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Perfect for Black Friday: JustBought.it lets you share what you’re thinking of buying - or what you’ve already picked up - with your Twitter and Facebook friends in just a couple of steps.

When you sign up for the service, you can have it connect directly to your Twitter and/or Facebook account, giving you the opportunity to share your shopping experience with your social graph by letting your friends and followers know what you’ve purchased where (including pictures and product links). You can hook up with other people who have similar interests, and easily determine if you have friends who are already using the service on Gmail or Hotmail.

Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. Traditionally we take stock of the things that we’re thankful for on this day each year. And I realized that one of those things is Steve Jobs. I’m thankful that he returned to Apple in 1997 and did the things he has done since. It wasn’t at all a certainty that he would ever return to the company that he cofounded two decades earlier. In fact, it was only luck and coincidence that pushed him back there.

It was late December 1996. I was an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the largest and most well known law firm in Silicon Valley. I’d fought for my job there, and I was lucky to be in a small group of lawyers that worked on some of the hottest deals at the firm - Netscape public financings and acquisitions, Pixar’s corporate deals with Disney, and NeXT Software, among others. Steve Jobs ran Pixar and NeXT, and whenever he did something that needed a law firm, he called my boss. Well, my boss’ boss - Larry Sonsini.

While consumers around the U.S. are sniffing out Black Friday deals today, sample sale sites have emerged to provide members with serious discounts year round. Online sample sales sites such as Gilt Groupe, HauteLook, Ideeli, RueLaLa and others, have been picking up serious traction in the past year.

We’ve seen a plethora of sites pop up for women’s and men’s clothing and accessories, travel deals and even children’s clothes. Totsy, an invitation only sales site that features children’s brands, baby gear and products, recently launched to appeal to parents looking for a bargain.

As most of you probably know, today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. Traditionally, this is a day when family and friends traditionally come together, pig out on a delicious meal, eat pie, and fall asleep with the satisfaction that they couldn’t eat another bite.

More importantly, Thanksgiving is a day for specifically giving thanks for the good things and the wonderful people in our lives. Since Mashable is The Social Media Guide, we thought it was appropriate to focus on social media’s impact and, more importantly, the people it has helped bring together.

Think about it. Social networks like Facebook help keep us in touch with our friends and families. Other tools, like Twitter, have helped forge new friendships and relationships. Social media has been a phenomenal force that has changed our relationships and helped bring us closer. Today’s a great day to reflect on its impact.

So we ask you: Who or what are you thankful for in social media? We want to hear your thoughts, so please let everybody know what you’re thankful for in the comments below.

A special thank you to our loyal Mashable readers, contributors, and friends that have helped us grow in our wonderful journey.

Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Remindo

Quick Pitch: A free, customizable SaaS Intranet with a Facebook-like environment that helps businesses, entrepreneurs, agencies and freelancers share and work better.

Genius Idea: Remindo is a free hosted intranet-like solution for businesses focused on improving communication and collaboration. Using Remindo, teams can share files, discuss and plan projects and share files with clients or contract workers.

Part intranet, part project management tool, Remindo is designed as a way for businesses to manage their day-to-day communications and keep track of projects and milestones.

The service, which is free (although total storage is now limited to 3 GB and paid pricing plans with enhanced features are going to be available soon), requires users to sign up using their business address. Every other person that signs up under that domain (say, CompanyX.com) will instantly be able to share files, send messages and share project calendars with one another.

Remindo has taken a page from Facebook and Twitter: it offers users the ability to use status updates. Similar to Google Wave, Remindo lets users create archived conversations assigned to a specific project or task and then attach files into those conversations for back and forth discussion.

One of the things I like about Remindo is that it is easy to invite outsiders into your own network. Lots of intranets are limited to domain users only — which makes sense in a lot of cases — but if you want to bring a client into a conversation and share ideas with them or share files directly, or if you are working with a contract or freelance worker, this can make the collaboration process difficult.

Remindo has a solid, streamlined interface and a variety of tools to make communication and project management easy and more efficient.

Spark of Genius Series Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest– use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Reviews: Facebook, Google Wave, PHP, Twitter

Tags: collaboration, project management, remindo

paddypowertrader upgrades to Ariel’s cutting-edge Multi Asset Trading Platform

London, 24 November, 2009: Ariel (www.arielcommunications.co.uk), the experts in Multi Asset Trading Platforms (Financial Spread Betting, Foreign Exchange and CFD trading software), today announces that paddypowertrader (www.paddypowertrader.com) has successfully gone live with Ariel’s next generation Multi Asset Trading Platform (MATP). Retail clients of paddypowertrading.com now benefit from a brand new web based front end with a wealth of new features.

paddypowertrader is a major white label of London Capital Group, (www.capitalspreads.com) which has a list of clients also powered by Ariel’s technology, including financial spreadbetting sites E*Trade Spread Betting (www.etradespreadbetting.com) and Tradefair Spreads (www.tradefair.com)

Ariel was commissioned by paddypowertrader to deliver a new trading platform to replace their existing Flash-based system. The new platform is Ariel’s next generation Multi Asset Trading Platform (MATP), also used by ETX Capital (www.etxcapital.com) for forex and spreadbetting. The platform uses cutting edge Flex technology enabling faster response times, robust connections and up-to-date prices. The new trading platform was delivered on time and within budget.

Simon Denham, CFO of London Capital Group comments: “This was an extremely efficient, hassle-free upgrade. We have been collecting feedback from our customers, most of whom are retail investors, and have received overwhelmingly positive commentary on the new platform. It offers customers a much richer interface, faster pricing, multiple views, multiple trade tickets as well as tear-off windows.”

Angus Clacher, CEO of Ariel, comments: “Importantly the new Multi Asset Trading Platform was delivered by Ariel in a short timeframe and without interruption to paddypowers’ operations. The project was completed in 8 weeks and there was zero downtime, which is essential for a business like paddypowertrader, which trades 24 hours a day. I’m extremely proud of the people at Ariel and the leading technology we produce. This implementation is testament to their skill and experience with Multi Asset Trading Platforms.”

The platforms new features include:

• Faster Trading: the stake entry is embedded in the trade ticket so that paddypower customers have default stakes, the ability to directly edit on ticket and visual cues on the BUY/SELL buttons.

• Multiple Trade Tickets: enable paddypower customers to watch multiple live markets and trade with a single click.

• Multiple Views with Browser Tear-offs: allow simultaneous opening and arranging of windows including “My Portfolio” and “Open Positions”.

• Cherry Picking: the ability to cherry pick open positions permits trades to be closed in the order the client sees fit. This allows a client to close a profitable trade in order to increase trading resources for use on other trades.

Notes to Editors

Graphics available

Logos are available for both Ariel and paddypowertrader.com.

70dpi images of the new paddypowertrader platform and functionality are available. These demonstrate:
Image 1: Faster trading functionality.
Image 2: Multiple trade tickets.
Image 3: Multiple windows functionality.
Image 4: Tear-off windows which can be viewed simultaneously/ on top of each other.
Image 5: Cherry picking an image of the ‘open positions’ screen.

For further information please contact:

Fiona Conroy at ICIS on +44 20 7651 8688

fiona@icisnet.com

About Ariel Ltd
Ariel Communications is a leading provider of Financial Spread Betting, Forex and CFDs systems to the City of London. Ariel has been providing complete turn key systems, individual components and bespoke development since 1995. With one of the largest teams in the industry dedicated to developing financial trading software, Ariel’s experts are at the forefront of product innovation including risk management, price engines and order routing.
www.arielcommunications.co.uk

About paddypowertrader
paddypowertrader is a trading name of London Capital Group Ltd (LCG). LCG is a company registered in England and Wales under registered number: 3218125. London Capital Group Ltd, a wholly owned trading subsidiary of LCGH plc, is regulated and authorised by the Financial Services Authority. It has a European passport and is a member of the London Stock Exchange. London Capital Group Ltd also has access to international markets through its global clearing relationships.
www.paddypowertrader.com

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First, we have spent an enormous amount of time and money developing our Web site. These days, a Web site is all-consuming. It includes positioning, branding, support, infrastructure, training materials, community development, sales operations, bug reporting. The list goes on. There is not a single facet of our business that doesn’t touch the Web site. This past weekend, we wanted to test our message of “empowerment” on a focus group. We sent one of our team members to a BarCamp in Philadelphia. At a Bar Camp, organizers prepare the location, set times and administrate a few other functions, but members largely determine the topics they want to speak about and hear about. We diligently noted reactions, questions and responses — just like a focus group.

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