The bitcoin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Amazon Announces Virtual Currency, Amazon Coins

Earlier this week, Amazon announced their new service, Amazon Coins, which is a virtual currency used to buy apps, games and other in-app purchases. 

They kicked off the launch by giving all Kindle Fire owners $5 worth of Coins, equal to 500 coins.  Users can buy more Coins, and they can save up to 10 percent for buying high quantities at a time. 

Español: Logo Vectorial de YouTube (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Google Set To Offer YouTube Subscriptions

Google, in its quest to be an omnipresent media overlord, is set to introduce paid YouTube video subscriptions in the coming week. It is currently highly dependent on its advertising revenue, so it is looking for new areas for bringing in money and offer a wide range of content as well. This also comes in the face of threat of original content from Netflix and Amazon.

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Twitter Updates Vine With Two New Exciting Features

Vine has taken the social media world by storm, allowing you to bring more than just an image to friends, family or the internet. Now, through the Vine app you can create short six second videos that can be continuous footage or clips, with an easy to use system that allows you to touch and hold the screen while capturing videos.

Anonymous (Photo credit: Schuilr)

How Twitter Hacks Cause Big Problems

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013, the Twitter account for the Associated Press was hacked; whether the hack was the result of malicious intent or a practical joke gone sour, the impact was widespread and potentially dangerous. With the AP's Twitter hacked, someone got instant access to an audience of over 880,000 people. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, the hackers chose to spread more terror.

The hackers tweeted about a fictional White House bombing and claimed that the President had been hurt. The Internet responded with an uproar as news organizations and homegrown Twitter journalists re-tweeted or investigated the claim. Although it was a single sentence in a myriad of Internet data, the tweet was enough to cause panic and reduce the stock market by over a hundred points.

Illustration of Facebook mobile interface (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Facebook Home For Android

With one in three people across the globe connected to Facebook, it represents a huge market that every company is trying to hone in on in order to capitalize upon the popularity.  The Android smartphone OS is one of the most recent comers to this market, launching a Facebook Home app for Google smartphones that has been met with no small amount of criticism. 

The Facebook Home app is a reinvention of the standard layout of the website.  It completely fills up your phone screen, meaning that it is not possible to run concurrent apps at the same time unless you are constantly switching back and forth.  While there are ways to dial back the app on your operating system, it comes pre-loaded, meaning that users will either need to modify it or ignore it completely if it starts aggravating them. 

Bezos’ Iconic Laugh (Photo credit: jurvetson)

Jeffrey Bezos Invests In Business Insider

Although he is not investing in Business Insider on his own, there is no doubt that Jeffrey Bezos is the driving force behind the new group that is funding the business blog. According to the site, Bezos - who built the Amazon.com empire - has been thinking about investing in the company for roughly a year. In fact, he met with executives from Business Insider at that time and expressed interest, though he did not actually make his contribution until a few days ago. When he did, though, it was a significant amount of money. All told, the investment from the group should be right around the five million dollar mark.

Funny No Cell Phone Sign (Photo credits: www.smartsign.com)

Adults Texting And Driving More Than Teens

If teens endure a bad reputation for texting right into the wee hours of the night or from behind the wheels of their cars, then the public has not received the full picture. It is their parents who are most guilty. Instances of adult texting and driving have risen.

Alarming Figures

Figures appear to have doubled, although they are based on admissions, not solid facts about texting. The trouble is adults seem to be the most rushed; the most pushed and pressured. Teens rarely need to be somewhere in a hurry, except when they are late for work or school. Having recently passed their exams, are teenagers keener to obey the law? Are they more concerned about losing their new-driver status because of texting?

English: Jack Dorsey at the 2010 Time 100. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Twitter Inventors Gain Patent Protection

Jack Dorsey (current CEO of Square and chairman at Twitter) and Biz Stone (aka Christopher Isaac Stone) have been granted a patent for Twitter, a patent petition that they filed some 6 years ago. The patent is for a device independent messaging system, a pretty accurate description of the social site long before it gained world-wide popularity. The company has the ability to file lawsuits against companies that offer similar services, although non have reached the popularity of Twitter and Twitter is not planning to sue anyone at this time.

Annual Irresponsible Tax Refund Purchase (Photo credit: kaylacasey)

If you want to get the maximum return on your federal and state taxes, you need to use Turbo Tax 2013 to prepare and file your tax return. With Turbo Tax 2013, you can rest assured you are getting every possible credit and deduction available to you and your tax situation. The free TurboTax edition is easy to use and walks you through each step of the filing process. Additionally, free TurboTax has an audit checker that will check your return to make sure there are no red flags that the Internal Revenue Service looks for to determine which returns will be audited. If the audit checker finds something that will likely trigger an audit, it will alert you and walk you through the steps to fix it.

Tweetdeck no iPod Touch (Photo credit: ManoelNetto)

Twitter Ends TweetDeck Apps for Mobile

TweetDeck will no longer be available on three mobile platforms including iOS, Android and Adobe Air. Twitter, which now owns TweetDeck, made a blog post that three apps would be removed from popular app stores and existing apps installed on thousands of phones would stop working in May. This is a new strategy for Twitter which wants more users to use the site directly instead of accessing data through its API. Third party apps like TweetDeck rely on the API to pull and post tweets to the popular social network.