in

Square today unveiled its "Business in a Box" package, a bundle including all the components needed for a small business to start taking payments on the company's Square Register platform.

With Square Register, almost any business can accept payments wirelessly from customers' mobile devices. The system lets businesses use an iPad instead of a cash register, and gives them an accompanying set of analytics tools, while customers download the app, sign up, register a credit card, and then pay automatically at any of the hundreds of thousands of merchants running Square Register.

The new bundle includes two … Read more

Last November I covered a new service called Sunrise. The goal of the service, after connecting it to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar accounts, was to help you start the day with a personalized agenda in your inbox. It would incorporate details about upcoming meetings, as well as who you're meeting with, from the various services.

While having an organized agenda automatically created for you each morning with important details was intriguing, after using the service for a few weeks the e-mail started to feel more like spam than a helpful digital assistant.

Fast-forward to today: Sunrise has … Read more

LinkedIn has redesigned its LinkedIn Jobs tool in an effort to show job seekers positions they can actually get.

The professional social network today announced the launch of the new tool, which now showcases open positions at companies where a person has allies, or "first degree connections" in LinkedIn speak, who can get the candidate noticed.

The new jobs tool, which will be rolled out to all 200 million members over the next few weeks, also features added search and management tools. For instance, LinkedIn Jobs now lets people more deeply refine their searches for open positions with … Read more

With Valentine's Day just hours away, LinkedIn employees are really feeling the love -- from their CEO.

Chief Executive Jeff Weiner surprised the company's 3,458 full-time employees Wednesday when he revealed at an all-hands meeting that they were all getting iPad Minis.

"Jeff 'Winfrey' Weiner decided to give every [LinkedIn] employee an iPad Mini today as a special reward for our recent results," Mike Grishaver, a product manager who works on the company's marketing solutions team, posted on the business social network.

Employees are getting 32GB iPad Mini models in white or black. Krista … Read more

SlideShare, the online presentation property of professional social network LinkedIn, today released a new feature called Send Tracker to help presentation makers determine which of their slides are the most effective.

LinkedIn purchased SlideShare in May 2012. The online deck-hosting tool, only partially integrated with LinkedIn, accounts for 39 million monthly unique visitors, or 25 percent of LinkedIn's total monthly unique audience. SlideShare is also at the center of the public company's strategy to become a hub for professional content.

Send Tracker, a new tool for users who pay to use SlideShare, is specifically tailored toward marketers, salespeople, … Read more

You can now control which Foursquare check-ins will trigger an alert on your iPhone. Previously, you were able only to turn alerts on or off for a particular Foursquare friend, and that's still the case for Android and BB10 users. With the latest update to the Foursquare app, version 5.4.3, you'll be able to assign a contact to one of three different notifications categories: Off, Nearby, Always.

When set to Off you'll never receive an alert for that contact. Nearby will work similarly to the way check-in notifications have in the past, and Always will … Read more

There is a sudden trend for casually obtained sex.

By "casually," I mean effortlessly, entirely without trying or even seeming to try.

The New York Times noticed it, describing how contemporary dating in New York is little more than the booking of an appointment.

Then along came "Bang with Friends," a site that, as a famous British ad campaign once held it, does exactly what it says on the tin. Or at least claims to.

Hot on its stilettos, there appeared Bang With Professionals, a site that decided to refine the casual sexual urges of the … Read more

LinkedIn spent much of 2012 transforming itself into a place where workers could stay and play a while -- a strategy that paid off handsomely. But the year ahead will be all about making the site the preferred destination for professional content, a transition that could make Wall Street's darling even more bewitching.

The professional network today reported earnings that blew the Street's socks off, so to speak. LinkedIn's stock is trading up close to 10 percent on the after-hours market because the company floored everyone with fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 35 cents, revenue of $… Read more