Hasta La Gadget!

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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We’ve long missed the stickers and badges we could wear to show achievements in our childhood, whether it was an A+ in History or our campfire-making chops. Mozilla must miss those too, as it’s launching Open Badges 1.0, a spec for proving skills on the web. The approach provides verifiable credentials that are stowed away in a virtual Mozilla backpack and shareable through a number of online avenues, starting with WordPress blogs and Twitter updates. You won’t necessarily need to be a web scripting wizard to earn badges, either — they’re available or coming from 600-plus companies and educational institutions that include Disney-Pixar, NASA and the Smithsonian. We’re a long way from only having to flash our Open Badges to land a job, but those symbols may be enough to let teachers and coworkers know we’re up to snuff for key tasks.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Mozilla Open Badges

For Twitter users running Windows 8, great new! Twitter had finally released a native app in Windows Store for Windows 8 on Wednesday. Designed with Windows 8 in mind, Twitter takes advantage of tools like Share function in Charm Bar to allow users to tweet from any app and Live Tiles that will display tweets no matter which app the user is currently using.

On the other hand, Snap view enables user to user another app alongside Twitter. Size of the Twitter app can be adjusted to on-third, two-thirds or full screen. Users can also make use of Windows 8 gestures to swipe photos back and forth. It also features Twitter’s Home, Connect, Discover and Me tabs.

This release is good news not only to Twitter users but to Microsoft as well. Until now, there is no official Twitter application for Microsoft’s new OS. Implementation by most third-party Twitter clients are lackluster. Tweetro, one of the best Windows Store app available previously had run out of user tokens as Twitter capped its ability to take new users. That left Windows users with only Twitter’s web client, until now.

So, have you tried the Twitter app? What do you think of it?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Intel Ultrabook Prototype with Haswell Spoted at CeBIT, The 7th Guest: 3 Heading To PC, Mac and Mobile To Give You Nightmares Again,

Twitter is apparently looking to bring some music into its service. The company is getting ready to use We Are Hunted, a music discovery service it had acquired 6 months ago, to help build itself a standalone music app. The app will give personalized music recommendations to users based on the musical artists the user follows, and the musical artists the user’s followers follow. The service, while less personalized, will still be usable for those without a Twitter account.

The app will stream music via SoundCloud. It will feature 4 tabs. The “Suggested” tab recommends you songs based on the musical artists you follow. The “#NowPlaying” tab lists links to songs tweeted by your followers who tweet using the #NowPlaying hashtag. The “Popular” tab lists the songs that are currently trending on the music app, and the “Emerging” tab lists a bunch of up-and-coming artists featured on We Are Hunted.

The app will display artists and songs in a grid design. Clicking on an artist’s panel will cause it to expand displaying a short bio on the artist, as well as links to songs the artist has on SoundCloud, or on iTunes. Users can tap the play button to begin streaming music from the artist. Users will also be able to follow artists directly from Twitter’s “Twitter Music” page.

iOS users are said to have first dibs on the Twitter Music service, just like Twitter’s video sharing app, Vine. The Twitter Music service is speculated to be released to iOS devices by the end of this month. Twitter hopes that by integrating music into its network, it can attract more new users to its service. It will, however, have a hard time prying users away from popular music services like Pandora and Spotify.

[via CNET]

Twitter to launch standalone music app is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Federal Trade Commission is setting some new, and much needed, guidelines for advertisers. The FTC has updated its guidelines, which were initially released in the year 2000, to include new ad marketing platforms. The FTC states that no matter what medium is used to see the ads, whether its a TV, radio, newspaper, computer, tablet, or a mobile phone, the ads must include full disclosure on the products being marketed.

The picture below displays the wrong way to present a mobile ad. While the advertisement states the pricing of the wireless security system, it doesn’t show that the system also requires a monthly service plan to use. This is misleading to customers who may not have purchased the product if they had known that there would be a monthly service fee added on.

Below is the correct way to display the ad. All of the required information is all on one screen, including the requirement of a service plan for the monitoring system. The FTC wants sites to optimize their website content for mobile devices, so that all disclosures are visible within one screen. It believes that mobile users may miss important disclosures by having to zoom in on web pages.

Below is a tweet advertisement. The FTC is requiring that tweets have to disclose all of the required information in the 140 characters allotted. Companies can no longer only post certain information, and then redirect its users to a link. The advertisements can’t be split across multiple tweets either. The companies have to make it clear that the tweet is an advertisement, and they have to disclose the general results that consumers can see when using its products.

The full details on how to optimize advertisements for mobile devices and tweets are all disclosed in this FTC file. Companies that violate any of the updated rules will receive penalties for “engaging in unfair or deceptive practices, in violation of the FTC Act.” The FTC is cracking down on deceitful advertisements and protecting consumers and their money. The updated guidelines were unanimously approved by the commission board.

[via PC Mag]

FTC: Advertisers can’t post deceptive tweets/mobile ads is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.