CooTek has just announced their TouchPal Tablet Keyboard app which will play nice with the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and what makes this special is it is the only Android tablet keyboard app which will rely on gestures in order to split and resize the keyboard. Not only that, you will be able to enjoy swiping and typing input methods.

A variety of Android tablets were released recently. However, many users have the concerns about the typing experience on Android tablets. TouchPal now addressed the concerns by providing a powerful soft keyboard specially designed for tablets. If you just got an Android tablet as a Christmas gift, you could download this app for free to make your tablet easier to type.

Key Features:

• Both Sliding and Typing Input: Type the way you want, when you want. TouchPal Tablet Keyboard offers both swiping and typing input methods, so you can start a sentence by swiping and finish by typing. How you enter text is up to you.

• Use Gestures to Resize and Split the Keyboard: Use simple swiping gestures to split the keyboard in landscape mode. Resize the keyboard in any orientation. A perfectly customized experience.

• Predictive Sliding for Faster Input: Unlike other swiping applications which require users to swipe through each and every letter to input a word, TouchPal Tablet Keyboard allows you to swipe only the first few letters. The app does the rest by offering words choices based on the letters selected and the context of the sentence.

• Intelligent Next-word Prediction: Constantly learns new words as you type to provide more accurate word prediction.

• Fast Misspelling Correction: Automatically corrects misspellings and learns custom words based on your typing habits.

• Contact List Import: Imports your contact list so even hard-to-spell names are easily recognized without triggering a spelling correction.

• Mixed Language Detection: Automatically detects languages so there’s no need to constantly switch, even when mixing multiple languages in a sentence.

• Larger, More User-friendly Keys: Features a clean layout with large, easy to swipe and type keys.

Verizon Wireless has confirmed that they will be rolling out a software update for the world’s first Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich powered smartphone – the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. This particular software update is said to fix the wireless signal strength indicator by making minor adjustments in order to better reflect the kind of signal strength you are receiving on the smartphone. This software update is released in under a week after the Galaxy Nexus starts to ship. Could this be the Android 4.0.3 leaked update?

Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney did not mention the exact date of the software update’s release, although some Verizon service reps did inform customers that January would be a safe bet. I say the sooner the better, what about you? According to Raney, the Galaxy Nexus update “will adjust the signal strength indicator to more closely match other Verizon Wireless devices.” Hopefully it will not just offer a psychological boost but rather, will offer a more accurate reflection of the network’s signal strength.

New Galaxy Nexus smartphone has a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 1750 mAh battery, 16GB/32GB flash storage, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, e-compass, and accelerometer. There is also a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera with Full HD 1080p@30fps video recording and a front 1.3 megapixels camera. Dimensions of Galaxy Nexus are 135.5 x 67.94 x 8.94 mm and weighs 135 grams.

The new OOptOut extension for Chrome adds toggles to the top of the Facebook permissions window for locking down apps of dubious origin.

Still in rough development, a new extension for Google Chrome puts in your hands a useful power tool for separating your data from Facebook apps of dubious origin. Called OOptOut (download), the add-on by Chad Selph helpfully lists above the Facebook header for you any permissions that a newly-installed Facebook app requests.

Check boxes next to each let you toggle the select permission. Keep in mind that this extension isn’t for casual enthusiasts. Disabling permissions can prevent an app from functioning properly. A gaming app that wants your location data may seem strange at first, but it’s possible that the game has a legit reason for the request, such as finding other players that are nearby.

Another problem with the extension is that the developer freely admits that it’s in rough shape as it now. As the instructions on the download page indicate, sometimes it breaks sites, but it requires a certain degree of savvy to even install. You must be comfortable creating a git clone of the extension repository and working with Google Chrome in developer mode, since the more usable public build of the extension isn’t ready yet.

Along with a better name and look, and a standard installer, Selph says that he is considering other options for future versions, such as allowing people to add permissions that an app hasn’t requested. That might be the first time in the brief recorded history of Facebook that anybody has expressed the desire to give Facebook apps more access than they already have.

Skype already went down around the globe once in the last month, and now many users from many countries around the world are currently unable to log in to Skype, and when they finally get logged in, they will notice that none of their friends appear to be online.
Although the company says that the outage has only affected a ‘small number of users’, many Skype users don’t agree and the problem seems to be a lot bigger than Skype is letting on.
It has acknowledged the problem both on its official blog and via Twitter:

“A configuration problem has meant that some of you have been disconnected from Skype.
We’ve identified the cause of the problem, and have begun to address it. If you’ve been affected, you should start to see improvement in the next hour or so. You shouldn’t need to manually sign back in to Skype – it should reconnect automatically when it’s able to do so.”

Me and My friend have just tested this ourselves, we have managed to log into Skype, and neither of us can see the other one online, in fact none of our contacts are appearing as if they are online even though some of them have confirmed that they are actually logged in to Skype. So it’s definitely not all users running into this issue.
Lets hope they get it fixed because if you search on Twitter for Skype, you will see that the problem is affecting a lot more users than just the ‘small number’ that Skype have claimed.

Taking Online Surveys For Cash

It’s easy to become fascinated with the notion of taking surveys to earn extra money.

But it’s tricky to discern between genuine survey sites and those that make incredible offers that lure you into page after page of signup offers. Taking Online Surveys For Cash

This brief but relevant guide will give you some tips you can use before launching your survey adventure, as well as a list of sites that will help get your cash-flow ball rolling in the right direction. Before you get started, here’s a handful of things to consider:

a. Set up an internet email account to be used exclusively with your survey endeavors at gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or whatever else works for you.

b. Most survey sites enable you to set your own password, so think about using the same password at all the sites you frequent. This makes it easier and faster to log into each site, and cuts down on time spent retrieving forgotten passwords.

c. Some sites will require an initial investment of time to get set up. There are typically a number of personal profiles offered at each site to enable the company to help match the right surveys to your interests. Once these profiles are completed, it increases your chances to receive survey invitations.

d. Be honest, and don’t try to submit false information about yourself, or try to enter somebody else’s personal information. Genuine survey sites require sincere data from you to ensure that the services they provide to their clients are accurate reflections.

e. None of the sites listed in this guide require any sort of payment to join.

f. Set up a PayPal.com account to facilitate faster earnings. It’s free, secure and relatively simple to do.

Now that you’re beginning to get a clearer picture of how to approach the internet survey world, let’s focus in on the sites: Taking Online Surveys For Cash

1. Survey Savvy — This is a cash-paying site that mails out checks, and rewards for member referrals as well as referrals’ surveys.

2. Opinion Outpost — Another cash-paying site, Opinion Outpost surveys usually start with a short “screener” to see if you qualify for the full survey. If you don’t qualify right away, don’t get discouraged. Earning money on the internet is a slow-moving process, and sooner or later you will qualify.

3. Mindfield Online — All it takes is in accumulated earnings to get a check from Mindfield Online. Members also have the option to let their earnings grow into a larger sum before requesting payment.

4. American Consumer Opinion Panel — Here’s a super site that lets you request payment either by check or paypal. Usually, surveys pay between and . Again, initial “screeners” are used to see if you qualify for the survey-du-jour.

5. Clear Voice Surveys — A point system enables members to pile up points which are then traded in for a prepaid debit card or amazon.com gift certificates.

6. Lightspeed Consumer Panel — This is a very active site which gives cash payments via Paypal. Survey takers also have the option of requesting goods and services from a broad array of well-known merchants.

7. Datatelligence Online — This survey site lets members earn points that are then redeemed for popular items, like clothing, music downloads, CVS gift cards or amazon.com credits.

8. Socratic Forum — Yet another check-paying site, Socratic Forum usually pays between and for each survey completed. It covers an interesting variety of topics, and pays in increments.

There are several other real survey sites on the internet, but the above list will definitely help you get started. Just remember to be diligent, persistent, patient and honest.

Keep the fascination alive, and good luck finding your survey niche! Taking Online Surveys For Cash

Market Research Online Surveys Australia

Online surveys are undoubtedly the most cost effective way to gather important data such as customer satisfaction and employee opinions. But how do you maximise your response rate? This is a problem incurred by most businesses undertaking online surveys and there is much literature available relating to the topic, all with varying facts and figures in relation to what response rate to expect, techniques for increasing responses, what length of survey should be used etc. Market Research Online Surveys Australia

The simple truth is that there is no single guideline to follow when undertaking an online survey, as each survey has its own set of variables affecting its response rate. However, there are some common techniques used to enhance the likelihood that a potential survey respondent will complete your questionnaire.

Having undertaken hundreds of online surveys of customers, employees, businesses, membership groups and event guests, I began recording survey response rates and the types of key variables likely to affect them. The variables recorded were:

Whether survey invitations were personalised (i.e. Dear John Smith v Dear customer)
Length of survey (categorised into completion times of 1-4 minutes, 5-9 minutes & 10+ minutes)
If a reward/prize was offered
Whether or not the survey was sent to people with a known interest in the survey subject (i.e. job related, previous customer, linked to social interests etc.)

The figures shown below were derived from the data of 143 online surveys, which were completed by a total of 49,335 respondents. As a general process, potential respondents were contacted twice via email to encourage participation in the online surveys.

Please note that the majority of respondents had submitted their details to various databases or were customers of my clients; therefore, it is likely that they were aware of the brand/company prior to receiving the online survey invitation. People sending email invites to random sub-sets of contacts should not expect to achieve response rates as high as those listed below.

Taking into account the 4 variables and their options, there were 24 possible combination’s – this will make sense when looking at the dot-points below. The combinations with the 5 highest and 5 lowest response rates have been listed.

5 highest response rates

Personalised email & 1-4 minutes to complete & reward offered & respondents had a known interest in the survey subject = 45.3% average response rate
Personalised email & 5-9 minutes to complete & reward offered & respondents had a known interest in the survey subject = 40.1% average response rate
Non-personalised email & 1-4 minutes to complete & reward offered & respondents had a known interest in the survey subject = 39.8% average response rate
Personalised email & 1-4 minutes to complete & no reward offered & respondents had a known interest in the survey subject = 39.2% average response rate
Personalised email & 5-9 minutes to complete & no reward offered & respondents had a known interest in the survey subject = 38.4% average response rate Market Research Online Surveys Australia

5 lowest response rates

Non-personalised email & 10+ minutes to complete & no reward offered & respondents did not have a known interest in the survey subject = 8.2% average response rate
Non-personalised email & 10+ minutes to complete & reward offered & respondents did not have a known interest in the survey subject = 15.5% average response rate
Personalised email & 10+ minutes to complete & no reward offered & respondents did not have a known interest in the survey subject = 16.2% average response rate
Non-personalised email & 5-9 minutes to complete & no reward offered & respondents did not have a known interest in the survey subject = 19.4% average response rate
Non-personalised email & 10+ minutes to complete & no reward offered & respondents had a known interest in the survey subject = 19.5% average response rate

So what works best?

The above findings show some clear correlations between response rates and the variables affecting them. As a general rule, it appears that the following actions should ensure that you gain the highest possible response rate when undertaking an online survey:

Personalise your email invitations. People are more likely to respond to emails that address them by their name rather than ‘Dear Sir/Madam’, Dear Colleague’ or ‘Dear Customer’. If you have the names of potential survey respondents, use them! This is easily done using simple software such as Microsoft Word in a mail-merge format sent via your Outlook account. It links directly to your database, removing the burden of typing every single name into each email invitation.
Keep the survey as short as possible. In most cases, the shorter the survey – the higher the response rate. Obviously some online surveys need to be in-depth and cannot avoid being 10+ minutes in length; however, try to avoid asking questions that only gather irrelevant information. This is a common crime amongst survey developers when preparing questions for an online survey.
Offer a reward. Everybody loves getting something for free, so try and offer a reward when sending out online survey invitations. Some experts such as Kurt Knapton, Executive Vice President of e-Rewards Market Research, suggest that you are more likely to gain a higher response rate if you offer every respondent a small reward rather than a chance of winning a large sweepstakes prize. His study found that offering 4,000 people each to complete a survey achieved a 19.3% response rate. Offering the same volume of people with an entry into a ,500 sweepstakes draw only managed a 12.2% response rate.
Find contacts that are likely to have an interest in the survey subject. This is no scientific discovery, but response rates are always going to be higher if the potential respondent has some interest in the survey subject. Job satisfaction surveys always gain high response rates because employees believe that their answers will influence beneficial changes. Likewise, repeat purchasers of a particular product/service will undoubtedly have more interest in a related online survey than someone who has only used it once or never at all. Market Research Online Surveys Australia

It is every marketer’s wish to read the consumer’s mind. If they could they would sell and strategize their products to with the right benefits, wants, price and the needs which enables them to go ahead and buy the product. Well unless marketers start to read their consumers minds there is online survey which is also often referred to as purchase intent survey. Following is a description of how it all works.

A right decision at the right time!

A sample survey can propose a question keeping in mind the five point scale like:

What do you think of this product?
Excellent
Good
Fair
Average
Poor

In order to get some insight from your purchase intent survey, there will be some questions which will help you fabricate a profile of the subjects. This can be better explained with an exemplar like which medium do you prefer for news, radio or newspaper. The answer will give you a straight link to your target advertising group of people.

What’s more you will get more insight into the relationship between the purchase intention and the actual purchases. The more the data the more the more accurate results can be made for better potential revenues from the marketing campaign.There are many survey types. Carrying out online surveys of purchase aim can give in helpful information. The Online survey software can be made use of in order to forecast this impulsive behavior. There can be questions regarding a person’s last instance when they got something out of impulse without any prior intention. It can be further researched with questions like what were they going to buy when they bought out of impulse.

Thus there may not be one fixed combination for a successful product in the market but a well designed survey can definitely help you near the desired output of the product or the service.

More Info

Magicsurveytool.com

Earn Money Taking Online Surveys Paid For Opinions

You may have received emails offering you to make big bucks by taking online surveys through various online survey websites. Having said that, the majority of individuals may assume that all these surveys are hoaxes. The truth is, you really can earn money online from home with these types of opportunities.

One can find many ways to earn an income at home with all these surveys online. You can effortlessly get – for giving your opinions that only needs 5-10 minutes of your time. If you decide to work hard enough, you can certainly generate quite a lot of cash. The following are several good tips to increase your earnings with these internet survey sites.

• You are required to subscribe to numerous online survey sites. A single site can potentially provide you just a couple of surveys online per month. However, if you subscribe to a lot of websites, you can earn a great amount of money with the several surveys completed from numerous websites.

• Try not to be so selective for completing all these internet surveys. Be careful not to miss any online surveys presented to you even if they merely pay out just a little. This will likely enable you to build up your credibility and to assure that the companies will not likely get you out of the list in the event that you keep on rejecting the surveys. Once you have credibility, companies certainly will provide you with more surveys which have better compensation. Earn Money Taking Online Surveys Paid For Opinions

• Be genuine when providing your opinions. Naturally, the internet surveys are done based on products and services. You must present your genuine views to ensure that it may help the companies. At the same time, you make money online at home.

• You will find various web forms filling computer software available on the internet. Take advantage of them to help save lots of time to complete the internet surveys. This software system allows automating the keying in of similar info which includes name, street address, cellular phone and so on.

Taking surveys through these kinds of online survey web sites to make extra cash at home is definitely fast becoming one of the most accepted methods to make money from home via the internet. Nevertheless, you must be practical about gains. Take care not to expect to make plenty of cash when initially started out. Over the time, build up your credibility and you will surely be earning much more when companies started to have confidence in you. Earn Money Taking Online Surveys Paid For Opinions

Is Online Survey Taking Safe

You seem to be interested in paid online surveys because you are reading this article. But you are not sure whether you should involve in them or not. Read these tips to keep you and your information safe and harvest the crop of online surveys as a panelist.

1. Join only those online survey panels that have a well defined privacy policy mention on, or linked to, their home page.

2. Search the panels that have been approved by the Better Business Bureau and their privacy policies have been reviewed and approved by TRUSTe, or the site has a Privacy Seal of Assurance from the WebTrust.

3. Keep your eyes open for the web sites that ask you to receive some kind of information about special offers and other survey panels during registration – they might sell your name and other information to companies who will swarm your mail box with spam.

4. Allocate a specific email account for survey invitations. Do not use this email ID at any other place or for any other purpose. This can help you handle the survey invitations in an easy and organized way. It will also save your personal email address from spam, resulting from registering with a bad site.

5. Do not provide any personal information like your bank account number, credit card number, full names of family members, etc. A legitimate online market research company does never ask for such an information. Is Online Survey Taking Safe

6. You can not get rich in days by taking online surveys. Avoid such sites that make some juicy offers, like 0 in an hour, or so.

7. There is a way to identify real survey invitations. Messages coming from real and legitimate sites will not bear any ads to win a product, or enter a lottery, etc. Real invitations have the survey relevant basic information mentioned in the message, like the type of study, the survey length, the incentive for completion, etc.

8. Some research companies require you to download and install a software. If you are sure about the credibility of the site, there is no harm in downloading the same. Some companies use this software to track your browsing habits and the information is collected anonymously for some kind of analysis.

9. Search survey panel websites and look out for the mentions of marketing association memberships. CASRO and AAPOR are amongst the reputable ones.

10. Provide honest opinion. You have been cautious while registering with online survey panels, but when you have done it, enjoy the fruit of your efforts. Is Online Survey Taking Safe

Make Money Taking Surveys For Kids

Finding the best paid survey sites is not a hard task to do. If you invest a little time on internet, you will easily find those sites. Earning money from surveys is an easy method to earn online money. You just need to tell your views to survey sites and you will get paid for this.

First, you have to know what things make a website the best. There are a few things I determine when I join any site.

1. What is the reputation of that site?
When I join any site, I go to Google and do some research about that site. I don’t join any site if I find lots of negative feedbacks on various WebPages.

2. It should have a good referral system.
I love referral system. I am always willing to join a site which has a good referral system. It gives me an offer to make money by making my own efforts. Lot of people think referral program is not important for making survey money. But I think referral system is a bonus money making opportunity for a survey taker. If you refer only your friends of social networking sites to the best paid survey sites, you will be able to make a few hundreds extra dollars each month. Make Money Taking Surveys For Kids

3. Is it worth to refer others to your joining site?
Some sites have good referral system; they give a few dollars plus a percentage of what your referrals make. But in other side, some sites give you only a few cents to make a referral. So, it is upon you to promote a site or not.

Before joining any sites, you should concern which type of sites they are. There maximum surveys should be related with you. For an example, Survey Savvy is the best site for a software engineer, because its maximum surveys are related with IT.

Once you find some of the best paid survey sites, you should download free Roboform software from internet. Install it on your computer, there after you will be able to save your time while joining those sites.

For your help, here are the few best paid survey sites:

~Cash Crate
~Survey Savvy
~American Consumer Opinion Panel
~Permission Research
~Global Test Market Make Money Taking Surveys For Kids