TJantunen.com

After suffering a massive network failure for more than a week, Sony’s PlayStation division had the distinct pleasure of revealing to users it had been hacked — deep and hard — by cybercriminals who may have been able to pilfer some very valuable information. Before this happened, PlayStation’s PR condition was already pretty frail on account of it suing its customers. But I hesitate to call this new failure “karma in action” because it looks like the main victims of Sony’s mistake will be, once again, Sony’s own customers.
from TechNewsWorld

A page on Facebook posts pictures and other keepsakes that fell from the sky after the violent storms that tore through the South.

from NYT > Internet

Related Posts:

• Gadget Thumbnails for 16-Jan-2011
• Gadget Thumbnails for 19-Feb-2011
• Gadget Thumbnails for 05-Feb-2011
• Gadget Thumbnails for 12-Feb-2011
• Gadget Thumbnails for 30-Jan-2011

from Coolest Gadgets

This is a guest post by Eugene. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

You might have a lot of ideas for your blog posts and you might know many tricks on how to successfully promote your blog. However, the content on a blog is as important as your marketing tools. The reason is simple: you want readers to come back. If you get readers to come to your page, but they don’t enjoy reading your blog posts, they won’t be back.

You might have a great interesting idea for a blog post. But if the blog post you come up with is not readable, your idea just goes to waste. Writing good blog posts takes practice and there are a few things which you can do to make your articles more readable and enjoyable to your audience.

1. Structure your blog posts. When you write an article, make sure you have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Your introduction should state the main idea that you’re going to discuss. The body will develop your argument, in one or several paragraphs, and can contain lists and bullet points if applicable. The conclusion should be a short summary of the whole article and a restatement of the idea from the introduction. A structured text is easy to go through, and your readers will be able to get your points only by skimming it.

2. Use sub-headers. Online readers are not very patient. A long block of text will bore them and they’ll be gone in seconds. Sub-headers are a great way to make blog posts more readable. They allow readers to get a quick idea on what issues you’re tackling in your article and to skip to the topics they’re interested in.

3. Make your blog posts coherent. Organize your ideas into paragraphs and don’t suddenly skip from one topic to another. All the arguments and ideas in your blog posts should flow in a logical manner. You might know what your point is, but if you jump around from one idea to another, your readers will get tired and confused and will simply quit trying to understand.

4. Use pictures. Not all blog posts can be illustrated with pictures, but many of them can. Depending on the length of your blog post, you can use one or multiple pictures. Images attract reader’s attention and make texts look friendlier.

5. Avoid using numbers and technical details. Unless you’re writing for a limited number of highly specialized readers, avoid using a lot of numbers, technical names and specifications. Scatter them through the article, and try to use a conversational language.

6. Don’t overestimate or underestimate your readers. You probably shouldn’t explain what Facebook is, but do explain things that your readers might not understand. If your not sure how to make the difference between what you should detail and what you shouldn’t, think whether your friends would understand it. If they would, it’s probably common knowledge. If they wouldn’t, explain it or provide a link where your readers can get some information.

7. Don’t use too many keywords and don’t include irrelevant links. It’s understandable why you want to fill your blog posts with keywords and why you want to link both to your blog and to other websites. But remember that blog readers can easily make the difference between a text written with the audience in mind, and a text written only for SEO purposes. Place keywords strategically, only where they fit naturally into the text, and only include relevant links. Your readers will get mad if they click on a link and get to an irrelevant page.

In time, you will be able to write excellent blog posts without thinking to much about it. But, in the beginning, you have to establish a step by step routine and follow it every time you want to publish something. And checking if your blog posts are readable should definitely be part of that routine if you want to build a solid returning audience.

About the Author: Eugene is in search of reality creation through use of tools readily available on the internet. You can find out more by following him at Reality Burst where he writes about optimizing lifestyle design on RealityBurst.com.

from Daily Blog Tips

Hackers are reportedly attempting to sell 2.2 million credit card numbers stolen from the PlayStation Network database. Sony earlier said customers’ personal data was encrypted; however, the company could not rule out the possibility that hackers might have accessed it. By Thursday, security researchers had seen talk on underground forums of hackers hoping to sell credit card lists for as much as $100,000. The forum comments indicated that hackers possessed names, addresses, user IDs, passwords, credit card numbers and even credit card security codes. One hacker admitted trying to sell a list to Sony but did not receive a response.
from TechNewsWorld

You might think to yourself that Internet radios are dime a dozen these days, but why have such closed thinking that you might miss the next available gem? We would like to think so with the RM50 Internet Radio that ought to keep your ears more than happy, bringing a modern touch to an old classical device in your living room. Retailing for £99.99 each, the RM50 Internet Radio will be able to let you access a bunch of stations that suits your fancy, ranging from music to news, local and specialist radio stations.

Since it is Wi-Fi enabled, it will be able to do more than just pick up old school FM signals, as it trawls through the Internet on your behalf, doing all the hard work of looking out for stations by name, theme, genre or region. You no longer need to grab a pen and paper to write down the correct wavelengths and frequencies, instead all you need to do is follow the dummy-proof on-screen prompts and you’re good to go.

To make things even better, all those channels will be free, so you won’t have any download fees or subscriptions to worry about. With the presence of an internal hard drive, it is capable of storing all your user settings so that you need not go through the hassle of configuring it all over again each time you boot it up.

Related Posts:

• Morphy Richards Internet Radio
• Carmen Internet Radio Player – Listen to the Internet in your car
• Blik Wi-Fi Internet Radio
• Blaupunkt and miRoamer create World’s First Internet Car Radio
• Sanyo rolls out Internet Radio R227

from Coolest Gadgets