A while back we wanted to create a poll to gage our customers feelings about the service. Have you tried finding a decent survey service?  No bells, or whistles or limited trials or onerous sign up procedures.   So we asked ourselves how difficult could it be to write a quick and easy frictionless survey service.   Turns out not difficult at all.   We put Pollly together over the course of a couple of weekends and are quite pleased with the results. Multiple questions, multiple answers, question tagging and a short link to your survey so you can easily share it via mail, SMS or your favorite social network.   We're offering it free to anyone that needs a simple straight forward polling solution.   http://poll.ly  

These days I often find myself drawn in by comments, sometimes more than the content of the original article itself.  I was reading a great piece by Nicolas Carr on why ebooks should be given away for free.  This article was written from the perspective of the incumbent.  Yet in the comments, I found this gem from a Bill H.:  “As publishers try to learn the lessons of the music and media industries in the shift from print to digital, anyone with some sense and an understanding of economics will seek to implement new strategies where pricing is based on usage, not asset sales.” This strikes me as the heart of the issue, and I believe intelligent answers come from asking tough questions.  Today we have hybrid models for stores and books, but let's really go to an extreme: "How can a brick and mortar establishment showcase a virtual asset and be viable financially?"   Whether or not we realise it, we're being forced to answer this question.  I've seen countless people go into stores, use bar code scanners to look up the same asset online for a cheaper price. I love the ability to discover stuff and browse in person. Financially I have to ask what can be done so this is viable.  I do think affiliate schemes, of some form or another are the answer.  But discovery - that's also very important.  And I think a possible solution is to allow people to look at exhaustive content while connected to the stores wireless access point with a protected gateway.. maybe that would do it? Opuss is a social publishing and discovery platform.  We want to make it easy for you to write and share your words with the world, online, in cafes and at stores. What makes us unique is that we're working hard to make it easy for mobile users to create content.  Mobiles and tablets are not just consumption devices anymore.  We’re hard at work building Opuss for additional platforms.   Which means we're offering the ability for people to create more, not less, digital assets and allowing budding authors to engage with their fans.

This week a controversy has come to light surrounding the odious practice of uploading and storing customer address book data without their prior permission. This revelation first hit the news after a blog post by Arun Thampi revealed that Path were practicing this. Subsequently it has been found out that many major service providers such as Twitter, Instagram, Yelp and Foursquare to name a handful also ingress their customers contacts without any notification.

We’d like to welcome you to Opuss™. A platform for creating and sharing your inspiration for the written word. When we looked at most apps out there we realised they were about sharing opinions, thoughts and statuses - but none around a passion for words. Opuss is for people who like to create and share their love of words: Jokes, quotes, short stories and poems. Creativity happens - just not always in front of a desk. Opuss is a way for you to capture and share your inspiration on the go.