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    Drew Guarini

    Drew Guarini

    Contributor

  • Marissa Mayer: I Napped Too Hard

    Marissa Mayer is taking work-life balance to a whole other level. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company's CEO slept through a dinner meeting last Tuesday with the Interpublic Group, a major advertising holding company. Mayer had been set to speak with executives representing the likes of brewer MillerCoors and Greek yogurt maker Chobani at the dinner, which was arranged as part of the Cannes advertising festival.

  • An App That Does Nothing Except Say 'Yo' Raises One. Million. Dollars.

    Taking minimalism to the extreme, the Yo app sends push notifications to other app users with an audible "Yo!" This has proven to be more popular than you might expect, with 50,000 users already sending 4 million Yos in just three months.

  • 10 States With The Slowest Growing Economies

    The United States economy grew 1.9% in 2013, down from the 2.8% growth rate in 2012. GDP growth of all but two states was positive last year, although economic growth at the state level varied considerably. While some states experienced truly substantial growth, helping to drive the U.S. economy, others languished, according to a recent release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

  • Facebook Just Goofed Up Pretty Bad

    Facebook must be really excited for you to use its new messaging app. The app, Slingshot, which resembles Snapchat in its emphasis on ephemeral messaging, disappeared from the App Store soon thereafter. "Earlier today, we accidentally released a version of Slingshot, a new app we’re working on," a Facebook spokesperson told The Huffington Post in an email.

  • 10 Companies With The Least Valuable Workers

    Revenue per employee is one measure of a company’s productivity. Some companies generate significant revenue per employee that runs into the millions of dollars. While it can suggest a company is struggling, many companies with lower revenue per employee thrive with employees that appear to be less productive.

  • Comcast CEO Ignores Reality, Says U.S. Internet Quality Is A-OK

    Eight nations currently have faster Internet connection speeds on average than the U.S., and 30 have faster average download speeds, according to two separate studies. On Wednesday, at the tech-centric Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Roberts said he's just fine with the speed and quality of broadband service in the U.S. “I don’t think we should be ashamed of where we are with broadband at all,” Roberts said, responding to a question about why Internet access in the U.S. isn't better.

  • Watch Neil DeGrasse Tyson Explain How Ludicrously Rich Bill Gates Is

    Bill Gates is far, far richer than you. During a 2011 speech at the University of Washington that's caught the attention of the Internet this week, the astrophysicist and "Cosmos" host says that if he sees some loose change on the street, he imagines it would only be worth his while to pick it up if it were 25 cents or more. Gates' net worth when Tyson spoke three years ago was $50 billion.

  • Spotify's Most Popular Song Is Also The Most Terrible Song

    In a feat best described as sad but predictable, the most streamed song in Spotify's history is a hybrid of the questionably popular genres of electronic dance music and country that would feel immoral in the lab of the most insane mad scientist. In this case the mad scientist in the beat lab is Swedish producer and DJ Avicii, and the song is 2013's "Wake Me Up" with Aloe Blacc. It has now been played on the music streaming service a whopping 235 million times. That's in addition to over 350 million YouTube views (plus another 150 million for the text-only video version), a whole lot of iTunes downloads, and every time you heard it played every six and a half minutes at the bar last summer.

  • Your Shiny New Game System Is An Energy Disaster

    For all their graphical improvements and multimedia functionality, there's one place where Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 are sorely lacking: energy efficiency. This is according to a report released on Thursday from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which found that both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 consume two to three times more electricity than the previous generation of consoles. The Nintendo Wii U is the only next-gen console that consumes less energy than the Wii that came before it, the NRDC found.

  • AT&T In Talks To Buy DirecTV For $50 Billion

    Telecom giant AT&T is in "advanced talks" to buy satellite TV service DirectTV for about $50 billion, according to Bloomberg News, which spoke with people familiar with the matter. The potential agreement could be as close as two weeks away, according to the Wall Street Journal. With shares of DirecTV trading for around $85 a piece in after-hours trading, the company's market value is currently somewhere in the $45 billion range, or $5 billion less than AT&T's supposed purchasing price.

  • Indie Band Exploits Spotify's Payment System With Completely Silent Album

    At least that was the case for the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based indie funk band Vulfpeck, which used a 10-song album called "Sleepify" composed entirely of silence to rake in an estimated $30,000 from Spotify for streaming royalties. For Vulfpeck, "Sleepify" was one part troll-esque marketing stunt, one part organic crowdfunding scheme. In March, Vulfpeck put "Sleepify" on Spotify and released a video with keyboardist Jack Stratton, who had a plea for fans: Stream this album of silence over and over while you sleep, and we will use the money Spotify pays us to fund a free tour.

  • The 10 Most Popular Stores In America

    According to data provided by Placed, a consumer habits data service provider that monitors behavior of more than 150,000 American consumers at 150 million locations daily, the most popular brands are primarily in the fast-food, discount retail and pharmacy segments. Half of the most visited retailers are fast-food chains. Placed founder and CEO David Shim explained that while you don’t need household supplies every day, “three times a day or more you need to eat, so there’s a higher propensity to visit these types of businesses.” The lower price per transaction at fast-food chains compared to other retailers also helps them to attract consumers, Shim noted.

  • Comcast Just Accused Netflix Of Screwing Its Users To Make A Point

    The war between Netflix and Comcast is entering surreal territory, with both companies accusing the other of conspiring against them. In a blog post published Thursday by Jennifer Khoury, a Senior Vice President of Corporate and Digital Communication at Comcast, the company claimed that Netflix had purposefully slowed its customers' streaming speed and signal strength in the past in what Comcast believes was an attempt to smear the Internet service provider's name. The post is the latest in a war of words between Netflix and Comcast, which escalated on Monday after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings expressed his disapproval of a proposed Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger in a letter to shareholders.

  • Feds May Be Looking To Bail On Net Neutrality

    Net neutrality is not dead. The Wall Street Journal has a foreboding scoop that provides details on an early draft of the Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules. According to the WSJ's sources, the FCC's plan would restructure the rules that govern online traffic by granting Internet service providers the ability to give some websites "preferential treatment" -- i.e.

  • Apple Should Have Read The Lyrics Before Putting This Song In An Ad

    During the primetime broadcast of "The Voice" and the NBA playoffs Tuesday night, Apple unveiled a new, lengthy advert for the iPhone 5S, its high-end smartphone. As they say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  • Netflix Dislikes The Comcast-Time Warner Deal Just As Much As You

    Add Netflix to the ranks of those opposed to a Comcast-Time Warner Cable union. In a letter to shareholders on Monday, the company formally came out against the proposed merger between the cable giants. If approved, "the combined company’s footprint will pass over 60 percent of U.S. broadband households...with most of those homes having Comcast as the only option for truly high-speed broadband," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Netflix CFO David Wells wrote in the letter to shareholders.

  • Yahoo Has Its Sights Set On Netflix, Amazon

    Web giant Yahoo is not known for online video, but it's looking to change that. The company is close to ordering four different original series that would take the form of half-hour comedies, sources familiar with Yahoo's plans told The Wall Street Journal. The move would pit Yahoo against services such as Amazon and Netflix, which have already made splashes with original series such as "House of Cards" and "Alpha House." According to the WSJ, per-episode budgets for Yahoo's series would range from $700,000 to $1 million.

  • Chili's Cancels Plan To Fundraise For Anti-Vaccination Autism Group

    UPDATE: 5:15 P.M. EST -- Chili's has canceled the event after negative feedback from customers. “While we remain committed to supporting the children and families affected by autism, we are canceling Monday's Give Back Event based on the feedback we heard from our guests," a Chili’s Grill & Bar spokesperson said to The Huffington Post in an email. On April 7, the restaurant chain will be donating 10 percent of customers' checks to the National Autism Association in honor of National Autism Awareness month.

  • 9 CEOs With The Worst Reputations

    Some CEOs, however, are not popular with employees. At nine major companies, 40% or fewer employees gave their CEOs a positive review. Sears Holdings’ CEO, Edward Lampert, received positive reviews from just 20% of Sears employees and from just 26% of Kmart employees, the lowest rated CEO.

  • Gmail's 'Shelfie' Prank Mocks Selfie-Obsessed Culture

    It's not even April Fools' Day yet, and already Google has released multiple pranks. In addition to a Google Maps-based Pokémon challenge, the company also posted Wednesday about a new Gmail feature on the Gmail blog: the Gmail Shelfie. What exactly is the Gmail Shelfie?