By Cynthia Herbert :: 8:57 PM
Allstate Insurance Company has selected Hearsay Social to support its social media strategy and local insurance agents in their use of social media.
The insurer has chosen the platform to enable its agents to continue to share useful information on social networks and assist in building relationships across their local communities. Hearsay Social enables large enterprises like Allstate to engage with their customers via social media at every level of the organization.
“Consumers use social media to connect with people and organizations that matter most to them,†said Bob Wasserman, senior vice president of e-Business at Allstate in a press release. “The relationship with Hearsay Social will help our Allstate Agents continue to connect digitally with people in their local communities and provide a useful tool to communicate with their customers.â€
Allstate is using Hearsay’s platform for brand protection as well as business results across every major social network at every level of the organization, from the corporate brand to local agents. Hearsay will be rolling out its services to all U.S.-based Allstate agency locations to help them develop and manage customer relationships across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
“Allstate is at the leading edge of innovation, using social media to deepen their customer relationships and enable their agents to leverage social networks,†said Hearsay Social’s CEO Clara Shih. “We are delighted to be selected by Allstate to support their social sales and marketing efforts.â€
By Gilbert Falso :: 4:36 PM
GoDaddy, the domain name registrar and web and email hosting service, down a good part of the afternoon due to a hacker attack, claims that some services have been restored.
In a Tweet sent at 4:04 PM, GoDaddy said, “Still working on it, but we’re making progress. Some service has already been restored. Stick with us.”
Based on Twitter chatter and various reports, it appears as if the services restored may be email accounts only, and not hosted websites or DNS functionality.
A member of the hacker group Anonymous, has claimed responsibility for the outage, saying that, “I’m taking godaddy down bacause well i’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now.”
The problem affects not only domains hosted with the company, but also with domains that use GoDaddy’s DNS service – usually these are domains that have been purchased through GoDaddy.
By Gilbert Falso :: 2:37 PM
Update: 4:27 PM – GoDaddy claims partial service restoration.
Update: 3:58 PM – Anonymous responds to a question about how long the denial of service attempt will last: “when i do some DDOS attack i like to let it down by many days , the attack for unlimited time, it can last one hour or one month”
Update: 3:29 PM – Anonymous representative Tweets the following message: “I’m taking godaddy down bacause well i’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now”.
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Millions of websites and email accounts hosted by GoDaddy are offline this afternoon after a malicious takedown of the company’s DNS servers left their hosted spaces unavailable on the Internet.
Although not confirmed, the loose-knit hacker group Anonymous has appeared to take credit for the attack in a series of Tweets.
Because the outage is centered on GoDaddy’s DNS services, even if a website or email account is not hosted with GoDaddy, it can still be affected if the domain is registered through GoDaddy or one of its partner services.
In a Tweet, GoDaddy confirmed that they are aware of the problem and are working on fixing it. No estimated time or resolution for the fix has been posted yet. See below for GoDaddy’s Tweet:
By Tyler C. Forbes :: 6:20 PM
When the new iPhone / iPhone5 / whatever they decide to call it comes out later this month, it is expected to look like a much different beast than its predecessors. We’re not just talking the form factor of the headset itself now, as new pictures leaked from Vietnam over the weekend appear to show changes coming for the next version of Apple earbuds as well.
Pictured above, these headphones allegedly come from a Phax Company factory in Vietnam, and will be shipped with the new iPhone when it goes on sale.
First reported on MacRumors, these new earbuds are just that, rumors – but given the timing of the leak, and the factory they supposedly came from, it is quite possible that these will be the earbuds packed in the new iPhone5 boxes.
Not digging Apple’s offerings for headphones? Check out these top three aftermarket headphones for your iPhone or iPod:
- JVC HAFX1X Headphone: Xtreme-Xplosivs
- Klipsch IMAGE S4 In-Ear Enhanced Headphones
- Panasonic RPHJE120S In-Ear Headphones
By Cynthia Herbert :: 11:50 AM
PBS launched its new animated series this morning, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. The show, an animated sequel of sorts to the well known and loved series, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, follows the adventures of Daniel Tiger, the son of Daniel Striped Tiger, one of the original characters from Fred Rogers’ Land of Make-Believe.
The series was created by writer Angela Santomero, a veteran of “Blue’s Clues” and “Super WHY!”, and focuses on many of the children of the characters from Make-Believe – something designed to resonate with the parents of the 2 to 6 year old set, which seems to be the target demographic for the show.
With the launch of the series came the #DanielTigerPBS hashtag for parents to follow along and participate at home. A smart move, given the holiday morning release of the new series – many parents will be at home, watching the series unfold with their children.
The majority of the Tweets to the hashtag have been positive, if even a little humorous. @PaulAllenHunton asks, “why is Daniel the only one without pants?”
Though the series launched today with back-to-back episodes at 11:00 AM, it will generally show at the 11:00 AM and 1:30 PM half-hour weekday time slots – check your local PBS listings to be sure.