Boston SEO And Websites
Let's Talk: (877) 520-6707
Chile, nine days later
Nine days after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake killed hundreds of people in south-central Chile, relief efforts were beginning to reach those in need, rescue missions became recovery missions, and rebuilding is already under way. In the days since the February 27th quake, nearly 150 aftershocks have been recorded, including thirteen above magnitude 6.0. The government has been criticized by Chileans, who say the response was slow and inefficient. One recent government action was to grant a short amnesty to looters before sending troops out in search of stolen goods. Nearly $2 million worth of looted items were returned, often dumped on roadsides, by Sunday. Collected here are photographs from the past week in quake-affected Chile.
The sweet smell of morality
Can a clean smell make you a better person? That's the provocative suggestion of a recent study in the journal Psychological Science. A team of researchers found that when people were in a room recently spritzed with a citrus-scented cleanser, they behaved more fairly when playing a classic trust game. In another experiment, the smell of cleanser made subjects more ...
A golden Eagle in ‘07-08
The worst season of the last decade for the Boston College men's basketball team turned out to be financially golden for coach Al Skinner.
Modeling kindness and empathy
Barbara Coloroso, author of several books on parenting, bullying, and conflict resolution, says parents must model behavior to create kind, empathetic children.
Norwell teen charged in deadly crash
A Norwell teenager has been charged with vehicular homicide for allegedly driving drunk Sunday and causing the crash that killed his 18-year-old passenger.
Bernie and Phyl share a long-kept secret
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - Furniture gurus Bernie and Phyl Rubin were sitting back last week on a plush, papaya-colored couch in their Florida home, and for once, Phyl was doing most of the talking.
Lawyer-bashing: No defense for Liz Cheney
It's a staple of the American judicial system that everyone deserves a defense. So Liz Cheney's campaign to determine the names of lawyers who represent alleged terrorism suspects, and then to question whether those lawyers are sympathetic to terrorists, is a sad form of demagoguery.
In The SXSW Location War, Loopt Hopes The Correct Weapon Is Events
With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.
The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be in the system so users won’t have to do anything other than share it with friends, or check-in if they’re going. The feature also uses you current location to show which events are happening around you at any given moment that a lot of people are at.
As you might expect, you also also tell who is already at the event, and which of your friend is supposed to be going. The later feature works with Facebook Connect. You can RSVP to an event right from within Loopt and see who else is scheduled to go.
Calling it the “best event ever from an app,” Loopt founder Sam Altman believes they’ll have every single event taking place at SXSW in their system. A newer startup, the recently funded Plancast (started by TechCrunch alum Mark Hendrickson), may have something to say about that statement as they’ll be debuting their own events-based iPhone app at the festival as well. And like this new Loopt feature, a key Plancast component is Facebook event integration.
Loopt was one of the original hot players in the location space, launching an iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008. However, their initial bet was on always-on location updates, which the iPhone cannot do because it will not allow third-party apps to run in the background. Loopt found a loophole (see what I did there?) to that through AT&T, but by then the momentum has already swung to the check-in based location services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year, Loopt pivoted its app to be more predicated around check-ins.
Look for the latest Loopt app tomorrow in the App Store.
Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here
.
