Thursday, April 07, 2011

RockYou Promotes Lisa Marino to CEOâ¦.And Sheâs Excited about It (TCTV)

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/07/rockyou-promotes-lisa-marino-to-ceo-and-shes-excited-about-it-tctv/

Forgive the snarky headline, but history has shown that navigating a once-hot consumer Web company through the trough of the hype cycle is one of the hardest jobs in Silicon Valley. And very few come out with a billion winner on the other side. (Cough, cough, MySpace, Digg, Six Apart…)

But if anyone is going to pull a turn-around off at RockYou, it’s Lisa Marino. Marino joined RockYou in better days, when her husband Ro Choy was the company’s head of business development. Choy left to start his own thing, but Marino stayed on, continually taking on more and more sales and executive responsibility as the company began to crumble.

She took over as chief operating officer nine months ago, managing layoffs (including possibly RockYou’s founder Lance Tokuda) while she successfully recruited new gaming talent starting with senior VP of games Jonathan Knight. Likewise, she spent nine months cutting expenses dramatically, while managing to grow the top line more than 40% in the fourth quarter. Typically, those two don’t go hand-in-hand.

Presented with a much leaner, faster-growing social gaming company with plenty of cash in the bank, the board was pleased enough with Marino’s job to give her a promotion to CEO. But will these early victories be enough to turn the company around and differentiate itself from larger, sexier players like Zynga?

Marino tells us her hopes and fears for RockYou in the clip below.



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Posted by Augustine at 1:10 PM

T-Mobile G2X priced at $200, coming April 15th online and April 20th in stores (update: Sidekick 4G date)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/07/t-mobile-g2x-priced-at-200-coming-april-15th-online-and-april/

The official word has been spoken with regard the T-Mobile G2X. LG's dual-core, pure Android handset will be hitting T-Mo's online outlet on April 15th for $200, and the same price will also apply in stores when it lands on April 20th. There's a pesky $50 mail-in rebate to negotiate your way around, but after that you're looking at one of the finest and smoothest Android experiences we've laid our hands on yet.

[Thanks, Kyle]

Update: The Sidekick 4G has also received its date with T-Mobile destiny: April 20th for $100 on contract.

Continue reading T-Mobile G2X priced at $200, coming April 15th online and April 20th in stores (update: Sidekick 4G date)

T-Mobile G2X priced at $200, coming April 15th online and April 20th in stores (update: Sidekick 4G date) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 11:55 AM

Save and Refill Any Web Form with a User Script [User Scripts]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5789607/save-and-refill-any-web-form-with-a-user-script

Save and Refill Any Web Form with a User ScriptMost browsers: You're filling out your shipping address on Amazon, and you decide you want to continue shopping. You grab a few more items and—oh no!—now you're stuck filling out that form again. Avoid this annoyance with a simple userscript.

The Simple Form Saver userscript adds a small button to the corner of your screen on form pages. After filling out the form (or during the process, just to be safe), all you need to do is click that button and it will save the entire form, as-is, for you. That way if you need to come back and you find the form empty, you can just hit the button again to have the entire page restored exactly the way you had it. It isn't the only form saver on the planet, but it is one of the best I've seen in a while.

Obviously, this isn't always a problem—things like LastPass might be able to fill in some forms for you. I've found, however, that these are never that reliable, and often only fill in a few things that I want, if that (and they aren't always accurate). And it doesn't work if you're filling out some other type of more obscure form. Simple Form Filler is remarkably reliable, since it just copies whatever you have on the page instead of trying to "guess" which boxes apply to which of its saved values. Plus it has a ton of other features—Hit the link to see what else it can do, and to try it out in your favorite Greasemonkey-compatible browser.

Save and Refill Any Web Form with a User Script Simple Form Filler | Userscripts.org via MakeUseOf

You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
 

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Posted by Augustine at 10:45 AM

Instacast for iPhone [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/#!5789612/instacast-for-iphone

Everyone likes a good podcast—and if you don't you should!—but Apple doesn't exactly make it easy to make sure you're staying up to date. Instacast, essentially an RSS reader for podcasts, makes it super simple to find podcasts, listen to them at home, or download them for when you're out and about.

What is it?

Instacast, $2, iPhone. There's a lot not to like about the podcast manager that's built in to iOS. It relies heavily on iTunes and syncing. It doesn't make finding new podcasts particularly easy nor keeping the ones you already subscribe to up to date. If you listen to podcasts even occasionally, it's worth checking out Instacast, a full-on podcast solution that will slurp up the ones you're already subscribed to, point out popular podcasts, and, mercifully, let you refresh all your podcasts with a single tap and download them for offline listening in a snap.

Who's it good for?

People who listen to podcasts; people who want to see how Apple should be doing the podcast thang.

Why's it better than alternatives?

It's totally intuitive, grabs the podcasts you already subscribe to (making the transition totally painless), and does it all with a simple, unobstrusive interface that actually looks right at home next to the iPod app. Basically, you could forget you're using a third party podcast app at all. And the "pull to refresh" mechanism, a la Twitter, feels as good as ever.

Instacast for iPhone

How could it be even better?

Please, an iPad version for my beloved video podcasts! My only other complaint is that the "popular" list skews heavily towards nerdy Mac-related podcasts, but I guess that's more a problem with the user base.

Instacast for iPhoneInstacast | iTunes

We're always looking for cool apps—for iOS, Android, Windows Phone or whatever else—to feature as App of the Day. If you come across one you think we should take a look at, please let us know.

For more apps, check out our weekly app roundups for iPhone, iPad, and Android

Music: Kevin MacLeod

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Posted by Augustine at 10:44 AM

Remains of the Day: Google Pulls Grooveshark from Android Market [For What It's Worth]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5789570/remains-of-the-day-google-pulls-grooveshark-from-android-market

Remains of the Day: Google Pulls Grooveshark from Android MarketFring's new beta brings four-way video calling to your smartphone, TweetDeck tests an HTML5 web client, and Google ejects Grooveshark's streaming music app from the Android Market.

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Posted by Augustine at 10:44 AM

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