TELEGRAPH.CO.UK -- Nov 17 -- New children's social network called Moshi Monsters launched in UK. Moshi Monster is a group of cute or scary monsters kids can adopt. Once a monster is adopted within the game, it's up to the user to nurture it and be responsible for its wellbeing, creating what the site's founder, Michael Acton Smith, hopes is an emotional connection between pet and user, reinforced as the monster develops throughout the game. In US, websites for pre-teens are growing faster than adult-orientated sites and the big money is indeed with this market. Neopets, social network where kids can adopt a virtual pets, was acquired by Viacom in 2005 for $160 million (L80 million) and Club Penguin's by Disney for $350 million (L175 million) in August. Other popular children's social networks are Imbee.com, Barbiegirls.com. FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
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Businesses Catching Up With Technology
The fast pace of technology and the presence of the Internet has provided more than just plain surfing and gathering of information from anywhere in the world. The Internet offers an opportunity to undertake business and money-making endeavors for people who have a knack of the entrepreneurialism -like attitude of getting into business and studying the rate of returns from getting into such. Given the chance, peoples and technology adept people would surf the net to find various ways of being able to raise money for themselves while at the same time honing their business experience level without much leg work needed.
With this said the opportunity for aids and software development has slowly adhered to this evident demand and need. Among the sites that most people see today is a ready online business where transactions can be made. All of this is done by mere sign-ups and registrations for affiliation with such sites. Taking note of the disclaimers and policies to abide by, anyone can practically put up his or her online store in matter of minutes. The system implement always aims to answer all the possible questions that a person would ask and look for. Trading is the best way to term most people who do business online. Selling items or services online is the easiest way to adapt to such online businesses. There are a number of sites that have offered this type of a business, answering all the needs of the common consumer and entrepreneur as far as trying to dispose of items and earning profits from such transactions as well.
The issue regarding the compatibility of such software also lies in the type of programming language that is used. Java, Html and Perl type of programming languages depend on the requirements set by the hosting mother site. In most cases, the programs that offers the easiest way of interface would be the one chosen, since technically, people are not much concerned about how sophisticated and convincing the system methodology that is implemented as long as they are easy to understand and digest. This is something that is also taken into account. Not all people are technologically educated to fully understand the whole system that is implemented. All people care about is how to sell their goods and the popularity and incoming traffic that an online website such as Fine Store has.
This concept has been adapted by Fine Store, optimized to ensure that all items, affiliates and the entire site is seen all over the world. This is why that search engine optimization for the site is a key attraction so that people may be able to consider sites as Fine Store as one of their stops as far as becoming affiliated with their venture for pushing online buying and selling.
The technology adapted for such sites will sure draw the attention of competing websites who are after the same business and consumer base. There are a lot of sites that are into the same concept, like Ebay and Amazon, two of the largest auction and online selling websites known to this day. Moreover, no implemented system is guaranteed to be perfect. Continuous improvements and revisions for a better system to enhance current processes by implemented systems will be also on the minds of developers and site owners everyday.
The best bet for being able to identify areas needed for improvement will always be the affiliated people and visitors of the site. This widens the ideas for improvement for a better operating process as far as the online business is concerned. It is the only way to be one step ahead since no matter how impressive developed systems are, areas for improvement and enhancements will always be an issue.
The best feedbacks come from another point of view. In most cases, a one sided view on the part of the hosts and managing party does not cover the entire ordeal. While not all feedbacks may be of value, all comments and suggestions for the improvement of the business aspect will surely be something worth hearing from. Just like in actual businesses, software development of programs for business improvement and related purposes will always have bugs and loopholes in them. That is why the endorsement and patronization of people will be a key indicator in identifying such loopholes and once again compile a complete system to answer the demands and needs that most people look for in a system.
Pimp Your PC
BURLINGAME, CALIF. - It’s called the Dominator. And it looks the part: It has fins. Many buy it with a specially designed fan. It’s not cheap–the Dominator will easily add more than $250 to your costs. But if you’re a serious PC gamer, you’re hungry for the most whopping memory modules out there–and willing to pay up to be fast.
Once upon a time, teenagers and other hot-rodders put their muscles and dollars into vamping up roadsters or motorcycles. These days, instead of getting under the hood of cars, they’re prying open their PC cases to transform the once humble office computer into the 21st century equivalent of the hot-rod. Egged on by programs with breathtakingly. complex graphics, gamers are tricking out their computers with high-performance variations on stock PC parts–including memory modules such as Corsair’s Dominator. They’re even decorating the outsides of their machines with showy paint jobs that mimic the candy-colored automotive contraptions of an earlier generation’s youth. And PC makers are cheering them on, every step of the way.
Analysts say it’s impossible to know how many gamers are rolling up their sleeves and messing around with their computers to make them work with the latest generation of videogames. There’s no shortage of games available that gamers are eager to take on.
And between the games and the equipment needed to run them, such super-high-end PCs are generating multibillion dollars’ worth of business. Web sites such as NewEgg.com and computer chains such as Fry’s cater to do-it-yourselfers eager to trick out their computers. Last year Dell (nasdaq: DELL - news - people ) snapped up high-end PC specialist Alienware, and HP bought its rival Voodoo in an effort to increase the margins for their PC businesses.
Corsair Chief Executive Andy Paul says he sells 375,000 pairs of memory modules, from its Value Select to the high-end Dominator, every month, chiefly to do-it-yourselfers. Since the start of the year, the company has begun selling two lines of high-performance main memory, and it’s begun competing with a host of new companies that are trying to juice up the once-prosaic electrical guts of the personal computer.
Much of the credit, or the blame, for the fad rests with software developers who are eagerly pushing the limits of what today’s PCs can handle. Electronic Arts‘ (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ) latest shoot-em-up, “Crysis,” has already gained a reputation as a game that will push even the priciest machine to the edge of its capabilities. That’s in part because developers are building games that will be able to look good on systems that won’t be built for years.
“We call it scalable content,” says Chas. Boyd, an architect with Microsoft’s (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) DirectX group. “There are options in the control panels that turn on additional levels of visual quality that the developer knew would not exist at the time it shipped, or at least not at playable frame rates. But that really gives legs to the title.”
Hobbyists, however, aren’t content to wait. Crawford Del Prete, a senior vice president with tech tracker IDC, compares hardcore gaming enthusiasts to Harley-Davidson (nyse: HOG - news - people ) owners, who love to show off their latest rides at events such as the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota. Likewise, custom-built, liquid-cooled machines are no more about running spreadsheets than a Harley Fat Boy is about basic transportation. “It has turned into a social thing,” Del Prete says.
The result is you’ll find high-end versions of any PC part that promises to boost gaming performance from the central processors sold by AMD and Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ), to graphics chips from Nvidia and AMD, to memory from the likes of Corsair, to hard drives sold by the likes of Seagate. Kelt Reeves, chief executive of boutique PC maker Falcon Northwest is even sourcing exotic, high-speed solid-state hard drives from Japan in an effort to offer his customers better performance.
And along with showy cooling systems, there are electrical systems that can pump more than a kilowatt of power into a machine that could be running three of Nvidia’s $600 graphics cards at the same time. “These guys aren’t looking at performance per dollar,” says Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight64. “This is for people who have more money than sense.”
article from forbes
