offers

Update: Calacanis has upped the ante, saying "My new offer to Twitter: $500,000 for three years for @questions as a suggested user in the sign-up process." He also talks about how this could be the next Super Bowl Ad, and explains his reasoning for making the offer in the first place.

Online coupons are incredibly popular these days. In fact, just recently, Nielsen released some data showing that not only are more people going to coupon sites, but the average amount of time spent there has increased.

Google is not not not building a social network. Really. They’re not. They’re just adding features to every product ever made to enable you to communicate and otherwise share information among your peer group and store all your information in a centralized place. That’s soooo not a social network, so I don’t need anybody telling me about how Google Reader’s new comment feature shows that they’re a social network.

With the economy in a recession and people looking for more ways to save money, Google is offering help with a new money saving site called Tip Jar. Google says the site is an experiment that it hopes will offer users the most effective ways to save money. Tip Jar is powered by Google Moderator, which itself began as an experiment for the Google App Engine.

Symantec has released the public beta of Norton Online Family, an Internet safety service aimed at helping parents protect children online. Norton Online Family is currently free and available in English only. It's compatible with both Macs and PCs. The service encourages discussions between parents and their children and provides customizable tools to manage online activity.

As you're probably aware by now, Google released its financial results for the fourth quarter yesterday, and although they managed to beat the analysts' expectations, they also had a drop in profit.

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that starting on January 16 it is expanding its e-file program for 2008 federal tax returns.IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman recommends taxpayers consider e-file this year as the best option to file accurate tax returns and receive fast refunds. The e-file program includes new improvements to the Free File program that will allow nearly all taxpayers to e-file for free.

Online video producers may be happy to learn that Verizon is offering direct regional access to its network. A more direct content delivery network means producers can skip the sometimes cumbersome peering arrangements that slow down online video and pump content directly onto Verizon’s Internet backbone network. Verizon says its Partner Port Program results in a faster, more responsive connection to Verizon’s backbone network for less money.