the likes of Facebook.It basically features a close-up of a computer screen zooming into the various aspects of Google+ and different people talking. ...

Rays of sunlight pierced my venetian blinds, sending UV rays lasering into my room. As I raised my trembling hand to shield my eyes, a tiny Logitech mouse cracked me across the bridge of my nose. Why was it tied to my hands? What happened the night before, and where the hell was my coffee?The office, yesterday, 4:30pm The Logitech M125 mouse, a tiny nugget of user interface fun was thrown onto my desk. “Here, review it. Make it shine,” my ...

The Taiwanese cellphone mega-manufacturer has cut its immediate revenue forecasts by as much as a quarter, citing continuing global recession and competition from Apple and Samsung. It expects it’s fourth quarter revenues to be $3.4 billion – the same as this time last year.“Due to global macroeconomic downturn and market competition, the assumptions of 2011 Q4 financial forecast provided earlier are no longer applicable,” HTC said. Growth will return in the first half of next year, it said.Read more on ...

Apple has pulled the "Jew or not Jew" app from its app stores worldwide following a lawsuit from French anti-racism groups, reports the Register.The app allowed users to measure "how Jewish they were" by cataloguing Jewish personality traits according to how genetically Jewish users considered themselves to be."Listed for you, thousands of Jewish personalities (through their mother), 'half-Jewish' (through their father), or converts," the app's inventor Johann Levy promised potential buyers on the French Apple Store.The app was pulled ...

Those who purchased the Kindle Fire and the swiftly proceeded to root it to allow the installation of unapproved apps would have swiftly hit an error message when trying to play videos. “Your device is no longer configured correctly to play Amazon videos. For more information see Help & Feedback under Settings.”Naturally, the hacker community swiftly swung into action to create a workaround. One of the biggest selling points of the Kindle Fire is its ultra-low price of US$200, which ...

It’s that time of year when we give our email stats a gander to see how well our campaigns have performed over the past 12 months; gauging successes and failures, and gaining insights into emerging trends and challenges.So how have your 2011 email campaign efforts measured up against other people’s worldwide?Enter email marketing benchmarks by various industries: Benchmark email marketing statistics offer a glimpse into the broad performance of various industries and industry sectors. These studies usually go beyond traditional metrics ...

With soaring stock valued at over US$7-billion, Twitter, a veritable startup success story, has without doubt been one of the most desirable employers in Silicon Valley. However, revelations from recent ex-employee Adrien Gaarf may change that.The San Francisco-based company’s ranks have, in a relatively short space of time, swelled from 150 to over 750. But in recent months, despite an expected IPO announcement which would be a windfall for those with stock options, it has seen a run of departures ...

South African fast food chicken outlet, Nando’s, has struck again with a holiday-themed campaign. This time it has taken its hunger for parodying current events to the world of dictators, with a new YouTube video featuring a man who bears a striking resemblance to long-standing Zimbabwean commander-in-chief, Robert Mugabe.The ad features "Mugabe" sitting at a dinner table alone reminiscing about the good times he had with his "friends" -- all deceased dictators. The star-studded cast features Uganda's one and only Idi Amin Dada, ...

BlackBerry is soaring ahead in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In July, it disclosed that it had added one-million new subscribers across this region in less than three weeks. This is huge. Balance that out with a net decline in subscribers in its mature North American markets, however, and the outlook isn’t fantastic. Basically, it needs to keep adding more (net) subscribers in emerging markets than ones it’s losing. So far, it’s keeping pace. But the company and platform ...

Early this month, a bunch of kids in Queensland, Australia, created a Facebook fan page called "Sneaky Hat". The original page has since been taken down, but it has quickly been replaced with alternatives such as this one. If you thought Planking or HorseManing were weird, I have to warn you that clicking on a Sneaky Hat link while at work may be somewhat risky.The new photo fad started with young men taking photographs of themselves naked except for ...