As if Twitter users haven’t had enough headaches as of late with downtime, SXSW is looming, and everyone thinks that is going to strain the system even further. This seems the perfect time for a competitor to make a move, and according to Mike Gunderloy of Web Worker Daily, Pownce has made some improvements to its API which may be the first sign they are ready to step up (again).

Part of Twitter’s appeal has been the numerous third-part applications you can use to interact with it. With an improved API, Pownce can now enjoy similar support. According to the initial announcement on the Pownce blog, version 2.0 of the API will now allow developers to set commands to fetch lists of private and friends-only notes, post replies, and more. These are all features that Twitter apps have enjoyed for a while now, and it’s curious it took Pownce so long to do the same. (They admit to the delay, and apologize for it.)

There is no suggestion as to how long it will take these new features to show up in developers’ creations, but with everyone suspecting SXSW to put a huge strain on Twitter when it starts, people will probably be developing as quick as their fingers can type. If some apps could make it out before the March 7th start of the conference, this could really be a chance for Pownce to really start stealing a good portion of Twitter’s users.

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What it does

The idea behind Weddinic is to make your wedding day the most incredible day by helping you to plan the big day and allowing your friends to share their feelings and ideas. Guests can sign in and become a part of the social network surrounding your wedding. They can post pictures make suggestions on how the wedding could run smoother just share stories about the couple. They can also check the gift registry to make sure that their gift is on the list and send virtual gifts that the bride can change for SMS credits to send out free wedding planning reminders. The vendor section allows to add/find vendors that you would like to use for planning your wedding. You can read reviews about these vendors shared by others get maps of their locations and view their products online. All in all, this is a very complete site in which they appear to have thought of everything.

In their own words

“Whether you want to meet people to discuss the best way to plan a beach wedding, plan your own wedding or share stories and pictures with the people who are going to attend your wedding– Weddinic is the right place for you.”

Why it might be a killer

This is a pretty original idea and they seem to have thought of everything. There are many tools here that could be very useful for those planning their special day and it could become a very popular site.

Some questions

Nowadays, it seems that everyone has a wedding planner. While Weddinic has a lot to offer, will people use it instead of a wedding planner or will they stick with what they know? It’s definitely a well made site, but will that translate to success?

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Are you an Mac fanatic? If so, how do you prefer reading the Mashable feed? Via a third-party Web-based service? Or through a more local piece of software?

For those of you who can’t quite get yourselves to adopt a strictly Web-based lifestyle when it comes to consuming the daily dish, and like to work with pretty confabulations that look thematically in tune with the desktop environment of Mac OS X 10.4+, you can get yourself an install of Newsfire - free of cost [WebWorkerDaily]. That’s right, you can save your pennies now while enjoying some great Web news (wink, wink) with a great reader.

Sure, you could snap up a copy of NetNewsWire for the express price of zero dineros from the developers at Newsgator if that’s your inclination. But hey, you’ve now got a choice of premier wares. That isn’t such a bad situation to be in, eh? Of course, we won’t play favorites. You get to determine which suits your needs/moods best.

Want to give NewsFire a go? Have at it. It’s free for all.

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Filed under: Laptops

You'd have to turn your brain all the way back to September to spot the first time we got wind of Acer's Ferrari 1100 laptop, but the folks over at PC Mag have finally received one in and took the time to spill the beans on how it fared. Right out of the box, it was criticized for being entirely too hefty for a 12.1-incher, but then again, it does have an integrated DVD burner. Still, the lack of a LED-backlit display along with the totally underwhelming performance when benchmarked was hard to overlook. 'Course, it wasn't exactly a slouch, but it certainly didn't live up to expectations. Unfortunately for folks hoping for the best on this rig, it looks as if your $1,860 could be spent better elsewhere, but feel free to dig into the whole review to find out exactly why it earned just three out of those five oh-so-coveted stars.

 

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What it does

Scred is a very original site that allows you to manage your debts amongst friends and family members. Anyone can sign up to use this service which will help you to organize group expenses and maintain your street credit. If you’ve ever gone away for the weekend with a few friends, then you know how difficult it can be to fairly divide the expenses. It can be very uncomfortable having to ask friends for money and it seems like one person always ends up paying for the majority of the expenses. Scred is also available as a mobile application meaning that you can figure out expenses right from your phone and even calculate for different currencies. As well, Scred allows you to loan others money without about them “forgetting” about the debt.

In their own words

So say you are spending a weekend together at a cottage. Mike pays for the petrol to wherever you are going, and Lisa pays for the food. Other small expenses pop up along the way, as they tend to do. After the trip is over and you're finally safe from the mosquitos Scred will work out all the complex shared expenses between participants back and forth and will tell you exactly what each person owes, and who is expecting money. All you need to do is to lie back and relax.

Why it might be a killer

There are so many situations where a service like this could be incredibly useful. Even going out to dinner with your friends would be easier, allowing you to factor in the taxi, the meal and the tip without any awkwardness. This is also a great way of keeping track of loans that you’ve given to your friends over the past as it will probably make your friend more likely to pay you back.

Some questions

Scred will only work well if it becomes well-known. If only one person in the group knows about it they could be frowned upon for suggesting its use. Also the “street cred” concept only works if your whole group of friends are using the service.

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We’ll take this with a grain of salt, but BGR is usually on point with this sort of thing so we’ll leave it up to the readers in the New England area to vouch for this. AT&T stores will be offering refurbished 4GB and 8GB iPhones with new activation for $199 and $249, respectively. BGR has obtained an internal memo, which can be found over yonder.

March 1, 2008
Refurbished iPhones at COR Stores. For a limited time, select COR stores in the New England Market will offer refurbished iPhones (both 4GB and 8GB) for a special price. These devices are good as new and give customers the opportunity to experience the revolutionary iPhone with big savings. New activations only, upgrades with Manager approval. Refurbished iPhones will only be available to purchase in select COR stores across the Northeast Region and will be available while supplies last. Please reach out to customers that have recently purchased an iPhone to see if they are interested in activating an additional iPhone at a discounted equipment cost. Please note no in-store sales materials should be created. This is to be sold as a closing tool only. Product is available while supplies last from initial shipment. Failure to follow this communication will result in a Code of Business Conduct violation

AT&T stores to offer refurbished iPhones with new activations, $199 and $249 [BGR]

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In a piece published Friday in Forbes, Sramana Mitra documented the numerical reasons why India’s outsourcing industry - commanded by corporations like Infosys and Wipro - is bound to decline. And maybe even die, if the current hiring binge, the steady increase in industry wages, and the demand for any and all services supplied by the workforce on the subcontinent from around the world decreases as a result of increasing costs and nominally increasing productivity.

I’d like to rebut Mitra’s assertions with two main points.

First, it’s fairly common-sensical to determine that the Indian IT sector, in all its phone-support-heavy, code-producing glory, will not continue to grow at the rate it is. Market saturation will inevitably occur, and the ascent in wages will diminish in speed because such an industrial limit will have been reached. Yes, Indians, given the opportunity, will seek better jobs and better salaries (as we all generally do), and thus have been flooding the IT trade to get in on the action. But there are only so many seats at the table - despite the fact that the table is expanding in size at a brisk clip. So there’s reason to forecast a period at which Indian IT will plateau, figuratively speaking. And that moment will likely be reached in tandem with the leveling-off of demand for various services.

Furthermore, it’s necessary to consider the larger, fuller picture of the evolving Indian IT world, which, according to data shown in this Mashable piece published last month, is seeing a marked rise in venture capital investments. In 2007 alone, India saw nearly $1bn in financing. This essentially means growth for Indian IT, whether infrastructural or specific to Web startups, is gradually being driven by businesses that are built to cater largely to the homeland. Self-sustainment is on the rise.

Will the slow-down in the outsourcing industry transition seamlessly into the rise of India-to-India business? Hardly. It’ll be a rough shift, for sure. The market comprised of tech giants like Infosys and Wipro will not experience a leisurely move into middle and old age. But might things work out okay in the end? It’s not out of the realm of possibility. It would be quite unlikely to find India exhaust itself of this IT boom its endured for so many years already. India still has a long way to go before the fuel supply isn’t enough to sustain the fire, so to speak.

In all, I imagine outsourcing will not go away for a good number more years. It has numerous benefits for many corporations placed elsewhere. We should count on all excess weight in the outsourcing sector to be moved into other areas, absolutely. There’s no question that outsourcing will peak. Whether it will chart a significant decline in the short term, however, is something I happen to remain very skeptical about.

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What it does

Appropriately named SuprGlu in another site that will aggregate your online lifestream for you so that data from all of the different sites you subscribe to can be published in one place. Your content is presented in well-designed templates which you can also personalize. If you find that you are spending hours online everyday just trying to keep your various sites up-to-date then this could be just the solution for you, or if you want to find out what your friends have been up to without checking each of the individual communities that they are apart of then this will be a very useful site. In a world of too much information, getting as much of it as possible in the same place is highly appreciated.

In their own words

Do you already use services like del.icio.us, flickr, blogger, typepad, etc? SuprGlu is a new way to gather all your content from those sites. In a nutshell, SuprGlu: gathers your content from popular webs services and publishes them in one convenient place.

Why it might be a killer

SuprGlu has been around for awhile so in the new world of lifestream aggregation, it is a relatively mature player and subsequently has had a head start. The ability to customize your templates is a nice touch.

Some questions

There are a multitude of sites that do the same thing. Ultimately, the sites that offer the best experience will come out on top. Will SuperGlu be one such site?

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What it does

Appropriately named SuprGlu in another site that will aggregate your online lifestream for you so that data from all of the different sites you subscribe to can be published in one place. Your content is presented in well-designed templates which you can also personalize. If you find that you are spending hours online everyday just trying to keep your various sites up-to-date then this could be just the solution for you, or if you want to find out what your friends have been up to without checking each of the individual communities that they are apart of then this will be a very useful site. In a world of too much information, getting as much of it as possible in the same place is highly appreciated.

In their own words

Do you already use services like del.icio.us, flickr, blogger, typepad, etc? SuprGlu is a new way to gather all your content from those sites. In a nutshell, SuprGlu: gathers your content from popular webs services and publishes them in one convenient place.

Why it might be a killer

SuprGlu has been around for awhile so in the new world of lifestream aggregation, it is a relatively mature player and subsequently has had a head start. The ability to customize your templates is a nice touch.

Some questions

There are a multitude of sites that do the same thing. Ultimately, the sites that offer the best experience will come out on top. Will SuperGlu be one such site?

Updates


 » original news

What it does

OneSwirl allows you to manage your entire cyber life from one webpage. This lifestream aggregator service allows you to put all of your activities in one place making it easy for people to follow you. To get started, you simply provide your username to the different services that OneSwirl integrates with and they will be updated every 15-minutes on your page and RSS feed. Currently supported sites include: Flickr, Google Photos, Netflix, YouTube, Last.fm, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Amazon.com, and College Humor. Signing up for OneSwirl allows other members to follow you from one page instead of having to check each individual page that you subscribe to.

In their own words

OneSwirl is a "lifestream aggregator", giving you the ability to put all of your activities (well, only on the Internet) in one place, for people to easily follow you. After creating an account, you provide your username (or in some cases, user ID) to the different services that we integrate with. We check for updates across all accounts every 15 minutes, and post them to both your page and RSS feed.

Why it might be a killer

So called “lifestream aggregators” are becoming increasingly popular as people’s online lives become increasingly complex. There is definitely high demand for a service like OneSwirl that saves people time by allowing them to manage their life from one page.

Some questions

While there is a demand for this type of service, there are a large number of competitors out there offering more or less the same thing. Does OneSwirl have what it takes to survive in this very crowded space?

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