But the catch with alternative instant messaging services is that each one is a closed system.
Company security officials said Facebook is a closed system, which can be helpful in erasing phony messages from all accounts.
Apple has chosen a closed system in which it and only it derives nearly all the economic benefit of its technology.
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The Commodore 64 was a closed system without expansion ports and a crummy poke-based version of BASIC that was outdated and stilted.
Linkedin has always seemed to be more of a closed system to me, more professional and that makes sense as that is its audience.
Apple remains a closed system with its fair share or problems.
Without such restrictions, many consumer advocates say the Internet will change from being an open, democratic network to a closed system, as NPR's Laura Sydell reports.
When critics charge that Facebook, the largest virtual community on earth connecting more people than ever before, is a closed system, the terms seem to lose meaning.
But I think the key thing, though, is that Chad has a closed political system and it has had a closed political system since long before Deby came to power.
The snag was that bureaucrats insisted on keeping this a closed system, even after it became clear to everyone else that the future belonged to open networks like the internet.
But when it's in a closed system that no one can see, that people can't judge and say, well, hey, you know, you gave that contract away for so much more money and it's a sole source contract.
The iPhone OS, by comparison, is a closed operating system where only certain Apple approved products can be loaded onto the device.
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The salmon just grows faster, a tremendous economic advantage to those farming the fish in a closed water system, and to consumers, who would be able to take advantage of greater supply and lower prices.
Even though Congress is different in this era -- with both parties deeply divided internally and a closed committee system that dampens the power of party leaders to control members -- those historical struggles offer some instructive lessons for today as to how to seize a great opportunity that emerges.
Though Symbian's certainly not getting as much share of the mobile discussion these days as some of its smaller competitors, it's certainly important to keep in mind that these guys have software deployed on literally hundreds of millions of devices, making this perhaps the largest-scale conversion of a closed operating system to open source in history.
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Apple, on the other hand, has a very closed operating system, giving its developers far less leeway in exchange for what the company says is a smoother, better-developed user experience.
They also wrote in a semi-closed system that required an imprimatur of worthiness to enter.
All of the aforementioned steps take place in a closed-network system.
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Apple was the first to (very successfully) focus on a closed-IT system for the consumer and it was radical to Wall Street in its approach.
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Despite years of negotiating with Hollywood content owners, we lost out to a much larger company who presented a closed server-based system.
The junction at Saddle Road in Douglas will be closed with a one-way system in place between Millmount Industrial Estate and Ballaughton Close.
In this case, Richardson combined a couple of Arduino circuit boards with an infrared LED light -- that little red bubble on the front of your TV remote -- and programmed the whole thing to interact with a TV's closed-captioning system.
Now Haley, who took office in 2011, has pledged to bolster a mental health system that dropped case workers, closed treatment centers and extended waiting lists.
On its mobile iOS operating system, Apple has created a "closed garden" environment in which everything from apps to accessories has to be approved by Apple, as opposed to Google's more wide-open Android system.
In May he was jailed for 33 years in a controversial hearing held behind closed doors under Pakistan's tribal justice system.
Updates are delivered over your home internet connection, cell phone internet or both, routed to Toyota's G-BOOK telematics system, and should be fresh enough to warn you of a closed road or newly opened lane.
No single competitor offers the complete offering to consumers connecting a vast library of content to highly designed hardware in an easy-to-use closed system.
Some of the factories are now closed part of the year and the government is looking into the possibility of a metro system in the Kathmandu Valley.
Three village schools have closed in the last batch of changes during a shake-up of Norfolk's education system.
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