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If you’ve been online for long enough, you probably have used and even grew to love the wealth of discussion forums — called ‘newsgroups’ — that Usenet offered us. Of course, in the last decade of Usenet’s life, it became increasingly emaciated and diseases, robbing many of us of those fond memories. Legitimate users flocked to newer mediums and all that was left was the infectious spam. But before that, and before the rise of the browser forum, heck, before even the popularity of eGroups....

Want to update your web apps to get onto the ‘gamification’ bandwagon while it’s still trendy? The company behind commercial gamification platformCloudCaptivehas releasedUserInfuser, an open-source platform that those with shallower pockets can make use of. The platform contains most of what you’ve come to expect through other APIs, such as Apple’s Game Center. With UserInfuser you can include badges (achievements), points, notifications and leaderboards in your web app and view analytics to see how much users are participating....

Many of the tasks we’ve traditionally undertaken have been moving over to mobile over the past few years thanks to devices like the iPhone that have shifted our expectations. Email usage is one of those tasks, with email marketing companyCampaign Monitorrevealing some interesting patternsfrom the last two years of data it has collected from — and here’s a sample size for you — over 2 billion recipients. The percentage of emails opened on a mobile device has risen from just 4% in May 2009 to 20% in May 2011 while desktop client usage has declined by 11%....

A recent topic up atApple Discussion Forumshas a few users report an unusual glitch with the FaceTime app on their iPhones. Users are reporting that when using FaceTime, the screen shows up a random picture frozen on the screens. User kar0786, who firstreportedthe glitch, says: My boyfriend and I have both recently experienced this problem several times – when one of us is calling the other via FaceTime, an old picture freezes on our screen, while the person receiving the call only sees a black screen....

Since early this month owners of the new 2011 15” and 17” MacBook Pro’s have been claiming they’ve been experiencing freezing while processing heavy loads. Based on comment threads at various Apple-fansites, the issue is occurring when users run extensive applications, intensive games or multiple applications simultaneously. The freezing varies and the complaints range from trying to import files to iMovie and playing desktop games. After one user contacted the company regarding the issue, the user reported on MacRumours that the Apple representative said to wait for a further update and mentioned he’d saw the problem in an internal employee article....