By Cynthia Herbert :: 8:09 AM
A new app, Santa Gram, has launched to bring holiday wishlists to life. The app allows parents record or upload their children’s wishlists and enables instant social sharing with friends, family, and of course Santa Claus.
Santa Gram was developed to alleviate the stress associated with holiday gift buying. Combining video and instant social sharing, the Santa Gram app allows children tell Santa what they really want for Christmas, and helps friends and family to select a meaningful gift.
Users simply connect the app with Facebook, record or upload their child’s wishlist then share with friends and family via social platforms or through an email. Upon sending, the children receive a special message from Santa, thanking them for the lists and a reminder to be a good girl or boy.
“It’s like pulling teeth trying to get my sister to send through my 5 year old niece’s Christmas list every year,†explained Santa Gram’s CEO, Ryan O’Donnell. “We don’t live very close to each other, so it’s always great to actually see and hear from family with video. We’ve made the app we always wanted for ourselves and now we are ready to bring it to the rest of the world.â€
The Santa Gram app can be downloaded in the iOS app store, and is also accessible via computer by visiting http://SantaGramapp.com.
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:01 AM
First Twitter cut off access to find your Twitter friends on Instagram. Then, Instagram yanked support for Twitter’s Cards feature to see previews of Instagram photos in Twitter streams. Now, Twitter has struck back at Facebook-owned Instagram by introducing some new photo features of its own.
Tonight, Twitter announced the release of new features that will allow users to be able to edit and touch up their photos, right from within Twitter applications. New versions of the Twitter app for iPhone and Android now have image editing capabilities as well as Instagram-like photo filters.
According to Twitter’s blog entry, users can now take the following actions with their photos:
- Apply one of eight filters, ranging from black & white to vintage
- Preview how each filter would affect photos across a single grid view
- Crop and zoom into a specific area on a photo
- Adjust light and colors.
Twitter’s blog explained, “Every day, millions of people come to Twitter to connect with the things they care about and find out what’s happening around the world. As one of the most compelling forms of self-expression, photos have long been an important part of these experiences.”
By Cynthia Herbert :: 12:07 PM
Google’s Gmail online mail service crashed late this morning for nearly all users. The cloud-based service first started showing outages around 11:25 AM eastern time, and users immediately took to Twitter to share the news, with the word “gmail” rocketing to the top of the trending topic list.
Many users are reporting that the web version is totally down, but other access methods, such as POP and IMAP continue to work.
In addition to Gmail crashes, many users are now reporting issues with Google’s Chrome browser, as well. Most of those issues apply when the user is logged into their Google Apps account on Chrome. The browser crashes, and must be restarted. Users who are running Chrome but who are not logged into their Google accounts do not seem to be experiencing the same problems.
This story is evolving, and we will post updates as available.
By Gilbert Falso :: 3:51 PM
Apple is poised to launch an Internet radio service in early 2013. Stock in the streaming music service Pandora dropped precipitously, triggering the circuit breaker. Ad-driven Pandora is likely the new service’s closest competitor.
Apple will partner with the major music labels to launch an advertising-supported service, reports Bloomberg’s Businessweek. Talks are now underway, and apparently focused on how to divide advertising revenues. Unnamed sources involved in the deal have told Businessweek that they anticipate Apple launching this venture sometime during the first three months of next year.
Shares of Pandora (NYSE: P) fell 15%, and at publishing time, the stock has lost $1.42, to trade at $7.87. Earlier this week, Pandora stock had actually headed up about 8% after Apple’s iPad Mini announcement didn’t include any mention of a streaming music service.
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:27 PM
Google’s early SEC filing release is being blamed on publisher RR Donnelley, who prepares and prints the report for the company.
The company has released a statement placing the blame on Donnelley. “Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8-K earnings statement without authorization, We have ceased trading on NASDAQ while we work to finalize the document. Once it’s finalized we will release our earnings, resume trading on Nasdaq and hold our earnings call as normal.”
A recap:
Trading of shares in the search giant Google have been halted after an SEC report was inadvertently released this morning, with an unfinished filing that left an open quote for Google CEO Larry Paige.
The top line of the report said “PENDING LARRY QUOTE,†which suggests that the filing was released early, without being fully reviewed or completed.
The company reported third-quarter earnings of $9.03, well below the $10.65 that analysts at Thomson Reuters were expecting. Shares were down nearly 10% when trading was halted, dropping from $754 to $687.
It was widely expected that though Google would release their earnings report today, that release would not occur until after the stock market’s closing bell.