Twitter gives developers new embedded timeline options

Developers got a little more control today over how embedded Twitter timelines appear.

In a blog post Thursday, Twitter said it has made some minor modifications to the way its embedded timeline tool works.

For one, the post said, developers can now choose how many tweets appear, so long as they're happy with a number from one to 20.

Second, Twitter now lets developers decide whether they want a scrollbar to appear on an embedded timeline. Apparently, this is something that people have been asking about. But while Twitter is now enabling those who want to get rid of … Read more

Keith Richards: Apple's iPod shortchanges customers

Keith Richards wearing white headphones would be like Josh Groban wearing a skirt.

Or Steven Tyler wearing men's clothing.

Somehow, it wouldn't seem right.

Fortunately, it is unlikely to happen, because the Rolling Stone who once fell out of a tree has revealed he doesn't own an iPod. … Read more

Facebook's Q1 by the numbers

Facebook's Q1 results are in and there's food for both bulls and bears to chew over. One bullet point in particular stands out: The number of people using the social network via smartphones and tablets soared 54 percent from a year earlier. Here's the year-over-year comparison to the same quarter in 2012. (We'll update the stats after Facebook's conference call gets underway this afternoon.)

Daily active users: 665 million, up 26 percent Monthly active users: 1.11 billion up 23 percent Mobile monthly active users: 751 million, up 54 percent Instagram: 100 million monthly active … Read more

Tumblr CEO says average cost of ad campaign tops six figures

NEW YORK -- Companies are spending, on average, "north of six figures" on advertising campaigns on Tumblr, the CEO of the blogging platform said Wednesday.

David Karp, speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, noted that advertising remains Tumblr's biggest challenge, but it's seeing good traction with its efforts.

"Budgets are starting to ratchet up," Karp said. He noted that "some of the best advertisers in the world" are turning to Tumblr.

Tumblr sits alongside the Internet elites in terms of audience, but the 6-year-old blogging medium has lagged far … Read more

Misspell Google search terms? It's probably hunger

It's hard to know whether those who can't spell are stressed, oppressed by excess multitasking, or merely uneducated.

The people behind the highly nutritious Snickers bar decided to prove that it might be none of the above.

It is, they posited, merely hunger that drives you to ignorance.

So, as AdAge reports, Snickers got together with Google to see whether they could encourage better spelling of Google search terms, as misspelling was causing Google's servers to seize up and spew smoke and curses.

I made up that last part.

As part of the campaign, the Snickers-sponsored machines … Read more

LinkedIn turns online resumes into professional portfolios

LinkedIn is letting users take their online resumes to a whole new level. The social network announced Wednesday that people now have more options to visually showcase their work experience and talent with videos, images, and photos.

For example, graphic designers can show images of their past projects, photographers can show examples of their snapshots, and advertisers can launch videos of previous campaigns. With this new feature, LinkedIn is aiming to let users turn their text-only resumes into interactive lookbooks.

"You can illustrate your greatest achievements in the form of stunning images, compelling videos, innovative presentations and more," … Read more

Yes, you can tweet from Google Glass

Corrected at 9:30 p.m. PT: Due to erroneous information provided by a source, the original version of this report misidentified the app as an official Twitter app for Google Glass. It is in fact an app produced by a third party.

There's no doubt about it: Google Glass is already being used to send tweets.

For now, however, it's not known for certain that anyone has done so with an official Twitter app for Google's wearable computer. What is known is that LeWeb founder Loic Le Meur has been testing out a third-party app called … Read more

Consolidate your photo libraries with NeroKwik

Whether you're a professional photographer or an amateur food journalist, chances are that you have more than a handful of photos spread across social network sites like Facebook and Google+ as well as smart devices like phones and tablets. With so many pictures in so many places, finding a specific photo can be a chore. NeroKwik offers a welcome solution to this problem. By consolidating all of your images to be accessible from any platform in one app, NeroKwik makes finding, rating, and sharing your photos much easier.

Here's how it works:

1. Install the NeroKwik app on … Read more

Twaggies greatest hits: Weird tweets get illustrated

It used to be Twitter was all about text. We now have Vines and Instagrams to go with it, but letters and numbers are still the primary form of tweeting communication. Twaggies give tweets a visual lift thanks to a team of illustrators who take the funniest and weirdest tweets and turn them into little comics.

Twaggies add an extra blast of the surreal to tweets that are already outside the norm. The site has been around since 2009, when it started with some very crudely computer-drawn illustrations. Founder David Israel (@resila) had to admit to a lack of artistic skill, so Twaggies grew into a crowdsourced repository of images created by a couple dozen different artists.… Read more