YBuy lets you test gadgets before buying them
A new online service called YBuy launched today allowing users to test new gadgets and kitchen electronics before purchasing them for good.
In the site’s About Us section, the mission statement explains how consumers should feel and handle the products they plan to buy online. “ybuy solves that problem by allowing you to get familiar with the item for 30 days before committing to buying it,” it goes on to say.
Members pay $25 a month for the service, and shipping is free both ways. If members decide to keep a gadget, the $25 applies toward the item’s purchase price. You can only test new items at the beginning of each month and if an item is bought, you must must wait until the first of the next month to try out a new product.
YBuy doesn’t have hundreds of products available, only a few dozen so far. Those products include the iPad 2, the Kindle Fire, the Roomba 562 and a WiFi Body Scale. Kitchen appliances available to test out include blenders, mixers, coffee makers and bread makers.
Based in California, YBuy has raised $750,000 in funding from angel investors, AllThingsD reports.
So far, joining YBuy is via an invitation-only request.
New Hampshire journalist explains why he’s pulling his byline in protest
by David Silverberg
The Friday copy of the New Hampshire Union Leader looked a bit different to regular readers: on the front page, instead of a reporter’s bylines, on five stories it read under the headline “Staff report.” As one participating reporter explains, this isn’t a typo but an action to “demonstrate the Manchester Newspaper Guild’s unity during long and difficult contract bargaining with Union Leader management,” as Chad Graff explains.
Graff, a regular reporter for the Union Leader, is among the many journalists at the paper pulling their byline in solidarity. He says on his blog “key leaders of the management bargaining team have demonstrated a general unappreciation of their staff, which has been reflected in their words and their contract proposals.”
He goes on to say, “This negotiation has gone on for far too long and management has been unreasonable throughout.”
At issue is the proposed decision to not allow part-time staff to work more than 40 hours a week. There is also a 10 percent pay cut proposal on the board. In addition, the company wants to to eliminate pro-rated vision care for part-timers.
On mobile devices, most people get news from social media, not apps
A new survey found most smartphone users tend to get their news fix from social media surfing rather than from dedicated news apps, according to Flurry Analytics.
U.S. mobile or tablet application users spend around 30 percent of their time social networking, while most play games (at 49 percent). News apps capture only 6 percent of total time on mobile apps, the data says.
The press release adds, “Further considering that Flurry does not track Facebook usage, the Social Networking category is actually larger.”
A Poynter article reminds us why people clamor to news apps in the first place: They are catered to the most-loyal fraction of a news outlet’s established audience, and may also get them to pay for content.
“The app fulfills those readers so dedicated to your brand that they want on-demand access to a comprehensive bundle of your content. These people who value your content most also are most likely to pay for it, and the app stores make those payments and subscriptions easier,” the author says.
The report also looked at time consumption. “The growth in time spent in mobile applications is slowing – from above 23% between December 2010 and June 2011 this year to a little over 15% from June 2011 to December 2011,” Flurry states.
Flurry accounted for its data by tracking anonymous sessions across more than 140,000 applications.
News applications are still popular with some smartphone lovers. A Nielsen study found 33 percent of consumers downloaded news apps during the past month. The study also found 51 percent of consumers “are more tolerant of in-app advertising if it means they can access content for free.”
Netflix launches in UK and Ireland
by Elaine Findlay (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)
The America-based on-demand Internet streaming film and TV programme service provider Netflix spreads its wings to add the United Kingdom and Ireland to the list of countries where viewers can subscribe to its library of visual media.
On Monday, Netflix, the company whichdescribes itself as “the world’s leading internet subscription service for enjoying films and TV programmes” made its services available to internet users in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Netflix service allows subscribers to watch any of the films and TV episodes that are available in its library via many electronic devices such as PS3, Xbox, standard PC, iPad and Wii.
The company is offering a month’s free trial if subscribers sign up using a Facebook account. However, a subscriber’s Netflix activity will be automatically shared with friends unless changes are explicitly made to Facebook app settings, as the company points out on its website:
When you connect and register an account, your basic information from Facebook will be shared with Netflix, plus your email address. We will share your Netflix activity with your Facebook friends, but you have control over what gets shared on most devices and you can disconnect at any time. You can control who sees your Netflix activity on Facebook using your Facebook app settings.
After the one-month free trial ends, monthly subscription fees are £5.99 which is slightly more expensive (using standard internet dollar/sterling conversion rates) than the subscription fee in the U.S. which currently stands at $7.99.
Chief Executive Reed Hastings recently said Netflix gained U.S. subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year after a sudden price hike sparked an exodus in the third quarter, the Chicago Tribune reports.
This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [link]
New scam targets ‘haters’ of Facebook Timeline
by Leigh Goessl (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)
Recently Facebook unveiled its controversial Timeline feature and, perhaps not surprisingly, a new scam has surfaced on the social network that banks on the fact people often do not respond well to change.
Exploiters are targeting Facebook users with the hope of snagging those who have an intense dislike of Timeline, playing on those emotions in order to provoke a user response.
In this case, the exploiters are hoping people hate the network’s new Timeline feature and attempt to lure users into believing they can revert back to the previously designed Facebook. The fraudsters bait with fake instructions on how to “go back to the ‘old’ Facebook,” playing on their emotions if they are adverse to the change.
According to All Facebook, the tricks being used are fake ‘Like’ buttons, invites to friends, asking users to view YouTube videos, and, as characteristic to scams, a download that directs to an extension that contains probable malware.
AllFacebook notes that at the time of report 16 Timeline-related scam pages were live on Facebook. This reporter did a search and counted 10 at the time of publication, the highest of which had 12,436 likes listed, so it seems Facebook has been removing these scams; however many still exist and people are still ‘liking’ the fraudulent pages.
According to Web Pro News, one of the scams has several odd steps designed to trick users and despite asking to click over a dozen ‘likes’ as one step, thousands have fallen for the trick (click the Web Pro link to see the graphic). Other pages reportedly look more legit.
Facebook has no visible warning, nor a mention on the company’s security page to let users know a conversion back is not an option for users whose profiles have been switched to Timeline — once this happens, the feature is here to stay.
Eventually all profiles will convert to Timeline.Anyone wanting to take part in the future of the network will have to ultimately accept the Timeline change; there are no magic steps to get rid of it as Mark Zuckerberg and company have made it clear Timeline is here to stay.
Pages that offers any sort of button, link or download to ditch Timeline is a scam and those behind the ruses could be nabbing personal information and spamming the victim’s friends. Scams routinely surface on the social network that currently boasts over 800 million members, and the ‘Timeline scam’ is the latest of many.
This article was originally published on Digital Journal [Link]