I try to keep you informed as much as possible with the latest and greatest news in the Social Networking World, Search Engines, and with anything new and interesting with the Internet. The information posted at Twitter mostly points back to here.. Be sure and Bookmark this site.

http://twitter.com/james_st_john

Taser is the company best known for the device that allows a user piece of mind with a self-defense device that allows you to ZAP a person with thousands of volts of electricity. Taser has just announced a new Mobile Phone Monitoring tool. This dashboard allows you to login and see what is going on with the particular phone that you are monitoring and has been designed specifically for parents. You can see everything from the exact location of your child (wherever the mobile device is), this uses the built in GPS device that most mobile phones and almost all Smart Phones have built in.

You may also setup alerts for example when the child exceeds 80 mph (again this uses the GPS portion of your Smart Phone. And what would this device be without the built in “Emergency Feature” whic happens to be my favorite feature of this technology. It allows authorities to locate the EXACT location of the mobile phone (which in most cases should be with the child in the even of a missing child, or other emergencies).

Through the dashboard the authorized user can monitor all the calls that are made or received and how long each call is, in addition the authorized dashboard user can block calls or force certain calls to always ring. Great Job Taser!!

Economically the piece of mind that you get for signing up is well worth it, at a price point of $10-$30 per month.

One of the lead engineers for the Google Android Operating System has changed jobs and is now working for a leading edge company that is able to utilize the functionality of the Google Android Operating System to accept credit cards with an awesome gadget / add-on credit card swiper called a “Square”. Square inc has an awesome physical product (the square), but it is the software foundation that caught my attention. The software that runs the square has the ability to integrate photo verification, text or email receipts, manage all your coupon, and gift cards like a Starbucks punch card. @square – I am impressed with this device and also the functionality of the software that runs this. If you get a chance to use this I would recommend it, and I would love to hear your review on the square mobile device for credit card swiping. Let me know

The square device plugs in directly to the audio jack on most smart phones, the device is primarily focused towards Backberry, iPhone, and Android Phones at this time.

Square is backed by Khosla Ventures and a team of angels. Square, Inc. has offices in San Francisco (Product & Engineering), Saint Louis (Operations), and New York City (Risk & Partnerships).

Square inc. Has a new device out called the square, it allows users to swipe a credit card on your phone.

This video has a great review of the Motorola Backflip with Android

Google Adds new feature called “Near Me Now” for mobile

Google Adds “Near Me Now” to its mobile home page, so here is the reviews and descriptions for Google “Near Me Now”. When doing a Google search you may now select the link “Near Me Now” this allows you to do a search query and to make the query relevant only to the specific location that you are at the time of the query, the function works through the GPS functionality of the phone or mobile device and your location can be updated on demand by selecting “Update”.

The Google Mobile “Near Me Now” feature is currently ONLY available for iPhone and Android phone users in the U.S.

In order to use the “Near Me Now” Google Mobile functionality you must first activate the ‘location feature’ on your Android (Droid), or Appla iPhone mobile device. Then go to www.Google.com and select the “Near Me Now” tab. You can also explore the whereabouts of specific locations including reviews or rants of other people about a specific restaurants and their menus and services.

The new Google mobile homepage feature lets you easily search for popular categories of nearby places. Just by clicking or tapping on the “Near me now” link right on the Google mobile homepage, you will find categories of places. And if you want more you can just select the “browse more categories” link.

Google Mobile Search Engine Feature - Near Me Now

Come on Blackberry! My email has been flooded by people who want to vent frustrations with Blackberry. Since I’m not an avid Blackberry user I have to rely on all of you to keep me informed. Evidently Blackberry has had and reported an email outage with their servers twice all within a one week time period. As this year comes to a close and the Holiday season was almost upon us we saw Blackberry crumble under the pressure of the emails that clients were trying to send. In fact in many cases duplicates of the same email were distributed after the Blackberry email outage was allegedly repaired.

When Corey Marshall’s Blackberry mysteriously stopped sending and receiving messages, he realized all too clearly just how much he depends on the device: He had no way of contacting his friends because he never bothers to exchange phone numbers with anyone anymore.

“A lot of the times if I meet someone and I see they have a BlackBerry, I don’t even want their number or care. I just want their BBM,” or their BlackBerry instant-messaging ID, said the 23-year-old tanning-salon manager and student. “I didn’t even have my boss’ number. I only contact him through BB.”

He added: “I go to sleep with it in my hands. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the middle of the night. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning.”

The second BlackBerry outage in less than a week disrupted service for millions of users on two continents Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrating how vital — and how addictive — the device dubbed the “CrackBerry” can be.

The company behind the service, Canada’s Research in Motion Ltd., blamed a software upgrade for the problem, which it said was confined to North and South America.

RIM said BlackBerry users were unable to send or receive e-mails and instant messages but did not lose phone service. Many users also found the Internet inaccessible. RIM said the disruptions began around 1:45 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, worsened around 6:30 p.m. and began to be fixed around 11:30 p.m. Service appeared restored by Wednesday afternoon. RIM would not disclose exactly how many subscribers were affected.

The glitch comes after another outage last Thursday and at least three breakdowns in 2008. The latest problems are happening at an especially bad time for RIM, which is facing tougher competition than ever before in the market it helped pioneer.

“One of RIM’s big advantages is that it’s perceived as a reliable device,” said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSam Consulting. “To lose the advantage of reliability would, in fact, be a very big deal for this company.”

CanDace Johnson, a 25-year-old nanny living in New York, said her BlackBerry lost all Internet service around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, leaving her cut off from the e-mail account she uses to keep in touch with her boss.

“If someone is watching your child, you want them to respond to your messages,” she said.

Robert Hagler, a 46-year-old lawyer in Daphne, Ala., noticed around dinner time Tuesday that the normal flow of e-mail and Facebook updates on his BlackBerry Curve had petered out.

“So I went home that evening, logged on to my laptop, and there’s 20 e-mails sitting there,” he said. “All my iPhone friends are just tickled to death.”

When Marshall suddenly stopped getting reply messages from his friends, he lost his cool: “I kept unplugging my phone, turning it off and on. I was getting very upset when it wouldn’t work.”

“My whole life is based on my BBM,” he said.

RIM has sold more than 75 million BlackBerrys since the gadget debuted 10 years ago. It now counts 36 million subscribers around the globe and ranks second in the worldwide market for advanced “smart phones,” with a 21 percent share, behind Nokia Corp.’s 39 percent, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.

BlackBerrys are especially popular in occupations heavily dependent on messaging — among lawyers and business executives, for instance. RIM counts 500,000 subscribers in the U.S. government. President Barack Obama has been a BlackBerry devotee.

After originally focusing on corporate or government customers, RIM now gets most of its new subscribers in the consumer market, thanks to touch-screen models like the BlackBerry Storm.

But RIM faces innovative competitors such as Apple’s iPhone, which had 17 percent of the smart phone market in the Gartner report, and the brand-new Motorola Droid. RIM’s stock has dropped 23 percent since September.

The iPhone is beloved for its design cachet and the seemingly limitless supply of programs, known as “apps,” that users can download to customize their phones. BlackBerrys got apps later, and have fewer available.

Yet the iPhone also has not been as reliable as many users would like. AT&T, the sole carrier of the device in the U.S., has been upgrading its network to reduce the dropped connections and long waits people have encountered when trying to run programs.

Although BlackBerry service is sold by wireless carriers, RIM manages its messaging network itself. The centralized structure means that any problems can affect millions of users.

This week’s outage apparently stemmed from a flaw in recently released versions of RIM’s instant messaging software, known as BlackBerry Messenger. RIM released a new version on Wednesday that solves the problem.

RIM, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, apologized for any inconvenience. The company declined interview requests.

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer Rob Gillies, Associated Press Writer – AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore in New York contributed to this report – James St. John also contributed to article.

In other news: iPhone is still working perfectly (just thought I would throw that in their for all the Mac lovers)