Today's Current News, Opinion & Advice
Sparkcentral, a company that provides tools to help businesses conduct customer support over social channels, has raised a $12 million Series B round of funding, led by Split Rock Partners. The company previously raised a total of $5.6 million, including a $4.5 million Series A round of capital in October of 2013, or around 15 months…
By Sharona Ott Zillow This updated colonial in Baltimore has three bedrooms, three baths and a finished attic and is priced at $309,900. In some major cities, finding a home that has both quality infrastructure and modern finishes can be a tedious task. Do not fret, home buyers. We’ve done the work for you and…
Music, music everywhere, but what song should I pick? Dance music fans have it particularly tough when it comes to discovery. Spotify’s 100% legal catalogue lacks tons of cool, unofficial remixes and mixsets, while SoundCloud’s limited curation make sorting through the jumble of sporadically released tracks a chore. If only someone would build a Digg/Reddit/Hacker…
Courtesy of Toll Brothers – The Carriage Barn clubhouse is intended as a center of the community at Liseter, a development of up to 449 homes. Pennsylvania’s famed Du Pont estate, where thoroughbreds once frolicked and John du Pont shot and killed an Olympic gold medal wrestler, has been leveled and replaced with a Toll Brothers…
App name: Seeking Alpha Portfolio Publisher: Seeking Alpha Price: Free Available on: Android and iOS devices What’s it supposed to do? Keep you informed on market data and stocks you’re tracking. It provides a broad selection of analysis from its crowd-sourced platform of contributors. Ease of use (3/5): Right off the bat, Seeking Alpha Portfolio…
If you’re in the market for a rewards credit card, you have a lot of options. Do you want to earn cash back? Points toward a free flight or hotel stay? What about money toward a new car? If you think you might want a General Motors vehicle for your next car, the automaker’s branded…
Editor’s note: Gaurav Jain is a principal at Founder Collective. He was the founding product manager for Google+ Enterprise, Google’s social collaboration product for the workplace, as well as an early product manager for Android. If you’re an employer, how do you solve a problem like Facebook? Roughly 61 percent of office workers use social media during…
A new application called Shout is offering a twist on location-based mobile social networking, with a newly launched app that lets you post messages shared with those in your immediate vicinity, or even citywide. The idea is similar in some ways to the popular anonymous social app Yik Yak, which also lets you post things…
Story highlights TripAdvisor announces Travelers’ Choice awards for hotels A Maldives resort earns the top global award Three of the world’s top 25 hotels, according to TripAdvisor, embrace this tried-and-true combo for blissful luxury vacationing. The mammoth travel site announced its TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice awards for hotels Wednesday. More than 8,100 properties in eight regions…
Story highlights Click through the gallery for our favorite examples of wildlife photography Follow the tips below to shoot amazing animal images of your own Want to share your own wildlife photos? Submit at CNN iReport Camping in the freezing snow at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Trekking through the jungle with an armed guard.…
A long-term care insurance policy that doubles as conventional whole or universal life insurance is becoming increasingly popular. Buyers of this type of insurance usually pay a single lump-sum premium — although there are installment plans available. These policies give people who need long-term care access to their life insurance to pay for it, reducing…
It’s a new year, a fresh start. And while there’s a good chance you didn’t get to everything on your financial to-do list last year — those months roll by so quickly — that’s no reason to shelve your efforts. Why not strive instead to end 2015 better than you started it? Making these moves…
Investing in stocks can be intimidating for newbies but a certificate of deposit, or CD, may not be the best answer for every situation. There are different tools for different jobs. A hammer is for driving nails into hard objects, a saw is for cutting things. A hammer can’t cut a board and a CD…
Twitter appears to be sending out a message to a group of very high-profile users suggesting that these users post photos directly to Twitter instead of sharing through Instagram. Mashable secured a screenshot of the prompt, which shows the aesthetic differences between sharing an Instagram link and posting a photo directly through Twitter. In 2012,…
The European Central Bank announced a new effort to stimulate inflation in the Eurozone and further weaken the currency: quantitative easing, or QE. Per the press release from the European Central Bank, or ECB: The central bank will purchase sovereign bonds “in order to address the risks of a too prolonged period of low inflation.”…
Story highlights Chicago declares O’Hare International Airport “world’s busiest airport” FAA stats show O’Hare tops Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson as No. 1 in takeoffs and landings Does that make O’Hare the “world’s busiest airport?” Depends on whom you ask Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson handles more yearly passengers than any other airport, worldwide For the first time in a decade,…
Are you a Starwood Preferred Guest? You may want to go ahead and change (possibly all) your passwords. Security blogger Brian Krebs reported Thursday that some of the hotel conglomerate’s loyalty program account holders were having their rewards hijacked by scammers. Per Krebs, “the mass compromise … coincides with a Starwoods-specific account-checking tool that was…
Already-forgotten, anti-Facebook social network Ello today launched the ability to share music and video clips in its feed, but that won’t matter. Here in September gone in September, Ello hoped to dethrone Facebook by … not having ads. But while hipsters had fun hating on Zuck’s creation for a few days, they all went back…
Like any sane northern-born American, I dreamed of one day abandoning my rain gear and snow shovel and relocating to sunny Florida. As luck would have it, I was able to do just that well before reaching “Seinfeld’s” Del Boca Vista retirement age. Frankly, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. But while the palm trees, pelicans,…
So many people dream about all the things they would buy if they were richer — fast cars, vacation homes, jewels and generally just more, more, more. But one woman’s story is proof that happiness doesn’t come from acquiring things, but rather from acquiring interesting experiences and friends. Lee Wachtstetter, 86, has spent the past 10 years living…
Does your shopping list look like this: milk, bread, tax refund? If you shop at Walmart this tax filing season, it might. Walmart announced on Jan. 20, the day that the 2015 filing season officially began, that it has added a new financial service to its offerings: the ability to pick up your tax refund in…
Some retirees who can afford to rest on their laurels think continuing to work is a better approach, according to a survey of people with household incomes of at least $75,000 and assets of at least $100,000. The John Hancock Financial survey found that 45 percent of respondents plan to work during their retirement years.…
Tumblr, at 420 million monthly uniques, has announced a new program today called Creatrs. Tumblr describes it as a art-meets-content collective but it feels a lot like an ad agency. There are two different pieces to the Creatrs program. The first, and most important, is the Creatrs Network. It’s an advertising platform from Tumblr that…
Follow us at @CNNTravel on Twitter and Instagram. Like us on Facebook The driver cheerfully ignores the doctor’s pleas and continues to take the corners at a clip, smoking all the while and occasionally breaking into wailed bursts of Kurdish folk song. We’re traveling from Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, to Marivan, a…
Evan Joseph/ Extell DevelopmentThe 360-degree views from the 89th and 90th floor duplex stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Catskill Mountains.A New York City real estate record is broken almost as often as the No. 1 train heads uptown. And the latest — most expensive apartment ehhh-ver — has been shattered at One57, the…
Governor Jerry and his traffic engineer’s flawed logic somehow found its way down to my home town; San Pedro, CA. Using Jerry’s logic, (see below) pedestrians should be charged a fee for their protected walking lanes—sidewalks. I guess when the bike riders start obeying the vehicle code I might become a little more tolerant of…
Cassandra Hubbart/AOL By AJ Smith The new year is a time for resolutions, new beginnings and (hopefully) a higher credit score. It may be the last thing you are thinking about right now, but your credit score can affect your mortgage, your job potential and, ultimately, your life. So now is the time to start…
Back in November 2014, Twitter announced that it would be launching a native video service in the first half of 2015 as part of its bigger strategy to position itself as a media platform. Now some more details have been uncovered about how this will work. The Twitter Video Player will host videos of up to 10 minutes with…
Private group messaging is a feature Twitter is supposedly working on and that many have been waiting to come out for a while, but we’ve yet to see. @howardlindzon@pmarca twitter’s new group DM functionality should help — Josh Felser (@Joshmedia) December 31, 2014 @howardlindzon@pmarca not out yet — Josh Felser (@Joshmedia) December 31, 2014 Twitter…
A number of top pundits are predicting that messaging apps will become ‘the new social media’ in 2015, and here’s some evidence to support that theory from Line, the chat app from Japan with over 500 million registered users and 170 million monthly actives. Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney released a surprise collaboration with Kanye West on New…
ZillowThis four-bedroom home with 2,160 square feet is on the market for $395,000 in Greensboro, N.C. By Melissa Allison Although $400,000 falls below the median home value in some places (including Boston, Miami and San Diego), it’s more than twice the national median of $177,600, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. That means $400,000…
By Zillow Digs Zillow Digs has announced its choices for the top five home design trends in 2015 — and the four soon-to-be forgotten fads of 2014. The results were published in the 2015 Zillow Digs Home Trend Forecast, a one-of-a-kind report that combines data from a survey of leading interior design experts and an…
