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Gadgets:

Holiday Gift Idea for Tech-Savvy Adventurers

This post brought to you by SPOT. All opinions are 100% mine.

Sometimes giving gifts can be difficult, but one general rule of thumb for giving good gifts is to always think practical. What could be more practical for an adventurer in your life than giving the gift of safety? The SPOT Satellite GPS messenger is a great gift for hikers, campers, mountain climbers, and other outdoor adventurers in your life.

In fact, for the holiday season, if you purchase the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger you’ll get a bonus adventure kit worth $50. The kit includes a coupon for 15% off Basic Service, flotation case for SPOT, micro LED flashlight, safety tips bandana, lanyard, safety whistle and a carabineer keychain. Not bad.

On to the features:


  • SPOT transmits your exact GPS coordinates and sends selected messages over commercial satellites to tell others of your location and status.


  • Works anywhere in the world, outside of cellular networks.


  • SPOT features four important functions that enable users to send messages to friends, family or emergency responders, based upon varying levels of need:
  • - Alert 9-1-1 – Dispatches emergency responders to your exact location
  • - Ask for Help – Request help from friends and family wherever you are
  • - Check In – Lets your contacts know exactly where you are and that you’re OK
  • - Track Progress – Saves your location and allows friends and family to track your progress using Google Maps™


Bottom line: The SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger is a great gift idea for any adventurer on your list.

Gadgets:

Give the Gift of Getting There

This post brought to you by NAVTEQ. All opinions are 100% mine.

It can be really hard to shop for some people. Especially the pickiest of your friends and family. So what do you do? You turn to practical gifts and call it a day. Well, what could be more practical than the gift that makes sure they even show up to your holiday shindig?

These days, millions of people have GPS units for their car. But, everyday new roads are being established, so what could be better and more practical than a map update? Not much.

Here are six reasons to give a map update for the holidays:

  • - Won’t get re-gifted
  • - Doesn’t have to be the right size, color, style

  • - Is perfect for that someone who has everything 

  • - Is perfect for someone who needs an extra push to arrive on time 

  • - Is a perfect gift for yourself! Getting to your office Christmas parties; going from store to store to get that sold out item; avoiding your own “Meet the Parents” experience 

  • - Helps take care of your family – keep them safe with the latest information on how to get there and places to stop along the way

All I know is that I don’t like getting lost so if anyone would like to get me a map update for me, I’m 100% fine with that.

Web:

Is Google Building a Facebook Rival?

Internet search leader Google Inc is not building a social network to compete with Facebook, a company executive reiterated on Thursday, despite an intensifying rivalry between the two leading Internet groups.

“We’re not working on a social network platform that’s just going to be another social network platform,” Google’s head of mobile product development, Hugo Barra, said in answer to a question at the Monaco Media Forum.

“We do think that social is an ingredient for success for any app going forward, search and advertising being probably the best two examples that I would mention. So that’s how we’re thinking about the problem.”

Social:

A $250 Million Bet That Social Is Just Getting Started

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga are committed to helping social startups taking investments from newly created $250 million fund. TechCrunch has the story.

“Major industries are just beginning to reorganize themselves around social, and that a lot of disruption is going to happen over the next several years.

Web:

Zillow Partners with Apartments.com to Serve Apartment Listings

Zillow.com® and Apartments.com™, two of the nation’s leading online destinations for real estate and multifamily housing, respectively, today announced a partnership to bring the Apartments.com national database of 90,000 managed apartment rental listings to Zillow®. Apartments.com rental listings include comprehensive home details, photos, floorplans, and property manager contact information – bringing the full search experience from Apartments.com to Zillow.

Listings from Apartments.com will receive exposure to Zillow’s 12 million monthly visitors(i), nearly two million of whom are currently renters. This syndication brings the total number of rental listings for single-family homes and apartments on Zillow.com to 150,000.

In addition to being displayed on Zillow, Apartments.com rental listings will also appear on the Zillow Mobile application, which has been downloaded more than two million times and is the most popular real estate application on the iPhone®, Android®, iPad™, and Windows® Mobile platforms.

“Zillow offers an unmatched user experience for home shoppers who are renting, deciding whether to rent or buy, or shopping for a home to buy. This partnership deepens Zillow’s footprint in the rental search industry, and gives Zillow users access to a new category of managed apartment rental listings,” said Chloe Harford, Zillow’s vice president of mortgages and new ventures.

Web:

You Can Now Make Calls from Gmail

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”

Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

Social Media:

History of Social Networking Sites (The Way I Remember It)

Having grown up during the age of the Internet, I’ve witnessed firsthand the rise of the social networking website. And while Facebook currently dominates the Web, it wasn’t always so. Here’s a quick list of the sites I remember that set the standard in their own time.

  1. Makeoutclub—Calling itself the “original underground community,” Makeoutclub arguably started the craze 10 years ago this Summer. Splitting users into two categories, girls and guys, the site was geared mainly towards allowing hipster teens and young twenty-somethings to flirt online. I never got into this, but I definitely stood on the outskirts and watched what was going on. The concept was fascinating. Of course, I was a teenager.
  2. Friendster—In 2003, Friendster hit the Internet and blew up. It quickly gained worldwide media attention and was featured in magazines such as Spin and Time. The one thing I remember most about Friendster is how slow it ran. Once it took off, so many users flooded in that the site was Hell to use.

Social Media:

LinkedIn Forges New Ground in Real Estate with Rofo

LinkedIn has turned to Rofo in an attempt to revolutionize social media in respect to real estate. Rofo recently released Real Estate Pro, an app that benefits real estate professionals as well as potential buyers. Real Estate Pro is part of the second wave of apps released by LinkedIn.

Sure real estate professionals were already invited to the LinkedIn community to show off their work experience, but Real Estate Pro allows them to display their work productivity as well. So realtors who are busting their rears and making sales can gain recognition and attract employers. No more claiming to be the best. You can prove it with Real Estate Pro.

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