By Paul Thomson :: 6:48 AM
A Philadelphia-based social media development company announced the public availability of a new social decision making app, Choozum, last week
The company spent a year planning and developing the application, which integrates with Facebook, and relies on the user’s network of friends and connections to seek advice on solving decisions and problems. It had been rolling the app out across college and university campuses across the country since earlier this year as a soft launch.
“People are faced with making decisions amid competing choices on a daily basis,” explained Leigh Raup, Choozum’s public relations spokesperson. “We created Choozum with consumers in mind such that choice-making is more social, fun, convenient, engaging and quick. People who use Choozum rely on its qualitative and quantitative core, and that’s truly the underpinning value in our service.”
Crowdsourcing opinions has been gaining in popularity across the social media and networking communities. Other applications and websites offering social decision-making like Choozum have increased over the past year. Choozum claims that its service is unique in that invitations are generated with regards to both private and public permissions.
Users can invite one, many, or all of their Facebook friends to participate in their survey. Responses are delivered back to the survey author as their friends cast their votes. While users wait to receive votes for surveys they’ve shared, they can browse through any of 34 vertical categories, such as fashion, style, travel, and celebrity, to cast votes on other Choozum members’ surveys.
The company’s founders say that early adoption of the app has been overwhelming in the Greek life communities at colleges such as Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania. Choozum is free and available now for iOS through Apple’s App Store.
[More information: Choozum]
By Paul Thomson :: 8:49 PM
The annual Coachella festival is in full swing this weekend, and for those who cannot make it out to California to partake in some great music, YouTube and the festival organizers have got you covered.
Most acts will be streamed live from the Coachella stages onto YouTube channels. The schedule for Saturday and Sunday is listed below, with the accompanying YouTube channel number after the band name. Links to the different channels are at the bottom of the page. All times are Pacific.
Live streaming sponsorship is courtesy of Google and T-Mobile.
Saturday, April 13
6:05 p.m. – Puscifer @ Channel 1
6:10 p.m. – Allen Stone @ Channel 2
6:55 p.m. – Portugal. The Man @ Channel 1
7:00 p.m. – Major Lazer @ Channel 2
7:45 p.m. – Grizzly Bear @ Channel 1
8:00 p.m. – Yeasayer @ Channel 2
8:35 p.m. – Hot Chip @ Channel 1
9:00 p.m. – Spiritualized @ Channel 2
9:30 p.m. – The Postal Service @ Channel 1
9:55 p.m. – Moby @ Channel 3
10:00 p.m. – Descendents @ Channel 2
10:30 p.m. – The xx @ Channel 1
10:45 p.m. – Janelle Monáe @ Channel 3
10:55 p.m. – Two Door Cinema Club @ Channel 2
11:35 p.m. – Phoenix @ Channel 1
11:35 p.m. – Knife Party @ Channel 3
11:45 p.m. – New Order @ Channel 2
Sunday, April 14
3:30 p.m. – Smith Westerns @ Channel 2
3:30 p.m. – The Gaslight Anthem @ Channel 1
3:30 p.m. – DIIV @ Channel 3
4:20 p.m. – Cloud Nothings @ Channel 3
4:30 p.m. – Jessie Ware @ Channel 2
4:30 p.m. – The Airborne Toxic Event @ Channel 1
5:15 p.m. – The Lumineers @ Channel 1
5:30 p.m. – Tanlines @ Channel 2
6:05 p.m. – Social Distortion @ Channel 1
6:10 p.m. – James Blake @ Channel 2
6:20 p.m. – Paul Oakenfold @ Channel 3
7:00 p.m. – Tame Impala @ Channel 1
7:40 p.m. – Father John Misty @ Channel 2
7:40 p.m. – Simian Mobile Disco @ Channel 3
8:00 p.m. – Vampire Weekend @ Channel 1
8:30 p.m. – Franz Ferdinand @ Channel 2
8:50 p.m. – Pretty Lights (Highlights) @ Channel 1
8:50 p.m. – OMD @ Channel 3
9:20 p.m. – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds @ Channel 2
9:20 p.m. – Wu-Tang Clan @ Channel 1
9:45 p.m. – The Faint @ Channel 3
10:10 p.m. – Dinosaur Jr. @ Channel 2
10:20 p.m. – Red Hot Chili Peppers @ Channel 1
10:40 p.m. – Eric Prydz @ Channel 3
11:00 p.m. – Dead Can Dance @ Channel 2
YouTube Live Stream Channel Links
Channel 1 * Channel 2 * Channel 3
By Cynthia Herbert :: 6:18 PM
Microsoft’s XBox Live gaming and media delivery service for its Xbox console line has been suffering a widespread outage this afternoon, rendering many games and applications unusable.
Because many applications on the Xbox are tied to a user’s Xbox Live Gold subscription, popular selections like HBO GO, Hulu, Netflix and YouTube are completely non-functional on the console during such an outage.
At 5:56 PM (Eastern Time), Microsoft updated its status page to note that the company is still “hard at work fixing the issue members are having signing in,” but did not offer any estimated time for the service to be restored.
Such a widespread outage couldn’t come at a worse time for the company. Last weekend, it was dealing with issues and defending itself around the notion of “always-on” Internet connections for gameplay on its yet-to-be-announced next generation console. The company was on the defensive after one of its creative directors took to Twitter in support of Internet-connected gaming, and suggested that users who didn’t agree with him should just “deal with it.” That employee no longer works at Microsoft.
By Gilbert Falso :: 5:34 PM
BlackBerry is bristling at analyst reports issued late last week by ITG Investment Research and Detwiler Fenton, an investment research firm, that show more customers returning the new Z10 handset than keeping it.
Editor’s note – When news of this story broke, it was initially unclear which reports BlackBerry took issue with. The company and ITG have since clarified that it is the Detwiler Fenton report that BlackBerry is disputing, and not ITG’s findings.
“The U.S. launch of the Z10 started poorly and weakened significantly as the days passed,†noted Joseph Fersedi, an analyst at ITG. Some retailers in the U.S. are showing an uptick in customers returning the new handsets because the interface is difficult to use, in some cases, the analysts at Detwiler Fenton claimed, returns were exceeding sales.
BlackBerry lashed out on Friday at the reports, and said that it will seek the help of securities regulators in both the United States and Canada (where it is headquartered) to investigate the reports. BlackBerry’s stock price has dropped significantly this month, and suffered a drop of nearly 8% when this news broke on Thursday afternoon.
The company claims that sales of its new flagship Z10 handset have not suffered from out-of-the-ordinary return rates.
“To suggest otherwise is either a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation,” said BlackBerry’s CEO, Thorsten Heins. “Such a conclusion is absolutely without basis and BlackBerry will not leave it unchallenged.”
By Gilbert Falso :: 5:06 PM
If you’ve a Verizon Wireless customer who has been accustomed to getting a new phone just about every two years, that will soon be extended to exactly two years, with recent changes made to Verizon plans.
Currently, most customers on contract plans are eligible to upgrade to new phones every 20 months. Starting with customer contracts expiring in January of 2014, upgrade eligibility will move to every 24 months.
Customers with more than one line on their account will still be able to share the upgrades across their phone numbers, if needed, but those upgrades can only be applied within the same device category.
“This change aligns the upgrade date with the contract end date and is consistent with how the majority of customers purchase new phones today,” the company said in a release.
Last quarter, approximately 9% of Verizon’s wireless account holders upgraded a device on their plans.