Marco Simoncelli Dead After Horror Moto GP Crash

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

In sad news for the motorsport world, Italian MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli has passed away after a crash at the Malaysian GP.

The crash which claimed the life of promising young rider Marco Simoncelli came just four minutes in to the Malaysian MotoGP.

Simoncelli was aged 24.

In the second lap of the race Simoncelli, who had been fourth placed at the time, lost control of his bike and veered across the track, immediately into the path of his fellow riders.

He was struck by Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards. Edwards was thrown from his bike by the force of collision but escaped serious injury.

Simoncelli lost his helmet in the incident, and lay motionless on the track as medical staff rushed to his aid.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident Australian rider and 2011 champion Casey Stoner spoke of his concern for the rider.

"As soon as I saw the footage, it just makes you feel sick inside," Stoner told BBC2 shortly after the incident.

After being rushed to hospital following the crash, he was listed as in critical condition in early media reports but a little over an hour later it was confirmed that he had passed away from his injuries.

The race was immediately red flagged, and later cancelled as a sign of respect for Simoncelli.

Marco Simoncelli was considered by many to be an up and coming rider in the motorcycle racing world. He was a favorite among fans for his unusual riding style, but this style often contributed to crashes on the track.

Just days before he had spoken with confidence about his chances of winning the races that would in the end claim his life. The Sepang circuit had been the same one in which he had secured his 250cc win in 2008.

After a slow start to the 2010 MotoGP season, his first, Simoncelli managed to a final rank of 8th, ahead of more experienced riders such as Edwards and Capirossi. Up until the Malaysian GP he had been ranked 6th in the 2011 MotoGP season, having reached a career high in the Australian GP, finishing second.

He had previously been the world 250cc Champion in 2008 and third placed rider in the following season, with 12 career wins from 64 starts in the format.

The crash was the first fatal incident in the MotoGP since 2003, when Daijiro Kato was killed following a collision with a wall at up to 120km/h.

Simoncelli's death comes a week after the death of veteran racing driver Dan Wheldon in a 15-car pile up during the IndyCar World Championship.

Source from : Auto Racing

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Steve Jobs, Creator of iPad, iPod and iPhone was Gone

Steve Jobs, Apple's founder as well as the man behind the creation of the iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac, and iTunes, has died at the age of 56 years.

So far Apple has not been told Jobs the cause of death, although in recent years he was known to fight against pancreatic cancer and get a liver transplant.

"We are very sad to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," a statement on Apple's board of directors. "Brilliance, passion, and Steve is a source of energy innovations that enrich our lives. The world becomes a more beautiful place because of Steve. Love administered greatest for his wife, Lorene, and their families. Our hearts are sympathetic to them and everyone who was touched by his work extraordinary. "

Apple Web page even today, Thursday (09/06/2011), decorated with photographs Jobs with the words "Steve Jobs 1955-2011."

When the image is clicked will show the text "Apple has lost a creative genius and visionary, and the world lost an extraordinary human being. Those who have ever known and worked with Steve has lost a good friend and inspiring mentor. Steve left the company that can only be made by him, but his spirit will always be the foundation for Apple. "

Jobs founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, together with his childhood friend, Steve Wozniak, he sold what was considered the world's first personal computer, the Apple II.

The technology industry observers said Jobs as a master creator, who sometimes equated with a Thomas Edison, who changed the way people use computers, enjoy music, and communicate.

Source from : Blogger Maps

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Facebook Begins Testing Facebook Credits for Websites

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Facebook has started working with a few developers to test the ability of using Facebook Credits on other websites. Palo Alto says the goal of Facebook Credits for websites is to let developers offer a more unified app experience beyond Facebook apps.

Facebook is not yet sure if it will expand the test more broadly. If demand for the virtual currency is high and the user experience is deemed solid, the company could one day allow all websites to process payments for virtual goods using Facebook Credits.

There is just one early example of the new system: GameHouse’s Collapse! Blast. If you are a developer interested in Facebook Credits for websites, you can sign up at the Facebook Credits Developer Support Form by choosing the fifth category from the list.

“At this time, we are focused on gathering early developer feedback,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We will keep you posted as our tests continue.”

In related news, Facebook has added new payment methods for Facebook Credits. Some of the recent additions include: Axeso5 (Brazil), Join Card (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand), Malaysia OBT (Malaysia), MEPS FPX (Malaysia), MEPSCASH (Malaysia), PayEasy (Philippines), PaysBuy (Thailand), SafetyPay (Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Spain, Austria, Brazil), and WebCash (Malaysia). The social networking giant now supports over 80 payment methods in more than 50 countries around the world.

Facebook Credits launched as an alpha in May 2009. The beta stage started in February 2010 and ended with a final version in January 2011. As of July 2011, all Facebook game developers are required to only process payments through Facebook Credits. It is not (yet?) a mandatory payment option for Facebook apps. Earlier this month, Facebook Credits became available as a payment option to mobile app developers.

Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all revenue earned through Facebook Credits, leaving developers with the remaining 70 percent. It’s not clear how much revenue the company makes from the virtual currency, but it appears to be a growing percentage of its overall revenue. It could be massive if Facebook Credits for websites takes off.

Source from : ZDnet.com

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LinkedIn Wants to Make More Money From Job Recruiters

LinkedIn, the social network for businesspeople, is adding on to its biggest business: matching jobs to job seekers.

The company is announcing an addition to its hiring solutions business called Talent Pipeline at a conference for 1,500 job recruiters and personnel executives in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Pipeline is an effort to centralize the way recruiters find, track and stay in touch with potential hires and promotions. The product is intended to be used with candidates internally and outside the company. Employees, the company says, can more easily find out about job openings for themselves or candidates they know.

The company considers the recruiting industry as a fragmented global market worth $85 billion.

Not surprisingly, the Talent Pipeline also enables recruiters to connect the names on a résumé to their LinkedIn profiles. The idea is to enable them to build a bigger internal database with more information in it, including notes on a candidate that the hiring managers can share with each other, thus making LinkedIn more important to them.

“Most of the people you want to hire are in jobs where they are already happy – that’s why there are headhunters calling people up,” said Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive. But independent recruiters, with their personal networks and spreadsheets of candidates, tend to be specialized and incapable of looking globally for a lot of jobs, he said. “They don’t scale. We find when you unleash a search capability at scale you start looking through more variables, like geography, languages spoken, related fields and work history.”

The Pipeline will be introduced next year as part of the current service, called the Recruiter platform. It will also be available separately, though LinkedIn has not yet set a price for the service.

Building on hiring solutions is a big deal for LinkedIn. In the quarter that ended last June, the company made $58.6 million from Hiring Solutions, up 170 percent from a year earlier. That was 48 percent of the company’s total revenue, and its fastest-growing segment. LinkedIn’s second-biggest business is advertising, and it brought in $38.6 million. LinkedIn is a free service, but people pay premiums for things like access to anyone’s professional information; these premium subscriptions brought in $23.9 million.

Besides offering another reason to use the recruiting software, the company is looking to increase the time people spend interacting with its products, hoping it will also be used to structure how people work as well as how they get hired.

Some 6,000 companies use Hiring Solutions. LinkedIn is sharing parts of its database with partners like Success Factors, which makes software for planning and carrying out complex tasks, to build more uses for the talent data.

“We look at LinkedIn as an ecosystem or a platform,” Mr. Weiner said. “It’s not just about finding a job, it’s about helping people be great at the job they are in – they want to provide intelligence, participate in professional groups and share knowledge, share their expertise.”

Source from : NY Times

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Is Facebook looking to challenge LinkedIn in job postings?

Facebook has struck a partnership with the U.S. Labor Department to help the unemployed find jobs.

The partnership harnesses the popularity of Facebook, and the Labor Department wants to expand it to Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites to provide resources to job seekers as the nation wrestles with a 9.1% unemployment rate.

But does the new partnership position Facebook to move beyond social into professional networking?

Pundits have long speculated that Facebook, with its more than 800 million users, would eventually use its social networking dominance to challenge LinkedIn on the job-recruiting front.

LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman shrugged off the notion of Facebook as a competitive threat Wednesday at San Francisco's Web 2.0 Summit.

Asked whether LinkedIn would be held back by its demographic –- the average user is in his or her early to mid 40s –- Hoffman retorted:

"You mean, like someone who could give you a job?" Hoffman said.

His response got quite a few chuckles from the audience.

A year ago, LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner said LinkedIn keeps Facebook away with keg stands.

"While many of us in college probably were at parties having a good time, doing things like keg stands, or being exposed to keg stands, I don't know that many of us would look forward to having a prospective employer have access to picture of those events," Weiner said during an onstage interview at the Web 2.0 Summit last year.

Or, as conference host John Battelle added helpfully, "bong hits."

In other words, LinkedIn's position: People want to keep their personal and professional identities separate. If Facebook is a place for your friends, LinkedIn is a place for your professional connections.

But does that hold true now that Facebook has begun to make it easier for its users to share status updates, photos and other information just with the friends they designate? And what of Google's ambitions for its social network Google+?

All of which is not to say that LinkedIn is not plugged in. It is coming off a successful initial public offering and boasts more than 120 million users.

And it has its own close ties to the Obama administration. President Obama made his case for his jobs bill in September in a town hall forum with Weiner in which Obama took questions about creating jobs and goosing the economy. The forum was similar to one held at Facebook in April.

Facebook downplayed the significance of rolling out resources for job hunters for the first time on Facebook.

"We are simply creating a central location for employment services for people who are on Facebook, because we want to connect job seekers to the resources available to them. This is not a competitive service, it's a public service," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said.

Source from : Los Angeles Times

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Twitter Founder Pushes Square’s Payment Device Into Wal Mart

Square Inc., the mobile payments company created by Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey, said its credit-card reader for smartphones will be available in Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s locations nationwide, boosting the number of retail outlets where it is sold to more than 9,000.

The reader, which lets businesses handle payments via mobile devices, was previously available in about 200 Apple stores, as well as Target Corp., RadioShack Corp. and Best Buy Co. outlets.

Square is targeting small businesses that may not be able to afford machinery that handles credit cards, Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois said in an interview. The company is vying with EBay Inc.’s PayPal as well as providers of so-called near field communications to help consumers pay for things on the go. At stake is a mobile commerce market that Juniper Research predicts will surge to $670 billion in 2015.

“Payments have a lot of friction, a lot of distraction,” Rabois said. “We can’t eliminate all of that this month, but our mission is to make Square ubiquitous.”

Square’s technology lets U.S. businesses handle payments via Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, as well as devices running on Google Inc.’s Android software. The card reader plugs into the headphone jack of the mobile device and lets merchants swipe customers’ credit and debit cards.

The device can be ordered free on the Web. The reader is sold at stores for $9.99, a cost that can be refunded online. Square makes its money from each transaction, with merchants paying 2.75 percent of the amount paid.

Square publicly launched last October and has about $140 million in funding, according to regulatory filings.

Square vs. NFC

The company is betting that consumers will choose its system over near field communications, which lets phones function like credit and debit cards by waving them in front of a reader. The process requires customers to take out a phone and place it near a reader, much like they already do with a credit card, Rabois said.

“We don’t currently believe that NFC as a payment technology is likely to improve either the merchant’s experience or the buyer’s experience,” he said.

More than 800,000 of Square’s devices have been shipped to merchants. The company says it is processing more than $2 billion in payments on an annual basis. PayPal expects more than $3.5 billion in mobile volume this year and processed $29.3 billion total in payments in the third quarter, according to a statement by the San Jose-based company last week.

Source from : Businessweek

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