(* Source: Mark Hefflinger *)

The founders of gadget news blogs Gizmodo and Engadget have teamed to launch GDGT, a gadget-focused online social network.

The site was launched on Wednesday by Pete Rojas, the founder of Gizmodo and co-founder of Engadget, and Ryan Block, the editor of Engadget.

The site will not produce original news content or reviews, as do Gizmodo and Engadget, but instead aggregate news and reviews, and allow users to post their own gadget reviews.

Users can also create profiles and list their stable of gadgets, as well as wish lists.

Block told The New York Times that the gadget blogs focus on only 5% of a device's lifecycyle, the "lust phase," while GDGT will address "the 95 percent of the time you own the product there is nowhere to go. We are building the place where you can live with your gadgets online in perpetuity." 

See site here

Posted by brian tiong at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 (* Source: Alison Driscoll *)

Alison Driscoll is an interactive copywriter and social media consultant who specializes in Facebook. She authors a blog at alisondriscoll.com.

Not even a year ago, Facebook was still being dismissed as a silly site intended to help college kids slack off. Indeed, that is what helped the social network take hold with a large number of users, but it has proven its worth in business and by now, nearly everyone is on board. Companies of all sizes are scrambling to get on the site and reach both new and current customers with a Facebook Page, the Facebook preferred method for user interaction with a brand, company or public figure.

An effective Facebook Page not only attracts fans, but is sticky so that fans keep coming back and may even share the content on the Page. To do that, you need a well thought out Page that has some great applications supported by good, relevant content. Here are eight essential apps for your brand’s Facebook page:

Applications

1. Facebook Notes

This app was originally a Facebook feature that they then converted into an application; as such, it is sponsored and maintained by Facebook and less likely to break or be abandoned. Set this application up to pull in the RSS feed from your blog or other content source and it will automatically bring everything into Facebook and show all of your friends that you’ve posted a new Note.

This notification system is important for staying on their radar and is more visible than an RSS Reader, or mini-blog as I like to call it, but lacks many formatting capabilities; it’s best to think of Notes and an RSS Reader as working hand in hand. Start here to get content coming into your Page, then move on to the RSS Reader.

2. Blog RSS Feed Reader

I may have jumped ahead a bit with the Notes recommendation, but I am assuming that most companies have, or could have, a blog. If you don’t, work on that before Facebook, for many more reasons than I could get into here. But if you already have a blog, good news: there are tons of blog and RSS apps out there, but I’ve done the leg work and I found this one offered more functionality, better customization (you can pick an image to make your Facebook mini-blog look more like your actual blog) and a greater sense of control. It can be a bit buggy, but it’s worth persisting for the level of customization, and therefore attention grabbing potential.

3. Twitter App

Again, this assumes that you have a Twitter account, but if you’re reading this and working on a Facebook Page, my guess is you do. Or you at least know you should have one. If not, set one up before adding this application to your new Facebook Page. This will automatically pull your tweets into your Facebook status, and it puts a cute little Twitter-themed box on your profile, so everyone knows you’re cool enough to be on Twitter. It also saves you time in updating AND ensures profile activity to keep you relevant.

4. Static FBML

Neither Facebook Pages nor Profiles allow any type of HTML in the main content section, but you can add FBML and HTML applications to add more stylized elements to a Page, like clickable images, anchor text and interactive content. The Static FBML app allows you to add advanced functionality to a page by placing a customizable box in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language), giving you free reign over the space to add images, video, stylized text and almost whatever else you want. This app was developed by Facebook, so it’s fully supported and not prone to the problems of some third party applications.

5. Extended Info

In the Extended Info box you can use HTML to customize any kind of content and create numerous fields beyond the standard Information categories; you can also name the box anything you want so it matches your page perfectly. This app works much like the Static FBML application but is slightly easier to use. Although not developed by Facebook, it is highly ranked and provides a nice alternative or second customizable box option on a page.

6. Flash Player

This Flash application, also developed by Facebook, will add a box to your Page in which you can upload your own Flash files to achieve advanced customization and play any kind of Flash video, widget or game. It can be renamed to maintain the integrity of the page and keep the look and feel consistent with your brand.

7. Posted Items Pro

With Posted Items Pro you can embed multiple YouTube, Yahoo, and Google Videos, music mp3s, sites, files, and more onto your profile and Facebook pages. You can add any variety of these elements, making it great for a media center or press section.

8. Something Unique

If you have the resources, add some personality to your profile with a fun, irreverent application that you create just for your Page. This could be tied into your brand in multiple ways; try to think of something that people outside of Facebook would appreciate or enjoy that will remind them of who created it and keep them coming back, like a game or contest.

Brands that get it right

In order to stay relevant on Facebook, you need to continually update your Page and use the site. The more actions you take, the more you appear in a fan’s News Feed. This keeps you in their mind, and in their friend’s Feeds when they interact with you. But updating content will do more than keep you on the News Feed; it will also help make your Facebook Page sticky by offering fans an incentive to remain a supporter and come back more than once; one of the best way to do that is to provide some unique benefit to fans: exclusive content, secret contests or insider access to information before non-fans.

If you have a good brand, product or service with a strong website behind it, building a Facebook Page should be fairly easy. But if you need a few examples or inspiration, check out these Pages that definitely get it right:

VS Pink Victoria’s Secret

PINK collection is aimed at college girls, so Facebook is a natural fit, and this Page nails it. They are my most frequent example when explaining effective use of Facebook. This Page makes good use of HTML and FBML apps and provides lots of contests and exclusive stuff for Facebook fans.

Britney Spears

A childhood favorite of many avid Facebook users, Britney is taking Twitter by storm and her Facebook Page is not far behind. Britney sends out tons of Updates to fans and posts plenty of sneak peeks on Facebook.

Zappos

Lots of videos means plenty of opportunity for laughing and sharing. Zappos is almost always mentioned as a social media success story, and they’re working on making their Facebook Page meet the brand image.

Target

Target has managed to break free of the Wal-Mart stigma and position itself as a hip and budget conscious alternative to mall stores. They’ve chose to direct visitors to their “Vote” tab, where not only is Target donating to a good cause, it’s encouraging fans to participate and spread the word to their friends with interactive voting.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source:  Ben Parr *)

Name: AudioBoo

Quick Pitch: AudioBoo is social audio. An iPhone app & platform that effortlessly records audio to the cloud.

Genius Idea: AudioBoo is a platform that I’ve been waiting to review ever since I discovered it several months ago. It’s essentially a way to create and share podcasts and audio clips, but with a simplicity that has attracted some big names like UK actor Stephen Fry and The Guardian newspaper as users.

First, the iPhone app: it’s very simple to use. The most important feature of the app is that you can record audio and upload it to the AudioBoo server and your account. This makes it very simple to create, publish, and broadcast your most recent podcast (also known as a boo). The second feature is the ability to listen to the most recent boos from other users.

Yes, the iPhone app is very simple, but that’s the goal: to make podcasting really easy. Audioboo definitely succeeds in that regard. With very little fuss you can be up and running with your own podcast that can be distributed via social media - you can have AudioBoo automatically update your Facebook and Twitter with new Boos - and even iTunes.

The website itself is also pretty basic. You can only listen and subscribe to boos (although you can sort boos by popularity and time). But once again, this is the point: it’s the Twitter of podcasts - simple to use, easy to distribute. Its focus on simple audio is superb and perfect for anyone who wants to try podcasting without all of the fuss.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jason reports...

You may have noticed over the last few weeks that TechCrunch links on Twitter have had a nifty custom URL, with links looking like tcrn.ch/1A’ instead of more generic codes from TinyURL or Bit.ly. This was due in no small part to the handiwork of our crack team of developers, but it was made possible by a new service launching today called Awe.sm.

There are countless URL shortening services available on the web, and they’re probably only going to become even more popular as Twitter continues to catch on with mainstream audiences. But these services come with downsides, like obscuring where a link is pointing to (which makes them a godsend for spammers). Awe.sm is looking to offer publishers an alternative to these generic services, while also offering a powerful analytics engine that offers much more insight as to how their content gets distributed across the web.

Every time we publish a post on TechCrunch, Awe.sm generates a handful of links specific to the service it originates on. For example, the shortcode link at the bottom of this post is different from the link that we send out on Twitter through the TechCrunch account. Awe.sm then tracks these links, analyzing how they’re spread and storing meta data on each. Even better, the links awe.sm creates are compatible with Google Analytics, so you don’t have to learn how to navigate yet another dashboard.

This means that we can get a feel for how our links are spreading throughout each service, quantifying just how effective each one is and adjusting accordingly. And for some services, including Twitterfeed, AddtoAny, and TweetFace, Awe.sm can work in tandem with the service to gather even more data. Readers benefit too - spammers don’t have access to tcrn.ch, so all URLs pointing to that domain can be considered trustworthy.

Awe.sm is available beginning today for $99/year, which includes 10,000 URL creations per month (more than most people will ever need) and the option to export your data at any time if you want to stop using Awe.sm. The company’s flagship product is this custom URL shortening service, but it is also going to provide publishers with more tools that will help distribute content across a variety of services to maximize their audiences. The service is also slowly opening up an API to developers, who can build their own applications off the platform.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Ben Parr *)

Ben says...

Google has been on a tear with Gmail lately - it has been releasing new features at a rapid pace. You can now watch YouTube videos within Gmail, undo sent messages, and as of this week, you are able to insert images into Gmail. These are all useful and wonderful features…if you’ve turned them on in Gmail Labs.

Gmail Labs, the Gmail version of Google Labs, has several dozen features you can enable, from location-based signatures to multiple inboxes - these features can take your Gmail experience to the next level. However, many people don’t know about Gmail Labs or haven’t taken the time to review all of the features. With that in mind, here is how to get the most utility out of Gmail Labs:

Step 1: Understand how you use Gmail

Before turning on every feature available in Gmail, assess how you use it currently - is your Gmail mostly used for personal contacts? Is it a business account? Do others ever use your Gmail account? Do you attach a lot of images?

Answering these questions and more before adding features will save you a lot of trouble and a lot of headaches.

Step 2: Review the available features

After assessing how you use your Gmail, it’s time to take a look at all of the available features. Read all of the descriptions to get an idea of what each features does and how it can help you.

If you’re confused, read Google’s introduction to Gmail Labs and read our gmail coverage to get more in-depth information on specific features.

Step 3: Activate and try out features

Reading won’t be enough to understand these features, though - you’re just going to have to activate them and try them out yourself. Some, like “Vacation Time!” and “Right-side chat” are straightforward, while others like “Multiple Inboxes” and “Mouse Gestures” take a little more practice and training to get used to.

When trying them out, note your reaction and whether you want to keep it initially or not. Don’t activate anything you don’t need - this will just hinder your Gmail experience.

If Gmail Labs features become too complicated or if something goes wrong, use the Gmail escape hatch to deactivate features. This link returns you to the no-frills version os you can permanently deactivate features.

In the same line of thought, don’t keep features activated that you don’t use. These are still experimental features - things can go wrong like layouts or load times. Minimize your risk (and your clutter) and turn off any feature you aren’t using.

Step 4: Keep up-to-date with new features

Google seems to put out a new feature every week. This week’s feature, embeddable images, was a big one. Here are some simple ways to keep up:

Subscribe to the Gmail blog: Gmail tends to make all of their Labs announcements on their blog.

Create a Gmail Labs Google Alert: Google Alerts or an RSS feed of Gmail Labs can give you immediate knowledge of new features, although it may be filled with other noise on Gmail products.

Follow Mashable’s Gmail coverage: We try out best to cover the most useful Gmail information - read our Gmail articles for details on specific features.

GMail Labs: Top 10 Features We Recommend

Now that you’re getting started with Gmail Labs and its cool features, which ones should you start with? These features, in our opinion, are worth a spin:

1. Offline: This allows you to view your messages anywhere, even if you don’t have wifi.

2. Tasks: Tasks takes your to-do list and makes it part of Gmail. Tasks makes it easy to add items to your to-do list, even allowing you to take emails and turn them into tasks.

3. Superstars: This feature helps you organize your folders with different star icons. Be sure to determine what each icon means to you.

4. Mouse Gestures: Mouse Gestures allows you to scroll through your emails without clicking on multiple links or touching your keyboard. Swipe your mouse right with the right click held down to read your next email or go back to the inbox by swiping down.

5. Email Addict: On Gmail too much? Activate this and a link will appear at the top of the page, allowing you to take a 15 minute break. Great for when you have a lapse of self-control.

6. Navbar drag and drop: Navbar drag and drop makes it easy to organize your Gmail screen by dragging and dropping the items in the menus in the order that you want.

7. Multiple Inboxes: If you’re a Gmail power user, like most of us at Mashable, you have a lot of different mail sources and lots of labels. See more information at once by activating Multiple Inboxes. Note: this creates new inboxes for labels, not inboxes for secondary Gmail accounts.

8. Inserting Images: The newest Gmail Labs feature is a useful one that makes sending images a lot easier.

9. Create a Document: Turn any email into a Google doc with this useful little Gmail Labs feature.

10. Google Calendar gadget: If you’re a regular user of Google Calendar, activate it to link your Gmail to your Google Calendar.

Good luck with your Gmail experience!

Posted by brian tiong at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

Leena says...

Startup Nomee aggregates social networks and websites into a free Adobe Air powered desktop application that helps you manage these networks and sites into a single interface. The nomee personal all-in-one dashboard aggregates all your favorite social networking sites (you can manage profiles from up to 100 networks including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Digg ) and RSS feeds, giving you one place to organize your online relationships, share your information, follow newsmakers, and even publish your own news.

Nomee is designed to simplify social networking by organizing all of your online relationships in a single location, making it easy to focus on who you want to connect with, when you want to connect. With the help of Adobe Air, Nomee also brings news updates to users in a pretty simple interface. In addition, Nomee lets you customize the information you want to share, pointing your contacts to the web sites you want them to see. It also alerts your contacts when you post updates or new content, including providing custom updates to different friends and business associates.

Nomee also allows you to follow your favorite celebrities, sports teams and other interest areas through downloading its exclusive nomee newsmaker cards. You can become your own nomee newsmaker by collecting links on your nomee card and posting it for download from your blog or website, so your fans can track you.

Managing all of your social networks, celebrity obsessions and RSS feeds in one place is not a new idea. FriendFeed aggregates all of this information into a website. But the adoption of Adobe Air into the application gives it a different twist. Nomee, which can be run on a PC or a Mac, isn’t your conventional website, its actually a rich internet application separate from your browser.

Here’s a screenshot:

Posted by brian tiong at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

Yahoo has launched an Adobe AIR-powered desktop application called Sideline yesterday, once again validating the power of Twitter for real-time search. After taking it for a spin, I have to say it looks and feels really nice, but other than that there’s no real incentive for me to keep using it on a regular basis.

So what does it do?

Sideline is a straight-forward Twitter monitoring tool, giving you the opportunity to stay on top of the latest trends on the microsharing service and/or keywords you feed into the application. It has an auto-refresh feature (which you can tweak to have the search results reload between 1 minute and 1 hour), a notification system that alerts you of new keyword mentions in an overlay that appears whatever you’re doing and the ability to only look for favorited tweets containing the keywords you’re tracking.

So far, nothing special, but what’s nice about Sideline is that it enables you to create so-called Search Groups which pull together multiple keywords for tracking purposes. This basically allows anyone to create e.g. a TechCrunch group and track different keywords and phrases like ‘techcrunch’, ‘crunchgear’, ‘michael arrington’, etc. Also really nice is the advanced search function, which lets you filter results down extensively, for instance by person, hashtag, ‘asking a question’, by negative or positive connotation (determined with smilies), and so on. Update: this is actually a layer over Twitter’s advanced search functionality, as a commentor points out.

It’s slick and useful, but nothing major any way you look at it, especially since it’s not a functional client that lets you actually send direct or public Twitter messages. I wonder how many people will effectively keep using it after trying it out, but I doubt it will be many.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Reena Jana and Peter Burrows *)

Research in Motion will soon launch an online store to rival Apple's, with Nokia and Microsoft to follow

Businessweek reports...

On Apr. 1, Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIMM), is expected to take the stage at the wireless industry's annual trade show in Las Vegas and open the virtual doors to a much anticipated new online store. BlackBerry App World will be chock-full of software programs created by outside developers that visitors will be able to download to their RIM phones.

It's the first of several major assaults by rivals on Apple (AAPL)'s fast-­growing iPhone business. Apple has stoked demand for the device by offering thousands of software applications from independent developers through its App Store. Now, Nokia (NOK), Microsoft (MSFT), and Palm (PALM) plan to follow RIM with virtual software stores of their own this year. "There's going to be a significant counter-­challenge to Apple," says Mike McGuire, analyst with researcher Gartner (IT).

Nokia, RIM, and others sell more phones than Apple. But Apple has leapt out to an early lead in transforming the mobile phone into a sophisticated computing device onto which people load their favorite software. The number of mobile phones that can browse the Web and handle other advanced tasks is expected to surge from 139 million last year to 295 million in 2010, according to Gartner. These so-called smartphones are on track to eclipse the 300 million-unit ­personal computer market. "This could make the PC wars of the 1980s look like small potatoes," says Trip Hawkins, chief executive of mobile game maker Digital Chocolate.

More here

Posted by brian tiong at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

Erik says...

There are plenty of ways to monitor the buzz of any given topic in the blogosphere, on Twitter, or across social networks. There is Artiklz, Trendpedia, Trackur, Brandseye, Radian6, Attentio, Buzzcapture and Chatterguard, to name a few.. Now Omgili, a search engine that focuses on forums, discussion boards, newsgroups, and Q&A sites, has just added a new buzztracker called Omgili Stream. It searches the same set of discussion sites on the Web and returns results based on how recently they appeared.

Results are not ranked by anything other than chronology, which produces an undifferentiated set of results. What I really want to know is what are the most important or influential discussions going on about any given topic. Fortunately, Omgili Stream allows you to filter results by minimum number of replies, language, and where the search term appears (in the title, topic, or replies). Another filter opens up a column with Twitter search results on the left. A unified view might be preferable, but that might then be dominated by the Twitter results. Omgili’s strength is in searching through discussion boards, forms, and the like. It sifts through 7 million such posts a day.

Omgili’s greatest strength (its focus on deep discussion sites), is also its greatest weakness. It completely ignores blog comments, for instance, where a huge chunk of discussion on the Web takes place. That is a huge oversight, in my opinion. Although, there are other sites where you can search across only blog comments, such as Backtype or Artiklz. And then what about public discussions on Facebook and other social networks?

Omgili is geared towards marketers who want to keep track of what people are saying about their products, companies and brands. Yet it returns results from only one portion of the Web. So if you are a marketer, you might want to bookmark it (consumers might be more likely to talk about product defects or other problems on a discussion board or Q&A site where they are looking for assistance from other users). But it only addresses a portion of the discuss-o-sphere.

As far as it goes, it does a decent job. One of the more helpful features of Omgili is the ability to create a buzz chart for any set of topics. Below is one comparing “IE8″ to “Gmail” and “Flip Video.”

Posted by brian tiong at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

This is what you get when you use a slick tool like Wordle (try it!) to run all the words used to make up the Terms of Service agreements of seven notable internet companies: cool visualizations that somewhat capture the essence of their content.

Pointless? Very. Cool? Definitely.

Here’s how Facebook’s Terms of Use agreement comes out (at least for now):

Yahoo (Terms of Service)

Digg (Terms of Use)

Google (Terms of Service)

Twitter (Terms of Service)

MySpace (Terms of Use)

YouTube (Terms of Service)

Posted by brian tiong at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

Erik reports...

What if you could peer into the thoughts of millions of people as they were thinking those thoughts or shortly thereafter? And what if all of these thoughts were immediately available in a database that could be mined easily to tell you what people both individually and in aggregate are thinking right nowabout any imaginable subject or event? Well, then you’d have a different kind of search engine altogether. A real-time search engine. A what’s-happening-right-now search engine.

In fact, the crude beginnings of this “now” search engine already exists. It is called Twitter, and it is a big reason why new investors poured another $35 million into the two-year-old startup on Friday. Twitter is not the only company trying to solve this problem. Facebook, FriendFeed, and even Google are trying to crack it, but Twitter has a decided advantage in that it is capturing the vast majority of the real-time thought stream on the Web (because more people enter their thoughts directly into Twitter’s database than any other, and are doing so at an increasing rate).

What makes Google and other search engines so valuable is that they capture people’s intent—what they are looking for, what they desire, what they want to learn about. But they don’t do a great job at capturing what people are doing or what they are thinking about. For thoughts and events that are happening right now, searching Twitter increasingly brings up better results than searching Google.

Whether you want to know how people are mentally gearing up for this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or what they are thinking about today’s Ireland vs. Italy rugby match, searching Twitter will give you a pretty good smattering of sentiment and opinion. It is also a lot faster at getting out the essential details about breaking news, such as the Mumbai attacks or the plane that landed on the Hudson.

Twitter’s search engine is powered by Summize, a startup it acquired last July. But it also developed a feature called Track, currently disabled but coming back soon, that allowed people to follow the mention of specified keywords. John Borthwick, an investor in Summize (and thus now an investor in Twitter), explained in a blog post earlier this month ago why he thinks that “Twitter search changes everything.” Excerpt:

Imagine you are in line waiting for coffee and you hear people chattering about a plane landing on the Hudson. You go back to your desk and search Google for plane on the Hudson — today — weeks after the event, Google is replete with results — but the DAY of the incident there was nothing on the topic to be found on Google. Yet at http://search.twitter.com the conversations are right there in front of you. The same holds for any topical issues — lipstick on pig? — for real time questions, real time branding analysis, tracking a new product launch — on pretty much any subject if you want to know whats happening now, search.twitter.com will come up with a superior result set.

. . . How is real time search different? History isn’t that relevant — relevancy is driven mostly by time. . . . This reformulation of search as navigation is, I think, a step into a very new and different future. Google.com has suddenly become the source for pages — not conversations, not the real time web. What comes next? I think context is the next hurdle. Social context and page based context. . . . Twitter search today is crude — but so was Google.com once upon a not so long time ago.

Twitter may just be a collection of inane thoughts, but in aggregate that is a valuable thing. In aggregate, what you get is a direct view into consumer sentiment, political sentiment, any kind of sentiment. For companies trying to figure out what people are thinking about their brands, searching Twitter is a good place to start. To get a sense of what I’m talking about, try searching for “iPhone,” “Zune,” or “Volvo wagon”.

Why can’t Google simply index Twitter? It does, but its search results give more weight to links than to time. It could create a new search product along the lines of Blog Search or News search that is geared more towards Micro-messaging services such as Twitter, FriendFeed, and the rest. But what it really needs to go beyond simply indexing Twitter after the fact. IVP partner, and Twitter investor, Todd Chaffee, suggests:

If they were really smart they could partner with Twitter and make Twitter their real-time feed.

Doing that would require Google to “affirm Twitter’s dominance in this category and the importance of the Twitter data stream,” contends Borthwick. But so far, Google has pretty much flubbed this opportunity to open up real-time search. It bought Twitter competitor Jaiku, only to shut it down. And now it is hoping to create a counterweight to Twitter’s growing strength in real-time data by open-sourcing Jaiku. Good luck with that one.

Listening to Twitter’s investors gives a good sense of how they think Twitter can become a game-changer in real-time search. While it is instructive, it is also important to note that much of this vision has yet to materialize. Twitter’s current search is extremely crude, as Borthwick readily admits. It simply brings up the most recent Tweets with the keyword you are looking for. There is no ranking or clustering beyond that.

An undifferentiated thought stream of the masses at some point becomes unwieldy. In order to truly mine that data, Twitter needs to figure out how to extract the common sentiments from the noise (something which Summize was originally designed to do, by the way, but it was putting the cart before the horse—you need to be able to do simple searches before you start looking for patterns). But what is the best way to rank real-time search results—by number of followers, retweets, some other variable? It is not exactly clear. But if Twitter doesn’t solve this problem, someone else will and they will make a lot of money if they do it right.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

I’m not going to discuss the economic meltdown and its devastating effect on technology companies and internet startups in this post, but rather something that crossed my mind earlier this morning: “Web 2.0″ seems to become more and more a void (and an avoided) term. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely apparent.

So why do I say it’s fading? For one, because the number of startups that contact us and include the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message is visibly dropping (and that’s a good thing), and I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore on other technology blogs and news sites either. That’s not really tangible, so I took a look at the number of mentions of the phrase across the web, and they seem to be decreasing significantly, reflecting my feeling on this.

Judging by Google Trends, which shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world (and in various languages), the term started being used at the end of 2004 when Tim O’Reilly organized the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference. Search queries for the term started picking up in the middle of 2005, when TechCrunch was started - with the tagline “Tracking Web 2.0″ by the way - and the number kept increasing until the end of 2007. After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for “Web 2.0″ by 2011.

Also noteworthy: take a look at the geographic regions that have generated the highest volumes of worldwide search traffic for the term over the years - it’s Asia, with the top 5 regions being India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia (in that order). Furthermore, Google Trends pegs the number one language in which people search for stuff related to the topic of Web 2.0 to be Russian before English.

And just in case you’re curious: “Web 3.0″ doesn’t seem to picking up much.
Let’s all rejoice.

Google’s “Insights for Search”, a beta service that analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered - relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time - gives an even better overview:

Posted by brian tiong at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Morgan Stanley *)

Mary Meeker shares the below presentation on tech trends at the State of the Technology Industry November 2008 Web 2.0 Summit.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: MarketingCharts.com *)

Nearly 61% of US consumers who recently bought a mobile or wireless phone were influenced by online product reviews and user comments, while 30% of purchasers were similarly influenced by blogs, according to the Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey by Ad-ology.

Additional findings:

• Consumers who rated online blogs and reviews highly tend to be younger (18 - 34 years old) and have average or higher-than-average incomes.

• Television, newspapers, and direct mail advertisements were among the most influential traditional media for recent mobile phone buyers.
• 26.3% of consumers surveyed indicated they prefer to purchase mobile/wireless phones online instead of in perso or at a store.
• Survey respondents also revealed product reviews, user comments, and blogs significantly influenced other consumer electronics purchases.
• The price of a cell phone was widely considered to be a less important buying factor than rate plans, coverage area, and mobile phone product quality.

“This is the modern day version of ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising,” said C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research. “Advertisers have always known the immense value of positive word-of-mouth. Now consumers have a whole world of opinions and reviews available online, and this survey shows how much they value that kind of information.”

About the survey: The Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey is conducted quarterly by Ad-ology Research to study on- and off-line media influence on buying decisions. The survey asks a national consumer panel about key factors in their buying decisions. Respondents also rate nine types of online and seven types of traditional media with regard to how each influenced what they bought and where they bought it. The research was conducted with an online consumer panel of 1,105 adults from August 25-28, 2008.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Tony Hung *)

Tony says...

At the most recent BlogExpo Twitter was a huge topic, and with good reason. Although it started more than a year ago with fairly geeky roots, it continues to grow at a breakneck pace. Has it crossed over to the mainstream, yet? I think we're on the cusp. I certainly think that when anchors on CNN start using Twitter to monitor conversations on live television -- it's probably time.

Like a few others, I happen to be quite bullish on the topic of Twitter, not just as a singular web application, but as a medium, and microblogging service. As Mike Arrington of TechCrunch believes, services like Twitter are becoming more and more like a utility, much like the telephone service.

But what about its application in branding? Specifically, its role in brand management?

1. Understanding twitter (AKA microblogging) in the ecosystem of conversation

Whether you Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, or Friendfeed (or all of them), the role of such services for the purposes of brand management is primarily to listen. When Twitter launched, there was some angst about how crushingly banal some of the conversations were. However, like blogging, Twitter had some maturing to do -- and we're maturing still. People still Twitter about what they ate for breakfast, what bus stop they're at and where they plan to have dinner, but its also used for communications of other sorts.

Questions about particular services. Opinions about particular brands. Blog alerts on postings. By average folks. By opinion leaders.

The wonderful thing is that, for the most part, these conversations are public, searchable, and trackable. With this emerging ecosystem of live conversation and thought, anyone with any particular interest can follow ideas, topics, names and places as they happen.

The role of Twitter in brand management first is to listen. Find people who are talking about products, services, and experiences with your brand. Then find their friends. Then find who is driving those conversations and who those opinion leaders are.

The best way to do this is probably starting with Twitter's own search function which was acquired via Summize a few months ago. Search for names of products, services, brand names, competitors and people. Then select the feed icon for that search and follow it actively throughout the day in your favorite feed reeder. Done.

2. Engaging in microconversations

Once you've found your conversations of interest, take a deep breath. Because these are live, unfilitered and unmetered opinion, some of it may also contain a lot of raw emotion. After all, when you only have 140 characters to express yourself, it doesn't lend itself to appropriate self-censoring all the time.

Then, reach out.

I presume you already know about your brand, what it stands for, and what your brand "ideal" experience ought to be. You're probably intimately familiar with tag lines, logos, and all of the literal and visual elements of the brand. Now, with all that in mind, it's time to try and sculpt the experiences of others ... but not in a cynical or sinister way.

I firmly believe that there is a lot of banal conversation on Twitter, but there is a lot of important stuff as well. People talk and reach out when emotions are at their peak, whether it be happy, sad, or frustrated. For many folks, they Twitter during these times not only let themselves be known, but to share in the emotion, to get a response, and for some, a hope for answers as well.

The great thing about reaching out on Twitter, much like the blogosphere in some ways through comments, is that the expectation is close to nil that brand representatives of any fashion are present. Furthermore, the expectation that anyone will actually listen, or even do anything supportive or rectifying is also, for many, close to nil.

If you're able to answer questions, respond to opinion, and engage in a real human way (such as the admission that you don't know the answer), you'll shock and pleasantly surprise most Twitterers.

If they've got issues, and you've been empowered to use Twitter in this way, take ownership of the problem. Point them in the direction of someone who can solve it, or work with it until you can.

Because the bar on Twitter is so low, the mere act of appearing on Twitter can be a powerful first step that gets people noticing. Listening is better. Fixing and solving is, of course, best, and can generate word of mouth traffic and notice that is difficult to put a number sign to.

3. Dealing with "thought leaders"

Of course you should try and engage each Twitterer you meet equally. It's critical to keep in mind, that someone who has 5 followers should, in all seriousness, be treated with an equal amount of respect. Every conversation is searchable, and for folks who looking for particular problems, they'll find the exchange just as easily as you could.

However, like in any democracy, there are some Twitters who are, in some ways, more equal than others. And the relative "importance" of these individuals is sometimes, but not always, easy to recognize in the number of followers they have. I say "not-always" because sometimes a person's relative worth or importance may not always be measured by such metrics. They might be well known off line, or be followed by a few popular Twitterers, for example.

For Twitterers who have followers in the hundreds or thousands, engagements *will* be noticed by their followers, and so be prepared to engage in a way that's relative to the audience. However, if you've gotten this far in the article, congratulations, because you've probably identified this as a great opportunity.

It's hard to get any opinion leader to talk about your product, service, or brand (ask any start up about TechCrunch, for example). True, it's never ideal when it's mentioned in a less than flattering light, however, Twitter provides a great way of turning this into a fantastic opportunity. Unlike blogs, where the author may or may not respond, and the author may or may not append their original blog post, on Twitter, especially if you respond in real time, you can literally change people's opinion on the spot.

A great example was with Mike Arrington himself, when he was bitterly complaining about the service he was getting with Comcast. Turns out Comcast was listening, and worked on things in an expeditious fashion. Problem was solved, and Arrington went on to blog about it.

It would be tough to measure how much that good publicity would have cost.

At the end of the day, every conversation about your name, service, products, or brand, should be treated as an opportunity to engage people -- in real time -- with their experiences, and no matter how good it is, try and make it better, in the way that the ideal brand experience ought to be.

Using Twitter this way is not for the lazy, uninterested, or the disempowered. It necessitates a melding of great customer service and the knowledge of what the brand is, how it ought to be, and the integrity to realize that there are always going to be shortcomings. As trite as it sounds, when you engage people in Twitter, you are live and you are searchable. And in many cases, you may not get a second chance if you flub the first.

But in a time when expectations are so low, it represents, in many cases, not just an opportunity, but an easy opportunity to engage in a way that's human, real, and in a way that proves that your brand is listening and willing to help.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Paul Glazowski *)

Searching for things through a service that scours multiple engines is one thing. Searching for things through a service that scours certain aspects of the news and social discussion space is another. This is what a new invention called Social Mention allows you to accomplish.

Employing Yahoo’s increasingly noteworthy BOSS search platform, Social Mention, an Ottawa, Canada operation, distinguishes its results by their variety of source. If you’re looking for items to do with, say, today’s official debut of the T-Mobile G1 device, you can specify that the engine find blog posts, microblog posts, bookmarks, comments, events, images, links from social news websites, or videos.

Adding extra flavor to the mix is an asset labeled “Hot Conversations.” Everything deemed of the moment is listed, though these are not specific a category. If you search for the abovementioned handheld, and transition from left to right through the available tabs, the picks in the right-hand column stay largely the same.

Everything seems to work without much trouble at all. While it’s a bit difficult to gauge for relevance for links, at least given our brief test of it, the delivery of information is pretty much how you’d expect it to appear. Yet, you’re likely to notice the length of time it takes for the engine to provide information, both from the start and through successive moves to all sections of the results page. A 5-second wait time is what I sense is the average to see results. Not terribly extensive, but noticeable for sure. Keep in mind, if one aspect is cached, the time spent twiddling thumbs is less. Images and videos, meanwhile, may take longer to display.  This is in part due to its aggregation of material from sources like Twitter, FriendFeed, Delicious, Flickr, Reddit, Digg, YouTube, and coComment, as well as the many blogs that inhabit the Web.

What has me most excited about Social Mention is its take on keywords and how they are used in the blog world, the new media space, and conversations had in numerous places. Companies and organizations undoubtedly find it valuable to track mention of their names, brands and products to register trends, pinpoint troubles, and generally involve themselves more in the chatter, as they have been known to do in a venue like Twitter. Social Mention simply broadens the scope. Its speed could be improved, but to begin with, its quite an admirable piece of kit.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Michal Lev-Ram *)

Posted by brian tiong at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Cameron Chapman *)

A great list from Cameron on what's out there today for running your own business...

Cameron says...

Last August we featured a post with more than 230 online apps for running your business. Since there are hundreds of new apps coming on the market every year, we figured it was time for an update. This year we came up with more than 270 additional apps. Some are completely new since last year, others might have been overlooked, and still others made significant improvements that gained them a spot on the list.

Accounting, Billing, Invoicing, Estimating & Contracts

LiteAccounting - Invoice and track payment from your customers without a bunch of extra, useless features.

Invoice Journal - Free invoicing program.

endeve - Issue invoices, manage clients and check revenues all in one place.

ContractPal - Take your contracts and forms paperless and have them completed, validated, signed and processed online.

Bootstrap - Online bookkeeping software that lets you track sales and expenses, organize your records for tax time, and more.

Citrus - An online billing website that allows your customers to view, download and pay their invoices by credit card or direct debit.

Zapproved - Create and send proposals, manage the approval process and reach agreements without any hassle.

Mumboe - Online contract and business agreement management app.

FinanciFY - Easy to use online financial management tools for small businesses and individuals.

Invoice Place - Online billing software that lets you track invoices, quotes, receipts and more.

Zoho Invoice - Manage invoices and payments, format invoices and quotes, set up recurring invoices, and more, with free and paid plans.

GoToBilling - An online app that manages invoices and payments, marketing, customer relationship management and more.

NetBooks - Marketing, sales, inventory and financial control in one place.

Pulse - Cash flow management app for small businesses.

Shoeboxed - Online tracking and organizing of your receipts.

FreeAgent Central - Accounting and money management app for freelancers.

CurdBee - An online billing application that integrates with payments through PayPal or Google Checkout.

Clarity Accounting - Online accounting for small businesses and professionals with multi-user support.

Calendars & Scheduling

Appointy - An online appointment management tool.

SuperSaaS - This is online scheduling software that allows you to accept appointments booked directly on your website.

BookingPad - An online bookings system that can be integrated into any website.

clickbook - A free online booking and scheduling program.

eXpireTrack - Track and plan for the date that products are to expire.

Scheduly - Add your business to their directory and then let your clients pick their own appointment time slots (from your available slots).

When is Good - Find out the best time for everyone to meet without the hassle.

Shiftboard - Online scheduling for businesses to coordinate worker schedules.

Robyn - Easy online scheduling for service providers.

ScheduleOnce - Scheduling engine to get everyone who needs to meet together at one time.

TimeBridge - See the availability of everyone you need to meet with.

Charts, Diagrams, and Whiteboards

Exploratree - Online mind mapping software that provides ready-made thinking guides.

Wisdomap - A simple mind mapping application.

Best4C - An online charting and diagramming tool.

Scriblink - A simple, free online whiteboard.

Gliffy - Online diagramming and charting software.

Mindomo - Free online mind mapping software.

Mapul - Online mind mapping that allows you to create organic looking mind maps.

WiseMapping - Free mind mapping software that allows you to publish and share your mind maps.

Collaboration & Workgroups

Homecourt - Homecourt is a Web-based collaboration tool.

blogtronix - An enterprise social platform that includes blogs, wikis, documents and social media so that users in large and small organizations can collaborate and build communities inside and outside their company.

WorkflowPerfect - A Web-based business process tool that facilitates collaboration.

ClientSpot - A project collaboration and time tracking software specifically for virtual assistants and other freelancers.

skrbl - Online collaboration and white board space.

Planzone - Secure and private collaborative project workspace to share files, manage tasks, and communicate with others.

Nuospace - On demand collaboration software that provides online document management, allows you to edit pages in your browser, and offers tools to engage your colleagues.

DeskAway - An online project collaboration app aimed at small businesses and teams that organizes, manages and tracks your online work.

Mentat - A free project-sharing service accessible from a browser of supported devices (including BlackBerry).

Easy Projects .NET - Project collaboration software that offers both a downloadable option and a hosted version.

Ecto Connect - An online collaboration, communication and content sharing app.

Clearspace - An online collaboration suite that includes documents, blogs, discussions, projects, and more.

Twiddla - An online conference tool that allows you to mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or brainstorm on a blank canvas.

Sosius - Online workspace that includes a contact & group manager, custom workspace, file management, calendar, blog, discussions, chat, and more.

CollectiveX - Create free group sites for collaboration and networking.

Yammer - A twitter-like app for getting updates from your co-workers.

BrightIdeasLab - An online home for all your brilliant ideas that also offers collaborative brainstorming space.

Ximdesk - Collaboration and social networking platform for enterprise.

Status - A Twitter-like app for keeping your work group connected.

GroupSwim - Social collaboration and community tools to bring your employees, customers, and partners together.

Kindling - Idea management and collaboration tool that lets you vote on ideas.

Conferences, Presentations & Meetings

Expectnation - A conference program organizing software.

KinetiCast - Create online presentations, deliver them, and then track who’s watching.

Gretastudio - Create on-demand presentations for your company’s products, record training and e-learning materials, or other types of presentations that require audio or video content.

280Slides - A free online presentation software that allows you to import existing documents, download to PowerPoint, publish to the Web and more.

SlideRocket - Design professional quality presentations and then deliver them in person or over the Web.

vcasmo - Presentation software for business presentations, academic teaching, seminars, conferences, sales pitching, live events and more.

slideboom - Allows you to share PowerPoint presentations live online.

Empressr - A visual storytelling and presentation application.

Zoho Show - Create embeddable presentations online, present from a remote location, or share and collaborate on presentations.

slidelive - Present Microsoft PowerPoint presentations live online with this browser-based meeting solution.

Text The Mob - Collect feedback during presentations and seminars by posting polls or message boards on a large screen and having your audience send their input via their cell phones.

ReadyTalk - Online Web meeting and audio conferencing solutions.

Persony - Inexpensive Web conferencing service.

Calliflower - Conference calling tools that include Skype integration, invitations and reminders, and more.

GoToMeeting - Online meeting and conferencing software.

buzz2biz - A free online meeting platform.

MyCommittee - Online tracking of meeting agendas and minutes.

GroupLoop - Web-based committee organizing software.

Crowdsourcing, Networking & Community

Wild Apricot - Online tools for clubs, associations, and communities that include email newsletters, blogs, discussion forums, a member database and more.

OctopusCity - Build your online business network, keep in touch with people through mini-feeds, messaging and free teleconferencing, and save time by keeping one universal address book system.

LittleEngine - A community of small businesses and their patrons that are committed to buying locally and supporting local businesses.

Advisor Garage - A social network that connects entrepreneurs who need advice with advisors on just about any business-related topic.

Xing - A global networking and contact management site for business professionals.

Cambrian House - A free crowdsourcing app.

Socialcast - Private online communities of all sizes to help organize enterprise communication that allows employees to decide how to find and use information while reducing email clutter and unproductive communications.

CEOWorld.biz - Global networking for managers, entrepreneurs, and senior execs.

cmypitch.com - Online networking for entrepreneurs, investors and service providers that helps connect people who can help each other succeed.

Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service & Contact Management

Mojo Helpdesk - Mojo Helpdesk allows you to track customer requests, keep your customers and your staff informed about what’s happening with their accounts, and deliver better service.

TagTicket - This hosted helpdesk software is great for managing customer problems as well as in-house issues. There’s nothing to install, and it allows you to manage, track and share your emails and files with other staff.

RightNow - RightNow is an on-demand customer relationship management program that integrates sales, service, marketing, feedback and voice functions.

sfa finity - This CRM software offers all the regular features, plus account-centric, contact-centric and opportunity-centric perspectives, allowing you to view information the way you prefer.

LinkingUniverse CS - This progress-oriented CRM tool helps you work toward your customer goals. They also have a blog with tips for using the program.

Stazzle - Stazzle is a basic CRM that allows you to track information from birthdays and anniversaries to favorite ball teams and restaurants. It also allows you to track who referred which client and why.

HelpSpot - This help desk software allows support staff to easily manage requests from multiple sources in addition to providing powerful self-help functionality.

CRMdesk - This help desk software allows you to automate your online customer support.

insidesales.com - InsideSales.com provides a lead management CRM suite that incorporates an auto-dialer and allows coordination between multiple departments dealing with a single customer.

Free CRM - This is a Web-based customer relationship management software that allows for sales force automation. Track leads and manage your sales pipeline.

bConnections - This is a simple, easy to use CRM system that allows you to shorten your sales cycle, provide better customer service, make informed decisions, and increase your sales.

salesboom - This is a CRM and back office solution that’s user friendly and provides seamless integration.

SalesJunction - SalesJunction is a highly customizable but easy to use contact management system that’s very affordable.

Leadvine - LeadVine can help you increase sales by allowing you to post sales leads and have the community find you new customers.

Bizroof CRM - A free, Web-based contact management program.

Bizzvo - Bizzvo offers contact management, email marketing and invoicing solutions.

BatchBook - BatchBook is a small business CRM that manages contacts, communications, and to-do lists, and offers list and report functionality (including creating things like mailing labels and email lists).

Solomon - Solomon is a simplified Web-based CRM and contact manager.

ClairMail - ClairMail provides account management, mobile payments, customer service, and more, all on your mobile phone.

Appature CRM - A marketing-focused customer relationship management program.

Helperoo - A simple email support system geared toward small teams.

Mzinga - A full set of comprehensive social media and enterprise learning solutions that address talent development, enable support staff to communicate and collaborate with customers and partners, and helps your marketing team increase brand visibility, demand for products and services, and more.

Oprius - A contact management software designed for independent sales people.

b2b CRM - A Web-based CRM that manages contacts, activities, and your sales pipeline, and integrates with Outlook and Word.

zendesk - A branded online customer support system.

helpdeskpilot - Help desk software that includes email integration, a knowledge base and more.

Tactile CRM - A cost-effective CRM that tracks sales, deals, emails and customer contacts.

Nuebbo - Online contact and virtual business card management.

Simple Sales Tracking - An online sales tracking app that offers free and paid plans.

Soocial - A simple contact management app and address book.

Database, File Storage & Information Management

Pixily - An online service that lets you aggregate, organize, find and share your documents.

ThinkFree Docs - Online document sharing.

.docstoc - An online repository of free documents you can download, or upload your own documents to share.

Thinkfree - Online access to files, collaboration space for your team, and the ability to edit documents and post to blogs with a Web-based editor.

SpringCM - Online contract and document management.

ProofHQ - Online management and review of designs, artwork and documents.

Xythos - Online document management and storage.

NomaDesk - Online virtual file server with offline continuity.

Middlepost Docs - An online document manager that also allows you to sign docs.

AirSet - Online document management and sharing.

Email

MailChimp - Email marketing app that includes subscriber management, advanced coding capability, tracking and reports, and more.

Ping82 - Control, manage and track your email using tools made to improve communication between people working together on a project.

eMail Manager - A Web-based email management solution for high volume email environments.

IFM Campaign Manager - A Web-based email list management and marketing tool.

Xpenser - Record your expenses with email, SMS, Twitter, IM, and more.

Synergymail - Online email marketing app that includes campaign tracking.

Mad Mimi - Email marketing utility that allows you to create branded email newsletters and promotions.

EmailBrain - Email newsletter management app.

Employee Management, Payroll & Human Resources

Taleo - Taleo is e-recruitment and talent management software.

Zapoint - Zapoint is a Web 2.0 enterprise talent management platform with integrated performance management, skills mapping, organization mapping, recruiting and succession planning.

Halogen Software - Halogen offers talent management and employee performance solutions.

SuccessFactors - An on-demand talent and performance management platform that gets everyone in your company working together by aligning goals.

Cornerstone OnDemand - This is an on-demand talent management suite.

paylocity - Online payroll, human resources, time tracking and tax services.

Litmos - Create, deliver and manage online training.

Akken - Staffing and recruiting management software that includes email, CRM, accounting, human resources, and more.

TalentMaze - A marketplace for employers to find top recruiters to find the best employees for their businesses.

Rejose - Applicant tracking system that’s simple, efficient and cost effective.

Catch the Best - Online resume and applicant tracking solution.

Feedback

Kumquat - Quickly and easily solicit feedback from clients, superiors, peers, fans, family, or anyone else on projects, plans, on-going activities, blogs, or whatever else you want.

Feefo - Feefo is an independent customer feedback system that is transparent and comprehensive (and doesn’t allow business owners to edit customer feedback).

RivalMap - An online app that helps you monitor and share market news, maintain knowledge of your industry and competitors, and discuss information.

Feedback 2.0 - Collect opinions, expectations, and suggestions from a selected audience and discover the consensus.

ConceptShare - Share media with colleagues and have them leave feedback, reply to comments, approve artwork, and markup on visuals.

Backboard - An online feedback tool that allows users to markup documents (including images, text and websites).

Marketing & Publicity

StartPR - StartPR allows you to monitor your brand on social media sites including blogs, social networks, and more.

Prospect Insight - This is a Web marketing automation suite that provides information to your sales team on where to spend its time in order to maximize your return on investment.

HubSpot - HubSpot is an Internet marketing suite that integrates with your website to track your online marketing efforts.

iKarma - A reputation management service that allows you to compare customer comments, display testimonials, get customer referrals and manage your word-of-mouth.

Survelio.com - An online survey service.

Sonar - An online polling software.

formatpixel - Create your own online magazines, catalogs, brochures and more.

Traceworks - Online marketing software that helps you set goals, plan, execute and optimize your marketing activities.

ReputationHQ - Online reputation management app that searches for your desired information across millions of websites.

WordJot - Business blog hosting platform.

IncSpring - An online marketplace for businesses to purchase brands and logos directly from designers.

Anthillz - Professional relationship and reputation management.

BrandDoozie - A DIY online marketing material creation suite that helps you create professional-looking business cards, brochures, logos, and more.

Shoutlet - Distribute and track viral marketing campaigns across social media outlets.

Money Making & eCommerce Solutions

GoodBarry - An integrated system that runs your website, email marketing and online store that also automatically grows your customer database.

Scrobbld - PayPal and eBay order management app that keeps all your transactions in one place.

Office Applications

Celum Imagine - Software that lets you manage and distribute your photos, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs and multimedia content.

gOffice - They offer Web Word Wizard, a true online word processor.

PDFHammer.com - An online, free PDF editor that allows you to merge/combine files, rearrange, reorder and delete pages, lock your PDFs and more.

Organization & Management

OrderMotion - An order management system for online businesses.

MagSuite - An open source marketing automation, sales force automation, accounting, service automation and inventory control system.

Process Maker - Organize your company’s work flow and eliminate paperwork.

Alfresco - Open source enterprise content management that offers collaboration, record management, knowledge management and more.

minutesinaminute - An online app for keeping track of your company meeting minutes.

SyncWizard - Synchronize your contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and more with your portable devices.

analysis-one - Online tool to help you monitor your financial and non-financial business performance.

Phone & Voicemail

Phonesheet.com - This is a Web-based phone call and contact management program that allows you to track incoming and outgoing calls on a daily basis.

Vontoo - Vontoo provides automated voice messaging on demand.

Task Lists, Planning & Project Management

Torch Project Management - Torch allows you to collaborate using messages, e-mails, files, tasks, Google Docs, and other methods. You can bid, track your time and invoice clients directly. Offers seamless work flow (connecting bidding, project management, time tracking and invoicing).

PlanPlus Online - An online calendar, time management, project management, and contact management suite from FranklinCovey.

Wrike - Practical project management software that allows you to create tasks from emails.

Comindwork - Project management, knowledge management, and collaboration software.

No Kahuna - Project management with no unnecessary features.

Teamness - Organize project data and share it online with customers or colleagues.

Teamwork Project Manager - Online project management that includes custom views and quick access tabs.

PriorityTrack - Gather ideas, prioritize, collaborate, and keep projects on track.

ProjectPipe.com - Project management for small-to-midsized teams.

Planix - Consistently and accurately estimate resources, scheduling and costs of software development projects.

Pelotronics - Project organization and collaboration app.

Task2Gather - Free online task and project management.

ididwork - Keep track of the work you actually do, see what other members of your team are doing in real-time, and get feedback from your manager.

Gtdagenda.com - An online planner for Getting Things Done.

Undone - An online to-do list manager and project management app.

Qcron - Project management and time tracking app.

OnStage - Online project management, workspace and collaboration tool.

Joint Contact - Project collaboration and management tool.

Viewpath - Manage projects and events online.

5pm - An online project management tool with a customizable interface, an interactive timeline, time reports, email integration and more.

Flempo - An online to-do list with the ability to assign tasks and keep track of progress, collect tasks from other systems (using the Flempo API), and more.

TaskAnyone - Assign tasks to anyone via email, and TaskAnyone will follow up until they follow through.

TaskBin - Manage group tasks in a single shared to-do list.

ProjectOffice.net - Online project management that includes issue tracking, expense tracking, and knowledge management.

Lighthouse - Simple issue tracking and project management.

@task - Online time tracking, work flow and project management app.

Jumpchart - Online website planning app.

LiquidPlanner - Team management, task management and project scheduling all in one online app.

eloops - Online project management software that includes a calendar, data backup and social networking software.

XPLive - Project management app that focuses on individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Project Spaces - Project management and online workspace that includes a document library, task list, calendar, announcements and email lists.

Goplan - Simple online project management.

TargetProcess - Project management software that features real-time progress tracking, communications features, and more.

Staction - Group project management and communication app.

Collabtive - Easy to use collaborative project management software that tracks milestones, task lists, time tracking and more.

LessProjects - Project management from the people who created LessAccounting.

Jumptree - Project management that updates you by email, manages accountability and more.

Project2Manage - Free hosted project management that includes milestones, to-do lists, and more.

Mingle - Project management and team collaboration app.

Time Management & Tracking

TrackMyPeople - Track your time and your employees’ time online.

Office Timesheets - Web-based time and expense tracking that’s easy to use and available anywhere.

Tick - A time tracking app for the service industry.

TSheets - Simple online time and labor tracking for small business.

Tempo - Simple time tracking with reporting features.

myHours.com - Online time management, tracking and timesheet solution that is accessible online or via mobile phone.

LiveTimer - Online time tracking service with reporting features, iPhone/iPod Touch interface, and more.

Paymo - Time tracking that includes online invoices and expense tracking.

Time59 - Online time and expense tracking and invoicing.

Paybackable - Online expense tracking that includes mileage expense calculations and expense reporting.

motismo - Online time tracking for creative professionals.

Virtual Office Platforms

WORKetc. - A suite of online tools including employee timesheets, document management, customer support, sales management, project management, billing and invoicing, and more.

ConcourseSuite - This open source online suite of programs offers customer relationship management as well as online presence management, team collaboration, and customer service.

OpenGoo - An open source Web office with text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, task lists, email, calendars, contacts and more.

Website Tools

Outlandish - Landing page management tool for small to medium-sized advertisers.

VersoChat - An all-in-one solution for Web analytics, chatting with online visitors, live Web statistics and more.

LeadLander - Allows you to see exactly which companies are visiting your website to investigate your products.

LEADSExplorer - LeadsExplorer allows you to capture what companies your website visitors are coming from so that you can turn them into leads.

Sharedbase - An online tool to manage your members-only website and your membership database.

SmoothStart - Create online landing pages for generating, managing and tracking new leads.

Industry-Specific

Gympro - A program for personal trainers that allows you to manage your client information, assessments, workouts and schedule.

Practice Fusion - This is a free online electronic medical records software.

Buildium - An online property management program for property managers and associations.

TopSchool, Inc. - A Student Lifestyle Management system for schools.

ekklesia360 - This is a content management system designed specifically for churches to help increase new visitors and provide up-to-date information to their congregation.

Body-Quest.net - This is a business management solution for personal trainers that allows you to track your clients’ progress.

TenantWIZ - A property management program for vacation homes that works whether you own a single property or a large hotel or condo operation.

booktoeat - booktoeat allows restaurants to accept online reservations and bookings.

restaurantdiary - restaurantdiary is a restaurant booking and reservations system with no commission charges and flat monthly fee.

ClubReady - ClubReady is a fitness club management service that helps increase revenues and dramatically improve client and employee satisfaction.

ServiceBeacon - ServiceBeacon provides a Web-based car dealership marketing application for both new and used car dealerships in addition to their consumer services.

openSIS - An open source student information system that tracks student demographics, contact information, scheduling, gradebooks, report cards, transcripts, health records, attendance, cafeteria management, state reporting, and more.

RdEXpress - An online restaurant booking system for single unit restaurant operators that also includes a CRM and marketing system.

Music Arsenal - A business tool specifically for indie bands that helps you manage tasks, projects (tours, albums, etc.), concerts, records, and more, all online.

Plaid - On-demand ministry management software that organizes contact lists, tracks visitors, sends emails to targeted contacts, prints attendance sheets, and more.

Scriggle-it - An online fan management and music marketing solution for bands and musicians.

DonorDrive - Constituent, donation and event management software for non-profits. Includes reporting and exporting capability, e-mail marketing, message forums, and more.

Ministry(Starter) - A content management system geared toward Christian ministries.

RealProEdge.com - An email tool specifically for real estate agents.

fourthbook.com - An easy to use online church management software.

Massage manEdger - An online suite of tools for massage therapists that includes a website with online booking, electronic client files, streamlined daily accounting and more.

rezgo - An online booking software for travel tours and activities.

carbonmade - A free online portfolio showcase.

Planning Center Online - A church worship services planning app.

Creative Manager Pro - Online ad agency management software.

Rentomatic - Simplified property management app that includes an online rent-payment system.

Tuggle - Online ministry management suite that includes communication and event management tools.

CollabTrak - Project management specifically for Web designers.

N2uitive - An online insurance claims interview management software.

Macrocasa - Manage your real estate website and business.

Propertyware - Online property management software that organizes property and lease information, records income and expenses, lists vacancies, and more.

RentYield - A property management tool for landlords and real estate investors that allows you to stay on top of your rental income and track performance of your properties.

Shockfolio - An online portfolio site for actors, musicians and photographers.

Weefolio - A free online portfolio creator.

Streetfolio - Property management app that manages cashflow, insurance, mortgages, and more.

Miscellaneous

GigTide - Online creation of resumes, that also allows you to publish, manage and track your resumes, contacts and cover letters.

RB-Apps - RB-Apps provides customized, DIY business mini-applications based on the RB-Apps Platform.

lumifi - Use lumifi if you need to compile research and collaboration from multiple sources, discover information you might otherwise miss, and assemble that research into a well stated case.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: B-side *)

Its been 4 weeks since my last post and the reason for that is because Yahoo my hosting provider had a few problems.  After numerous emails and a little blogger anxiety, they finally fixed it.  I'm back online.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Gregor Hochmuth *)

Twitter isn’t for everyone, and you may have dismissed the service a long time ago. But regardless of your own use, it’s hard to dismiss the phenomenon itself and the passion of so many that has built up around it.

No matter how long the outage du jour, Twitter users continue to stay attached to the service despite an ever-changing backdrop of alternatives.

Blogging isn’t for everyone either. But unlike blogging, Twitter enjoys a far a greater variety of users — they include people, many people, who would never think of starting a blog and people who would never touch an RSS reader. The 140 character limit is a plus for Twitter, but it isn’t all.

What explains the Twitter phenomenon then? What produces the positive feeling and the strong attachment among those who tweet? And moreover: How can other systems learn from this?

The answer lies in understanding Audience.
Twitter has a simple premise: You tweet & the message is pushed to your friends. The actual mechanics are slightly different (messages go to everyone who follows you, whether they’re your “friends” or not, assuming your stream is public) — but from a user’s perspective, the circle of receivers consists only of the people they know. Everyone else is part of a faceless crowd that’s hidden behind the follower count.

This simple premise holds the key to Twitter’s success: messages go to a well-defined audience. In the moment you release a tweet, you know who’s on the line and you have an idea of who can catch a glimpse of your message. @replies are the best illustration for this sense of audience: Even though Twitter is not a point-to-point message delivery system (let alone a reliable one), @replies are sent with the understanding that they will be read by the intended people because they are known to be in the audience. (Imagine a newspaper article that suddenly greeted a specific reader.)

Blogging on the other hand has no such clearly defined audience. An aspiring blogger who hasn’t crossed the chasm speaks into the void. Direct feedback can only come in the form of written comments (a relatively high barrier of effort) and it’s diminished by spam and vocal trolls these days.

FeedBurner’s subscriber count only provides the equivalent of Twitter’s opaque follower count and MyBlogLog didn’t solve this problem either.

So it’s not surprising that the majority of blogs are abandoned — the most-cited reason being “No one was reading it.” No one might be following your Twitter stream either, but Twitter is designed for network effects to take hold and given the natural reciprocity among groups of friends, it’s likely that most people have at least a handful of followers they know.

Back to Twitter: Why Audience works
Twitter works and enjoys such strong attachment because it provides real-time access to a well-defined audience. The backlog of all previous tweets is a guarantee of permanence (you can even search it) and you can catch up on it anytime. As a result, people use Twitter because they have an idea of who will see their lightweight messages and this sense of audience is reinforced by @replies, re-tweets and references in future conversations (online and offline).

Designing for the sense of Audience is a powerful tool to create cohesion and a sense of utility among users of a service. This lesson from Twitter can apply to many other services too. But before leaving the current discussion, it’s helpful to look at a service that has missed the full power of Audience so far.

Facebook: Designed for Audience? Not so much.
Facebook isn’t about Audience? That’s ridiculous, you’ll say — so let me clarify. I fully agree that social network profiles are all about self-expression and being seen, but a platform for self-expression isn’t necessarily designed for the audience that does “the seeing.”

Profile Pages on Facebook can have audiences of course, but this requires that users continually roam Facebook to look for news in their network. Facebook realized this limitation and introduced the News Feed. Its intent was to move a user’s “acts and performances” from the stage of the profile page to a single and central stage, a single place for Audience.

Sharing with the News Feed: Did it ever reach my friends?
Facebook was the first major social network to introduce the News Feed concept, which has since become a standard sauce for stickiness in many places (although not StudiVZ surprisingly). But Facebook’s implementation of the News Feed doesn’t capture the full power of designing for Audience: While Twitter distributes every message consistently, Facebook decides algorithmically which update is shown to whom. Algorithmic filtering is nice in theory, but such black-box behavior is simply unpredictable for the user.

“When I post new things, will my friends actually see them?”, one might wonder. And conversely: “Have my friends posted something that I’m not seeing? The news feed is cluttered right now with people I don’t care about.” Anything that’s unpredictable produces a feeling of uncertainty — and that’s never a comfortable feeling.

Even with Facebook’s recent attempts to introduce smarter filters, users only have relative means to customize their feed (more of this, less of that). Furthermore, there is mostly just one kind of feedback that users can give on the News Feed: comments. Imagine a concert, in which you could only leave written notes as you left — no clapping, no booing.

Because users don’t really know who’s listening on Facebook and who isn’t, the platform hasn’t been embraced as a place to publish proactively. Publishing events or photos is mostly push-driven (and generates an email — “you are invited to an event” or “tagged in a photo”). But for everything else you share, do you know if it ever reached your friends?

Who capitalized on this gap? FriendFeed.
It’s the same setup as Twitter, but with more content: You know who’s listening and you choose the people you listen to. A useful premise but it also has a catch: the word “more”. Too much content, too many people — which is exactly the problem that Facebook is trying to address with its algorithmic feed. But what’s a solution then? It’s not the “middle ground” and it has nothing to do with smarter filters.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: John Biggs *) 

In the grand tradition of UPC codes and CueCat, ScanBuy/ScanLife is attempting to barcode the world. Their mission: to allow companies and individuals to place small barcodes on their publications that are readable by over 70 phone models including an upcoming application for the iPhone.

The 2d barcodes - meaning that unlike standard barcodes they are read in both the X and Y axis - can trigger menu events, download content, lead you to a website, or create a contact or calendar entry in your phone. They currently appear in outdoor ads, some magazines, as well as transit schedules in Europe. The program is actually compatible with multiple types of codes, ensuring international compatibility.

ScanLife wanted to offer TechCrunch users a chance to create their own EZCodes for placement on business cards, documents, and tattoos. You can download the application by texting SCAN to 43588 (U.S. only) or visiting www.getscanlife.com in your phone’s browser.

You can then get your own EZCode by visiting this link and typing in the invitation code techcrunch. One thousand invitations are available under this code.

The company, founded in 2000, is dedicated to making 2d barcodes a mainstay of the modern experience. Current ScanLife users can scan the barcode below to receive a special surprise.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Mike Arrington *) 

Mike says... 

Facebook is continuing its war on Facebook apps that push the limits on acceptable user interaction. Last week it was Slide’s Top Friends App, which it briefly suspended. Later Facebook also suspended another popular app, Social Me.

This time they’re targeting Slide’s rival RockYou and their Super Wall application, which tends to have a lot of spammy user content. But instead of shutting down the application wholesale, they’ve simply turned off the viral components of the app - invitations, notifications, etc.

The consequences have been just as dramatic. A month ago Super Wall had 2.4 million average daily users. Today it’s 600,000 and falling fast.

RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda confirmed that Facebook had shut down features of Super Wall, but says they’re working with Facebook to fix the issues and expect things to return to normal soon.

One thing is clear in all this: Facebook is serious about slapping down app developers who go too far in their efforts to grab new users.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says.. 

Regator, a new blog aggregator that hopes to reduce the blogosphere down to consumable chunks for the average user, has launched today in private beta. The site acts like a combination between Digg and a standard RSS reader, allowing users to vote on the most popular stories drawn from 3,000 blogs that have been hand-picked by Regator editors. TechCrunch readers looking to try the site can get one of 100 invites here by entering the code “techcrunch”.

The Ajax-heavy site seems best suited for users who aren’t interested in heavy-duty blog reading. There’s no way to add an RSS feed that isn’t already on the site, and the sharing options seem to be limited compared to more mature offerings like Google Reader. Each story has voting arrows which allow users to determine the most popular articles - a nice touch, but one that may turn Regator into a Digg-clone instead of a more general news reader.

Beyond standard text search, Regator offers an audio and video search across its indexed blogs, but the results aren’t always appropriate - a video search for “Yahoo” yielded a YouTube trailer for the movie Wanted as the second highest hit.

Regator will see competition from a number of blog aggregators, which include Blogged, which launched a similar feature yesterday, and TechMeme, which uses an algorithm rather than user input to rate top stories.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Posted by brian tiong at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Ray Ozzie first hinted at it during a keynote speech last March. But tonight Microsoft is finally launching a preview beta of Live Mesh, a new Windows Live platform for syncing files and, eventually, applications across different devices. (Of course, for Microsoft, a beta means 10,000 people, so you have a pretty good chance of getting in if you sign up now—or not). Mesh is really a key element in chief software architect Ozzie’s efforts to make the Web the center of the Microsoft experience for consumers instead of the PC.

Mesh lets you set up a virtual desktop online, and connect different computers to it. Put any file into a Mesh folder and it automatically syncs between the online desktop and every connected computer. Select a file or folder and you can easily share its contents—photos, videos, music, documents—with any friend or family member. You can also remotely control a connected computer from the Live Mesh desktop. Right now, this works with any computer, as long as it is running Windows XP or Vista. But the longer-term vision is to truly make this work with any device. Mac and mobile versions are coming later this year. And eventually, anything from Xboxes and DVRs to digital picture frames and printers could be connected through Mesh.

A hundred of Ozzie’s engineers have been working on Mesh for the past two years. At launch, it may not seem like much more than a combination of Windows Live SkyDrive and FolderShare, but under the hood it is an ambitious platform play. Mesh is really aimed at developers. Not only does it provide a framework for syncing files between devices, it can also sync applications. The way it does this is by using a two-way RSS or Atom feed developed by Ozzie called FeedSync, formerly called Simple Sharing Extensions.

The basic foundation of Mesh is this feed-centric programming model. A Web developer can build an app using any programming language or tools he likes (Python, Ruby on Rails, Flex) and then sync it across devices and other applications using two-way feeds as the basic data and communication channel. The promise for developers, says product unit manager Abhay Parasnis: “If you Mesh-enable your application, we will let you extend it to other devices.”

Microsoft is offering a set of Mesh APIs that include storage services, membership, sync, peer-to-peer communication, and a Newsfeed feature that tells users the status of different folders and who’s accessed them. The same programming model works whether a developer is building an app for an offline device or for the Web

In many ways this effort is a counterweight to what we are seeing with Adobe Air or Google Gears, which are efforts to take browser-based apps offline. With Mesh, Microsoft is in effect reasserting the primacy of client-based applications. They need not be Windows-based, but I’m sure that won’t hurt. Developers can customize their apps for whatever device they originally reside on—whether it is a PC, a smartphone, or a set-top box—and then Webify them by syncing them to other applications across the Web. These apps could be more powerful than apps confined to a browser-like sandbox without giving up the connectivity of the Web.

One example given to me was a PC-based genealogy app that would update whenever a family member made a change on their computer. The problem with this example, and perhaps the problem with Mesh, is that there is already a solution to that synchronization problem. It is called Geni, and it is a Web app. What I’d like to see, though, is a Mesh version of Word or Excel. That could at least begin to answer the threat presented by Google Docs and other online productivity apps. Mesh makes ciient apps social by linking them together and to the people you know.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 (* Source: Techcrunch *)

Michael says... 

Yahoo Buzz, a Digg-like service that launched on February 25, is now nearly three weeks old. We asked Yahoo to share some of the data from those first two weeks.

The big benefit for publishers is that top Buzz stories are linked from the Yahoo home page, which turns a firehose of traffic onto a story. When those stories hit the home page there’s a good chance that the linked site will have a record day in traffic. Yahoo says they’ve sent 16 million visitors to outside sites in those first two weeks, and they’ve gathered data from some of the linked partners:

• Salon got so excited about a February 28 link from the Yahoo home page to this story that they issued a press release - they had 1 million unique visitors that day, the most ever to the 12 year old site.
• US Magazine was linked from Yahoo on February 27, and had the second highest traffic day ever. 32% of visits that day came from the Yahoo home page.
• Huffington Post reported 800,000 unique visitors from a Yahoo-linked story
• Smoking Gun, Portfolio.com, Dallas Morning News and Imaginova all reported significant traffic increases after links from the Yahoo home page.
• Sugar, Inc. sites have had nearly 1.8 million unique visitors sent from five different Buzz stories on the Yahoo home page

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Michael Arrington *)

Mike says...

Google acquired hosted wiki service Jotspot in October 2006. The service immediately stopped taking new users, although existing users were supported. Now, nearly sixteen months later, Jotspot has been relaunched under the Google Apps team, as Google Sites.

Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out. Users now have a choice between just five basic templates - a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items. Instead of creating structured templates, users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums.

Like Google Docs, Google Sites wikis can be made private, shared with others, or made public. Users can select from a variety of templates, but cannot yet customize the look and feel of the site. Somewhere down the road, Google says, they’ll release an API for the new service as well. Editing is done with a rich text editor that allows for basic formatting.

Google Sites is a free product, with limitations on support and storage (10 GB). Users can upgrade their Google Apps account to a standard edition, also free, and map their own domains to the site. A premier edition is also available for $50/user/year that includes a service level agreement, support and more admin capabilities.

All wiki pages have RSS feeds associated with them to allow users to track any changes.

Existing Jotspot users will continue to be supported on the old platform for the near future, and they will also be given instructions for porting their Jotspot wikis to Google sites.

In an interview today, Google’s Management Director of Enterprise Matthew Glotzbach called the combined products under Google Apps a “Microsoft Sharepoint killer” because it’s allowing businesses to collaborate without all that expensive Microsoft software. It may not be a Sharepoint killer yet, but Google Apps constitutes 2-3% of Google’s total revenues. Some point soon, its going to start hurting Microsoft.

Sample screenshots:

Posted by brian tiong at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Erik reports... 

Daem Interactive has developed Skuair, new technology that it is calling the next generation of 2d code readers. Skuair isn’t limited to reading barcode lines and numbers but can read product logos or images. Skuair works with any mobile phone camera and is easy to operate. The user simply takes a picture of an advertisement or product logo and a low resolution image is sent to the recognition server and an associated URL is returned. The user can receive a variety of multimedia content from the company or person who owns the image

User generated tags will be launched later this year. A short demo of how Skuair works.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Duncan Riley *) 

Singapore based Comiqs gives users the ability to create their own comics with a rich web based editing suite.

Sites and services that provide comic generation aren’t new. Comic Life from Plasq (makers of Skitch) would be the best known in the field, and comes installed on new Macs. There’s also no shortage of “add speech bubble” style web editors available as well. Comiqs offers a similar feature set to Comic Life, but online and totally free.

Users can use Comiqs with photos uploaded from their computer or from a photo-sharing website like Flickr to create a comic. Tools include speech bubbles of different kinds and shapes, frames and fonts. The interface is drag and drop so the learning curve is next to zero. Comics can also be embedded on other sites in a custom viewer for multi-page productions.

Comiqs is currently securing investors to take the service to the next level, where they intend to “work closely with cartoon artists in a revenue sharing arrangement that open up new revenue streams for talented artists and position our site as a place to find talented cartoon artists.”

Comiqs completes with StripGenerator, PikiStrips and Toondoo.

The demo video below shows one frame editing, but it should be noted that the tool can be used for traditional style (frame by frame) comics. You can also play with the service directly without the need to set up an account.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Erik says... 

Web-based IM and chat room provider Meebo is releasing full-fledged APIs for its Meebo Rooms that will allow Websites to embed chat functionality in an automated fashion. Currently, Meebo Rooms can be embedded on sites or blogs manually by pasting in the appropriate code, which has already led to a proliferation of such widgets. There are more than 200,000 Meebo Rooms, attracting millions of visitors a month. (See our previous coverage here and here). Explains Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg:

Now, the servers of our partners can say, “I want to create a room.” It automates the creation process on a server-to-server basis. Also, we will be putting advertising into these rooms.

In addition to the APIs, the company is also announcing the Meebo Network, which will serve ads inside Meebo Rooms across the Web, splitting the revenues with the Websites hosting the rooms. Since each Meebo Room is formed around a particular interest, ads can be targeted. And to the extent that sites participating in the network have demographic data on their members, that can be used for ad targeting as well. Only Meebo Rooms created through the API will show ads, not the ones created manually.

The launch partners joining the Meebo Network are Piczo, Revision3, RockYou, Social Project, and Tagged. Revision3, for instance, will create a Meebo room on its site where fans can watch a synchronized loop of Web TV shows while chatting. Access to the full APIs and the ad network is by invitation only at this point. Social networks could use the new APIs to automatically add chat rooms to every group page. Rock bands or movie sites could add Meebo Rooms to their sites for visiting fans.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source Adam Ostrow *) 

Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider alerts us to a new offering from Google: the ability to purchase ads within newspapers that contain a 2D bar code. If a consumer sees such an ad, they can capture a picture of the barcode, and special software will then de-code it and send them to a specified page on the mobile Web. Apparently, this advertising format is already gaining popularity in Japan.

Will it work in the US?

To be able to use barcode ads, you first need to download de-coding software to your phone. Google provides a link to a site Nokia has setup to download codes, as well as to a company called Kaywa that is offering a form of de-coding software. The problem here is that I know very few people who will go out of their way to download software that helps them participate in more advertising. For bar code ads to work, phones need to come pre-loaded with the software, meaning carriers and device manufacturers will ultimately decide when barcode ads take off, if ever.

What are the benefits?

For the most part, today’s print advertising is limited in terms of being able to measure response. You don’t necessarily know if someone is visiting your store or web site because of your ad. Google, through AdWords/AdSense has created perhaps the most advanced advertising measurement system in the world, and by making newspaper ads interactive, advertisers will have much more insight into how their ads are performing, and presumably, be able to get a better return on their investment. For consumers, the ad format beats writing down a phone number or cutting out a coupon.

When will it happen?

A mobile exec tells Frommer that probably only around 1% of phones in the US have the necessary software installed. Thus, while including a bar code in a print ad might be a nice novelty, it’s not likely to be a good investment at this time. That said, with Google Android ramping up this year with the support of most of the carriers, the company clearly has a plan for how to get the software on more phones. As usual, Google is aiming big on this one, and has a very clever strategy for making it work. However, I think it is likely still at least a few years until they get enough traction to make barcode ads commonplace.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Dave Bullock *) 

We get strange Jacob’s Ladder flashbacks every time our musician friends ask us if we’re going to NAMM, but then we realize they're talking about the National Association of Music Merchants show. Chock full of motorized automated faders and digitally controlled blinking lights, NAMM 2008 was a digital producer's nirvana.

(Note: To get the full experience of the NAMM show floor while you view this gallery, take every MP3 you own and play them simultaneously while banging on some drums.)

Posted by brian tiong at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Dan Neumann *)

Ah... it's good to see 2D black & white barcodes moving into the airline space in the US and Canada. Saving trees makes sense.  Colorzip, a company I consulted for late last year has 3D color barcodes that have launched in Singapore.  How are we doing, Andrew?

Posted by brian tiong at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Alex Chitu *)

They're coming and it will be difficult to get away without having one. Google Profiles will be integrated in most Google services so you have a coherent identity and a simple way to manage your contacts.

"A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you're all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you'd like."

Until now, you could create profiles in Blogger, orkut, Google Groups, Google Co-op and all of them could contain different information. You could also add photos in Gmail, Google Talk and orkut, so the situation started to become confusing.

The new Google profiles are already available in Shared Stuff, Google Maps, Google Reader and will be added to other web applications. For example, in Google Maps you'll find the link to your profile at the top of the page.

Profiles are public and contain basic information about yourself: a nickname (the real name is displayed only to your contacts), your occupation, your location, a list of links, a photo and a short description. They are embedded as iframes in pages that showcase user-generated content (personalized maps, shared bookmarks).


It's not a stretch to see that these profiles are the perfect host for your activity streams and your public activities could become a part of the profile (uploading photos to a public album, bookmarking web pages, posting a new blog post). It's basically FrindFeed's widget that can be contemplated at Paul Buchheit's blog.

A side-effect of the public availability of your profile is that people can find it. "Can people do a Google search for my name and find this profile? It depends. If you put your full name in the Nickname field, pages on which your profile appears may be returned as results by Google." You can already find more than 100 profiles attached to Google Maps pages. Maybe Google will even create a directory for profiles and start to suggest friends based on personal descriptions, location and activity streams.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a Blackberry addict, and increasingly a user of Twitter, I was pretty pumped to learn about TwitterBerry via Download Squad this afternoon. As the name suggests, it’s a version of Twitter optimized for the Blackberry, and it is very well executed.

To get started, I downloaded TwitterBerry over the air (OTA) by going to http://www.orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/ on the mobile browser of my Blackberry Pearl. The download took only a few seconds, and then asked for my Twitter credentials. You can also download using a USB cable if you prefer.

Once that was done, I had access to all of the main components of the Twitter interface: the ability to post an update, see any replies to me, and also check out my timeline, friend timeline, and the public timeline. All of these come with user pictures right next to the respective updates. When posting an update via TwitterBerry, the program will even conveniently tell you how many characters you have remaining.

I check Facebook status updates all the time using their Blackberry app, and I imagine TwitterBerry will ultimately lead to a similar addiction for me. Kudos to the developers of this very simple yet powerful app.

See Also - Twits to Go: Top 12 Twitter Apps for Your Phone

Posted by brian tiong at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Adam Ostrow *)

I have been playing with the google maps application on my blackberry pearl and it's positioning ability is truely amazing and usable even though my blackberry doesn't have GPS.  No more getting lost anymore... 

Google has released a “mobile updater” for Blackberry devices that allows you to download all of the company’s mobile applications in one simple step. I gave it a try, and in reality, Gmail and Maps are the only services with downloadable applications, as the mobile site (mobile.google.com) itself is more of a portal for connecting you to all of the company’s different services.

Nonetheless, some of the services linked to are super convenient. For example, the GOOG-411 link initiates a call to Google’s free 411 service, while the Google Docs link takes you to a nicely formatted site for viewing (but not editing) the documents you have uploaded. Additionally, Google Mobile Updater will keep you posted on new applications and updates to various programs.

I’m already a big fan of Gmail’s mobile app for Blackberry, and much like Google Pack for recommended desktop software, offering all mobile apps as a bundle for Blackberry users should be a good way for Google to drive more adoption of its mobile services.

Google’s Blackberry version follows news yesterday of a Google interface optimized for iPhone.

[via Google Operating System]

Posted by brian tiong at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Mashable *)

Its December already! The year just flew by and in a couple of weeks, Christmas will be here.  Everyone will be wishing for presents under their Christmas tree.  Here is a list from Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins  from Mashable on things he would like to see made better on the web.

Mark says... 

We here at Mashable have been going back and forth on the things we’d like to see for Christmas this year, in terms of what the Web and social media can do for us. After we marked world peace and 10,000 shares of Google stock off, we came up with a bit more realistic wish-list. Of course, a few plasma TVs and a Nintendo Wii would also be welcome

Better Privacy with Facebook’s Project Beacon

Our biggest wish this year is for Facebook to either get rid of Beacon, or to make it less privacy invasive. We got part of our wish already. Personally, I’d like to see the mini-feeds and the news feeds over at Facebook become more useful. By this I mean allowing them to be exported more easily via RSS. I know some of the feeds are capable of this, and there are hacked-together ways of making it work as well, but for me to really get behind the idea of Project Beacon being not just good for advertisers, but good for me as well, I’d like to see Facebook give a little something back this year. To me. In the form of RSS.

Google Should Modify its Mission Statement

The #1 search engine is doing a bit more than organizing the world’s information these days. They’re bidding on wireless spectrum. They’re integrating everyone’s social graph. They’re providing platforms for new communication methods. They’re creating mobile alliances. Beyond the digital world, they’re creating maps of genomes on demand. They’re funding foreign startups. They’re engaging the free market in creating solutions to the world’s problems. They’re going green.

It is ok to admit it, Google. You want to be the internet. You want to fix the world. You can say it. I’m sure it will be quite liberating. Just come clean with us. We’ll still love you.

Net Neutrality. We Want It.

Here’s a tricky Christmas wish. I want network neutrality. I want to be able to throw up my BitTorrent client and not have it crap out at 95%. I want to have a conversation on Skype that lasts more the 20 minutes. I want ISPs to stop monkeying with my traffic. I don’t want the government to step in, because they’ll just gum up the works even more. But I want it fixed. Personally, I think telecom deregulation and de-subsidization is the way to go. I say we give it a shot. Santa, think you can make this one work?

We Want the RIAA and the MPAA to Quit It

The big music labels are realizing they should just quit. Radiohead made more money on one album than Warner made with their entire library this year. If the RIAA weren’t getting paid hundreds of millions a year to sue Warner’s customers, they may have more money to buy albums. All this while they get France to make P2P illegal. Meanwhile, the MPAA is getting legislation in place that forces universities to hunt down pirate students, or risk losing all federal funding. If I could get Santa to bring me one thing this year, I think it would have to be the bankruptcy papers for the RIAA and MPAA.

Google Should Get a Handle on Its Censorship Policy

Google is all over the map on this. They say they lean for free speech, but more stories crop up each week on new ways and reasons for them to censor Internet denizens. I know the company is growing fast (something like 100% staff growth over the previous year?). They’re losing many top tier executives to Facebook and elsewhere. Still, there needs to be an edict from the top to figure out what they’re doing in terms of their privacy and censorship policies. If YouTube is going to ban content that talks bad about terrorists, they need to ban content that shows terrorism. If they ban police brutality, then they need to ban civilian brutality. Or, as is our wish, block nothing at all.

Bloggers, Give Me Full RSS Feeds

One of my biggest wishes for this Christmas is for all the bloggers of the world to turn on FULL RSS FEEDS! Come on, most of you have to be with me on this. There’s little more annoying than coming upon a great new blog or content source, and finding that the RSS feeds only have short descriptions. I do 90% of my news consumption from within my RSS reader. I don’t want to load a special tab just for your site, you’re one of hundreds I read on a daily basis. Chances are, I’ll either unsubscribe or pass up on your content if I don’t have the time to click out and go to your blog specifically. Not to mention the fact that I can’t share your posts with folks on my link blog or easily email an article of yours to a friend who might find it interesting. This one is a group gift. It benefits me as much as you.

Podcasting Advertising Companies, Stop Being Hippies!

I need more podcast ad groups that will live up to their promises. If you have me run an advertisement for three months on my podcast, then you need to pay me. If you have me signed up to your download metering service for six months, you need to toss me an advertising deal once in a while. If you promise me $40 CPM, then don’t give me $3 CPM. There’s a reason that support and respect for the podcasting medium is eroding, and it is you. We’re in one of the biggest advertising booms in recorded history, and its taking place online, yet you guys can’t seem to grab any of the cash. Get with the program.

I Want Better Interoperability in Social Media

While we’re talking about the podcasting genre of social media, I want my services to talk to each other. TubeMogul has started this ball rolling, and Blip.TV does a little bit of this. RSS is sitting there and waiting for YouTube, UStream and your favorite podcast distribution point going “hey! we’re all the same thing - video! how about letting me help share the love around?” I’d love to be able to take a live stream I’ve done on UStream, click a button when I end transmission, and have that shoot directly to my Podango and TubeMogul accounts so that my podcast subscribers and viewers on all the embedded media sites can see it moments after it was live. Even more than that, I want major PVRs like TiVO and Comcast to nudge the door a bit wider open so that I can more easily get my video content onto their systems (as opposed to the climb the corporate ladder approach to the syndication deals).

MySpace, Please Lose the Glitter

I’ve been called elitist for wishing for this in the past, so I checked with my wife and her friends. They’re typical nerdy but non-techie folks who enjoy MySpace for the way it puts them in contact with one another, despite that they are separated by hundreds of miles. As it turns out, I’m not the only one that’s more than a little annoyed when it takes twenty minutes for a MySpace profile to load with all the slideshows and band music videos you have playing in the background. Here’s my Christmas wish: fix it so that only so many widgets are allowed per page. I know MySpace has a culture of excess, so I’d be ok if you limited it to under 25 widgets. But anything above that is too much.

I Wish the Patent System in America Wasn’t Broken

I’m not sure even how to formulate this Christmas wish. I know that the USPTO was designed to encourage innovation. I know that it currently serves as a system for patent trolls to inhibit innovation. I know this should be fixed. I don’t know how. I wonder if Santa has an elf that specializes in Intellectual Property Law.

Twitter Should Buy More Servers

Or something. Just make it stop going down as much, please? We love you, Twitter, but you’re killing us here.

I Want a New Version Number

We’ve been stuck on Web 2.0 for too long. I think it’s time we either picked a new buzzword, or gave ourselves a couple version bumps. I’m even open to doing the WinAmp thing, and skipping a few version numbers. Can we get ourselves up to Web 5.0 between now and the New Year? What about Web Candle + A Monkey?

Posted by brian tiong at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(*Source: Techcrunch *)

It seem apple always has a couple of soothsayers from the dark side... didn't they say the same thing about iTunes, iPod and the new iPhone? only time will tell or until another product company comes up with sexier products.

Erick Schonfeld says...

“Merry Christmas, Steve. Enjoy it while it lasts.” That is the sentiment of Fast Company’s December cover story about Apple, written by Adam Penenberg. (I got my hands on the cover at right, which is a computer-generated image of a sour-faced Jobs by Alex Ostroy). He argues that it is a “dangerous moment for Apple.” The stock is near an all-time high, with a P/E ratio about the same as Google’s. Everyone from Nokia to Amazon to Microsoft to Vivendi Universal to NBC is gunning for it, and its ability to sell 10 million iPhones next year—the famous third leg that is propping the stock up—is yet to be proven. Writes Penenberg:

But when you get down to it, the Apple phenomenon is as much about fashion as it is about technology. You might say that Steve Jobs is the Marc Jacobs of computers (minus the heroin), betting the house his products will be, season after season, cooler than anyone else’s. Yet fashion is, by definition, fickle. Lose the buzz, and you’ve got trouble. And for the first time in years, there are signs that Apple is not infallible and that Jobs’s reservoir of goodwill with his followers is not bottomless.

I’m not so sure I buy the arguments that Apple has to worry about the cell phone industry getting its act together, or the music industry, or the movie industry, for that matter. We still have not seen much evidence of this, although there’s been plenty of grumbling from all corners. The notion, for instance, that iTunes has anything to worry about from subscription music services is laughable. Rhapsody? Please. It is a great service, but hardly a business threat to the iPod/iTunes juggernaut. Apple should be more worried about free advertising-supported music services that are popping up.

I do agree, however, that the “iPod-iTunes pairing was the product of a historical moment that may never be reproduced.” AppleTV is certainly a bust, and Hollywood bosses will not be the easy marks that the desperate music executives were when iTunes first got started. Penenberg’s strongest argument is that in an era of increasing openness, Apple’s insistence on closed perfection might no longer fly:

What does Steve Jobs know that Albert Einstein didn’t? Einstein posited that a closed system would become stagnant over time. . . . Jobs may have to accept that Apple’s next wave of growth–or energy, as Einstein might have put it–depends on syncing up his products and platforms with those of his competitors.

In an age of convergence and simplification, customers are ever more insistent that computers, phones, TV, and music systems work together. For them, being “open” isn’t about sharing patent information or computer code but about compatibility and seamlessness, from the phones in their pockets to the movies playing on their flat screens. . . . Winning outright is a very tall order, of course. It means coming up with a self-contained system so beautifully functional that a critical mass of consumers are willing to enter that world and never leave

It all sounds good. Except that, it has been exactly this closed-world strategy that has worked perfectly for Apple so far. The digital device industry needs a control freak like Jobs to show the rest of us what is possible when everything works as it should. Open systems are great because of their inherent flexibility, but they can also be more chaotic and difficult to manage. The question is whether everyone else can learn from Apple, catch up, and surpass it. And if they do, whether Steve Jobs won’t simply join their parade (at the front, shouting loudly about his new-found open religion) just as it begins to pass by.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *)

Google takes a bite at the TV space...here are some hightlights on its plans to reinvent the box as we know it.

Erick Schonfeld says...

"An open-source operating system like Android for the set-top box could change that. If creating applications for set-top boxes was more like creating applications for the Web, we’d be able to do a lot more things with our TVs—especially if those set-top boxes were also connected to the Web. Want instant messaging and caller ID on your TV? No problem. Want customized information widgets for the TV that scroll breaking news, weather, sports scores or stock quotes from sources you choose in your own ticker at the bottom of the screen? No problem. Want to turn that annoying ticker off? No problem. Want to control the camera angles on that basketball game? No problem. Want to add the live video stream from your friend’s cell phone who is attheir TVs? No problem. The game? No problem. Want to create your own video mashup of fight scenes from various movies that you can edit right on your TV and share with others on"

"Oh, and what about new forms of advertising? Inserting ads into pay-per-view or triggering them when someone presses fast-forward on their DVR require applications of a different sort. You might not like that, but the TV industry would. Any new video ad unit that starts to gain traction on the Web could be ported over to regular TVs—clickable overlays, contextual video ads, unobtrusive sponsorship icons. Why not even let viewers program their own ads with a laundry list of categories and companies to choose from? They might actually watch them."

"When it comes to advertising, Google is not shy about stating its ambitions. “We are confident we are going to revive the television advertising industry,” says Dureau, “by bringing new advertising to it.” Already, Google is trying to make TV ads more relevant, easier to target, and cheaper to deploy. As a result, Google thinks it can attract more ad dollars from smaller businesses that may not have been advertising on TV before."

 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : Virtual World News *)

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(* Source : Worldsinmotion.com *)

Posted by Leigh Alexander :

Looking at market penetration, Mitham opined, "I think it’s pretty fair to say that virtual growth to date has been heavily based on word of mouth and viral marketing.” Moreover, Mitham expects the trend to continue, calling on the example of companies like BMW opening Second Life islands to widespread media coverage as a driver of Second Life population growth.

Finding New Markets, Developing Existing Ones

One can't rely purely on PR for advertising, Mitham added, stating that he hopes to see traditional marketing to start happening. "We’re seeing children actively adopting Club Penguin, Whyville, Habbo... as they eventually grow out of it, they will be looking for new worlds to grow into. There’s a huge market already there, waiting to happen."

The market is developing globally, too, Mitham said, noting that European countries are also actively embracing virtual worlds. Though typically Russia and South America are slower to adapt, Mitham noted, these are large growth areas that will begin adopting virtual worlds more in the future.

"We don't see much for 'silver surfers,'" Mitham added, noting that older users are also a prime growth area. Similarly, he expects corporate adoption to broaden, as companies like IBM encourage their employees to move into virtual worlds for corporate uses, and educational institutes are using virtual worlds in the classroom for the set aged 8 to 15.

Engaging New Users

It's a matter of product development, he said -- developing new products for marketplaces that already exist. Mitham also noted that better user interfaces and new user orientation will assist in driving more widespread adoption, as will other avenues of access like web-based remote viewers.

Diversification is the other key avenue, Mitham noted -- bringing new products into untapped markets, as with category-centric "vertical worlds". One example Mitham raised is Football Superstars, a virtual world currently in development for people who play football and soccer. Half the world is for playing football, the other half is for living the life of a footballer.

Beyond this, there are platform-centric virtual worlds, such as Sony's upcoming PlayStation Home, which will be used as a convergence tool for gamers. "The reason for going in isn’t the new technology; people are going in for a specific reason,," Mitham said.

Additionally, Mitham said that avatars that can cross worlds -- the interoperability work IBM is currently involved in -- will be "a really good driving factor for getting more people engaged in virtual worlds."

Mitham offered some projections on growth in virtual worlds he believes will take place between the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. He anticipates growth of registered accounts in Second Life to increase from 10 million to 20 million, 1 million to 7 million for There, .6 to 3 million for Kaneva, from zero to 10 million for the Chinese virtual world HiPiHi, an increase from 3 million to 10 million for Whyville, and from 15 million to 30 million for Club Penguin.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : Adam Ostrow *)

Google Earth has integrated YouTube, allowing you to view videos from specified locations around the world. A new “YouTube” button in Google Earth places icons on a map to show you where the videos are located. Upon zooming in, you will see more videos for the location of interest. The YouTube videos are plotted according to geotags that YouTube users have placed on their content.

This is a really clever integration between Google products. Versus the Street View feature of Google Maps where the company is sending camera crews around the globe, all of the content here is user-generated. In other Google Maps developments, the company has also added community maps to find things like places to eat, events, and activities, also submitted by users.

Could Google Maps be turning into one of the major social initiatives at Google? Between integrating YouTube videos, user-generated local maps, and potential presence features from the recently acquired Jaiku, it seems like there might be something brewing here.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

( Press Release via Virtual World News *)

TORONTO , ON – October 7, 2007 – SceneCaster today announced the release of the first immersive 3D Web application for Facebook - where anyone can create, transform and explore interactive 3D scenes and share them with their friends – all within Facebook. The application is available at: http://apps.facebook.com/scenecaster.

SceneCaster extends the rich visual experience of 3D on the Web to all Facebook users including consumers, creative professionals, and social media enthusiasts. Bridging the gap between the virtual and real worlds, SceneCaster also connects the Facebook 3D experience to eCommerce sites such as eBay and Amazon, product catalogs from leading manufacturers and retailers and to other rich media social networks such as Flickr.

SceneCaster is breaking new ground in 3D Web applications as the first 3D immersive experience that is built to leverage the "social graph" of Facebook. The Facebook economy is growing every day that could see it achieve 200 million users next year up from over 40 million today. SceneCaster delivers new conversation opportunities to all Facebook users while also providing an innovative revenue model simultaneously with each Facebook profile.

"Facebook facilitates better communication and an easier way to share & discover meaningful content," said Rodney Rumford, Editor of FaceReviews.com, a leading Facebook application review, rating and consulting service based in Solana Beach, CA. "SceneCaster in Facebook makes communications with my real world friends much richer and efficient. SceneCaster's great 3D immersive experience is revolutionary in concept and execution to sharing and discovering the 3D Web." Rodney's review of the SceneCaster Facebook app can be found at http://facereviews.com/2007/10 /04/facebook-3d-rooms-with-scenecaster

SceneCaster was first beta launched on September 25 th at DEMOfall '07, the technology industry's leading conference for innovative and disruptive technologies. Industry media and pundits have praised SceneCaster's debut with over 250,000 pages of reviews and comments residing on the Web today.

"SceneCaster's mission is to mainstream the 3D Web by lowering the barriers to adoption for the largest possible audience," said Mark Zohar, SceneCaster founder. "We've built it from the ground up by combining the very best the Web has to offer today – search, eCommerce and Facebook – with a rich, immersive 3D experience that is accessible within a standard Web browser."

About SceneCaster

SceneCaster is a 3D Web community where anyone can visualize their ideas, share them, and make them real. SceneCaster bridges the gap between the virtual and real worlds by connecting the 3D Web experience to online storefronts, product catalogs from leading brands and retailers, social networks, and consumers' dreams. SceneCaster is a brand initiative of View22 Technology Inc., a leading provider of 3D Web commerce and media solutions used by Global 2000 companies. For more information please visit www.scenecaster.com.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : MediaPost.com *)

Laurie Petersen says :

TURNER BROADCASTING SYSTEM, INC.'S NEW Products Group has signed a one-year deal with Kaneva to build and test virtual world extensions of its entertainment properties.

Each Turner Web community and corresponding virtual space inside Kaneva will contain video players for video streaming of select Turner network content.

"Our exploration with Kaneva of virtual worlds is yet another example of Turner staying at the forefront of consumer technology trends," said Blake Lewin, vice president for TBS Inc.'s New Products Group. "Through this opportunity, we hope to leverage the Kaneva platform to explore how users interact with our brands in a virtual world."

The agreement will grant Turner access to Kaneva's technology and tools to create and use Web communities and Virtual Spaces on the Kaneva Web site and in the virtual world of Kaneva.

"Turner is an ideal flagship media partner for Kaneva," said Christopher Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva. "Turner's high-quality programming and credibility is synergistic with our unique focus on delivering entertainment to the masses inside a virtual world. As a result of this partnership, we will provide entirely new ways for audiences to watch, participate and interact around their favorite TV programming."

Kaneva, which is Latin for "canvas," is a virtual entertainment world that unifies the 2D Web with a 3D experience. It integrates social networking, shared media and collaborative online communities into a modern-day, immersive 3D virtual world. Kaneva enables its members to hang out with their friends online and in 3D, share entertainment, express creativity and passions, and establish meaningful connections with others.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : Caleb Booker *)

We started off in Skype voice chat, but then he met me in Second Life at the same time. Using tools his company haven't even named yet, he was able to broadcast video of our avatars meeting through Skype. (Click the picture for full-size.) They still consider it technology in the pre-alpha stage, and won't feel like it's ready for consumers until they have it running in much higher detail. Even at the low resolution, being "in" Second Life through Skype and, in addition, seeing myself through multiple camera angles at once was a pretty impressive experience.

This was, of course, just the beginning. He switched from Second Life to a custom environment they had built with the Unreal 2 engine and again, streamed it right through Skype. The great part about using an engine like this one was that they were able to import high-detail AutoCAD files and make them look extremely realistic. Soon I was watching a high-quality alien avatar from Mars Attacks! exploring the environment in real-time. Below is a video of the world he had walked me through that they apparently built over the course of a few days.

Recently Rigby showcased the technology at the Copper/Cobre Conference. All of the other presenters went up and showed PowerPoint presentations. Rather than show a series of AutoCAD sketches, he plugged his laptop into the projector and walked the crowd through a 3D rendering. A copper smelter in the U.S. retained him to create a "virtual furnace" that not only showed the schematics in high resolution, but had walls lined with photographs of how everything is supposed to look as you assemble the machine. Not only that, but you can actually enter the furnace itself and (through color coding) see how everything is supposed to fit together.

Even though his company has already been retained by a few engineering firms for more work, Rigby sees more applications for high-resolution custom worlds. He's currently in touch with several galleries in London to create scale models of the buildings with high resolution art renderings inside. People could download them for a token fee (maybe five dollars) and collect them over time as the gallery updates itself with new exhibits. Also, since "Unreal 2" is a server-based platform, you could walk around these little worlds with your friends.

MellaniuM has only been experimenting with the possibilities since September of last year and has already shown some great innovations. If they keep up this pace they'll be the ones to watch in the future.

 See Video

Posted by brian tiong at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Mark Ward *)

Artificial environments could be great places for AI's to learn

Researchers at US firm Novamente have created software that learns by controlling avatars in virtual worlds.

Initially the AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with the avatars controlled by their human owners.

Novamente said it eventually aimed to create more sophisticated avatars such as talking parrots and even babies.

Virtual adoption

"The virtual world provides the body," said Dr Ben Goertzel, founder and head of Novamente.

He said the company had developed a "Cognition Engine" that acted as the thinking part of the artificial intelligences it wanted to create.

This engine had some partially scripted behaviours and goals for the avatar under its control but was also capable of reasoning to work out novel ways to achieve its aims.

Dr Goertzel said business and research reasons drew Novamente towards using virtual worlds for its AI development.

There was likely to be a ready market for smart virtual pets in worlds such as Second Life and many others, he said.

"There are a lot of virtual pets out there and none of them have much intelligence," he said.

"We have a pretty fully functioning animal brain right now and we are hooking it up to the different virtual worlds," said Dr Goertzel. "There's not much doubt that we can make really cool artificial animals.

"They could be ambient animals that go around and try to achieve their own goals, or pets that you can give people so they teach them."

Initially Novamente would focus on pets such as dogs or monkeys but aimed to branch out afterwards.

"I'd really like to do virtual talking parrots," he said, "and then virtual babies. You would get one and it would be yours for the next 18 years."

It's a lot more practical to control virtual robots in simulated worlds than real robots Dr Ben Goertzel

"The gaming industry has been one of the few places where AI has not been a dirty word," he said.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *)

Michael Arrington says:

We’ve been tracking emerging mobile-only social networks such as ZYB and Mocospace and Mig33. All have unique selling points (Mocospace is dead simple to use, ZYB has a rich set of potential users from their address book backup service, and Mig33 has a VOIP tool that has attracted over seven million users), but there’s one solid gold feature that none yet have: physical presence detection and information exchange with other users.

This is the Holy Grail of mobile social networking, and one of the main reasons for taking the networks off the desktop/laptop environment in the first place. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Knowing when your friends are around, and having the ability to meet new people who share your interests (even if it’s just that you are both single), will drive massive usage of networks. But, as with many new services, a chicken and egg problem looms. Until everyone is using this, there is no real reason for anyone to use it. Meetro, an instant messaging service that finds friends based on location, has struggled to gain users over the last couple of years for this reason.

Technical barriers aren’t an issue - cell phone tower triangulation and bluetooth solve a lot of the problems of locating users and transmitting information between phones. What’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.

The Failures

There is a trail of failed attempts at getting this right. Nokia released Nokia Sensor nearly three years ago. It broadcasts information about yourself to others via bluetooth. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, although it is still available for download. Google’s Dodgeball is another example that’s fallen flat - it tells friends (and friends of friends) who are within 10 blocks of you where you are and what you are doing.

The New Experiments

A bunch of new startups are giving this a shot, too. In a post yesterday TechCrunch UK mentions Germany’s Aka-Aki, Paris-based Mobiluck and MeetMoi (the lone U.S. startup). Another startup is Copenhagen-based Imity. It’s not surprising that most of the innovation is occurring in Europe. The current approach is to get java-based software on the phone - very few U.S. carriers and handsets allow user-based installs of java apps.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source : The Guardian *)

28 Weeks Later

Richard Wray says:

Next week's DVD release of the zombie-flick 28 Weeks Later will bring a revolutionary marketing widget, widely used in Japan, to the UK for the first time.

The film poster contains a square box full of black and white dots known as a QR - quick response - code. It contains information that can be decoded by the camera on a mobile phone with the right software installed. A huge poster showing nothing but a QR code has already gone up in London's Shoreditch to advertise the DVD.

These "bar codes" are widely used in Japan to store everything from web addresses and phone numbers to product details. Rather than laboriously typing in a person's phone number or an internet address into a phone, these codes give one-touch access to a wealth of information that can then be stored on a phone.

Japan's immigration service even stamps passports with codes detailing passenger's names and visa status. The 28 Weeks Later codes include details of the DVD's release and links to other material on the internet.

While many top-of-the-range phones such as the Nokia N93 already contain readers, anyone with a camera phone can install software that reads QR codes from companies such as i-nigma and Kaywa. They can even create their own codes.

For the mobile industry QR codes are both a way of making it easier for customers to get to their favourite websites using their mobile and a possible way of generating mobile advertising revenues.

Industry experts believe the time is right for QR codes in the UK. Over half the UK's mobile users have one while 95% of new phones sold include a camera. The first generation of QR codes in this country, however, are likely to be significantly larger than the 1cm x 1cm found in Japan, because most British camera phones have a lower resolution than in Asia.

Philip Makinson, consultant at industry experts Greenwich Consulting, said QR codes are likely to be little more than a bit of fun in the short term but could attract consumers to do more than just make calls and send texts.

"QR codes could help drive not only the take-up of high-end camera phones but make more people aware of the mobile internet and more conscious of the potential their phone has to store information about products and services," he said.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Nick Gonzalez *)

Nick says...
 
People really hate cell phone keypads for data entry.

Anyone who’s called customer service knows voice guided phone applications aren’t new, but they’re a good way to navigate menus and enter text. And applications like Spinvox which incorporated speech recognition to turn verbal voicemails into written text messages, and TellMe, which uses voice recognition to power local search, are useful and popular.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *)

Rand Fishkin explains how to Wiki Jack...

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(* Source: Mashables *) 

Preezo launched last week, bringing another new player to the online presentations scene. Meanwhile, Google Presentations is set to launch by the end of August - possibly as early as this week. With so many services in this market, we’ve rounded up more than 30 tools to create, host and share online presentations. Adiós, Powerpoint!

Ajax13.com - AjaxPresents is an online presentation editor that enables you to edit Microsoft PowerPoint files (.ppt) as well as Open source presentation files (.odp). It requires Ajax13 and does not require installation of any software on computer.

authorSTREAM.com - Users can present and share their PowerPoint presentations with others.

BrinkPad.com - BrinkPad enables users to create presentations with text and images. Be it slideshows, presentations or even drawing, you can do anything with this tool.

Demofuse.com - Users can create interactive website tours in minutes with Demofuse. The tour includes cursor movements and other activities related with a website visit.

Dimdim - Display your presentations to anyone remotely with Dimdim, a challenger to Webex.

Formatpixel.com - Create online applications like magazines, brochures and portfolios and customize them by adding text, images etc.

FlyInside.com - Instantly create, preview, edit, and publish your tours to the web from anywhere there’s a web connection.

Empressr.com - Share your interactive media presentations with your client and access them remotely from any computer.

Honeypitch.com – Combine your business proposal and presentation by inviting selected users to your website. Negotiate your contracts with them online.

mPOWER - Import an existing presentation or create a new presentation from scratch. Share your presentation with users worldwide or publish it to the web.

Preezo.com - Use the fast Ajax user interface to create professional presentations online.

PresentationEngine.com - Create professional looking multimedia presentations by combining your text and media.

PreZentit.com - Display your online presentations to other users.

ProfCast.com - Record PowerPoint presentations, mix them with audio and publish them as a podcasts online.

PPTExchange.com - A marketplace for PowerPoint presentations enabling user to store and share presentations.

Scribd.com - Online library where users can publish their documents and search for other documents using a Flash viewer.

Scooch - Create amazing slideshows of your images.

SlideAware.com - SlideAware is a presentation management platform designed to help you & your team manage the entire life cycle of PowerPoint presentations.

SlideBurner.com - Upload your presentations, share them with others and browse presentations.

Slidelive.com - Share your PowerPoint presentations instantly.

SlideShare - Upload your presentations, find other presentations and embed them in your blog or website.

SlideRocket.com - Web-based application to create presentations, manage presentation directories and share them with other users online.

Spresent.com - Web-based presentation alternative to PowerPoint. Publish, edit and share Flash-based presentations online.

Teamslide - Create and give online presentations for a global audience through your browser.

ThinkFree - A web-based office suite that enables users to create, edit and share their PowerPoint presentations online.

Thumbstacks.com - Make your presentations from a browser, then share them with other users by simply sending them a link to your presentation.

TonicPoint Builder - Read, edit and create PowerPoint presentations right from your browser. Does not require any plugins.

Viewbook.com - Aimed towards professional users like photographers, designers and artists. Registered users can create intuitive online presentations, photo albums and portfolios.

Toufee - Very easy way to create and publish online flash presentations and movies.

Zentation.com - Synchronize videos and PowerPoint files to create professional presentations.

Zoho Show - Create your presentations from your browser, share them over the web and export them offline. Part of the Zoho office suite.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Mashables *) 

From sending one document to backing up an entire business, data storage is the key to everything nowadays. Due to popular demand, we’ve put together a list of more than 80 of the leading file hosting services, many of which are completely free.

Online Backup

Allmydata.com - Unlimited storage and automated backup for $4.99 a month.

Angelbackup.com - Prices as low as $1.95 for 2GB of automated backup.

BlogBackupOnline.com - Automatically backs up your blog for you with up to 50MB of storage.

Carbonite.com - Backup your entire hard drive automatically, no free version.

CrashPlan.com - Automated backup plans as low as a one-time $20 fee, unlimited space.

Datapreserve.com - Automated, managed off-site remote backups, focusing on businesses.

Egnyte.com - Backup your files, store them securely, export them back to your computer in a crash. Share with co-workers for collaborative work.

ElephantDrive.com - 1GB of free storage, automated backups; up to 1TB in subscription form.

File123.com - 1GB of space for free, up to 10GB of backup for as low as $4.95 a month.

gDisk - Turn your Gmail account in to an online storage space for free.

GoDaddy.com - All paid plans, as low as $5.99 a year for 50MB, sync between multiple computers.

IBackup - Anywhere from 5GB to 300GB of storage, no free services.

iOmega iStorage - Automated backups for personal or business users, file sharing available.

Ironmountain.com - Focusing on professional backup solutions from small business up to government agencies.

MediaMaster.com - Unlimited storage of your music collection.

Mozy.com - Automated online backup of your selected files with versioning.

Mp3Tunes.com - Unlimited free storage of your music collection, streaming play of the songs from anywhere.

MyOtherDrive.com - Store up to 5GB of files, use as backup or share.

Omnidrive.com - Backup anywhere from 1GB for free, use as backup you can access from anywhere, or use as a file host to use on other sites.

Orbitfiles.com - 6GB of storage for your files, automated backup, ability to share with family and friends.

SOSOnlineBackup.com - Automated backup of your essential files.

Steekr.com - Online backup of digital media, free up to 1GB, subscriptions for more. Stream your stored music for listening anywhere, share files with friends.

Strongspace.com - Minimum of a 5GB subscription package, files are shareable with other registered users.

Textive.com - Backup your documents for free. Choose to publish some or all of your files, get paid for them.

Titanize.com - Online backup that allows you to snyc with other devices and share links to your files.

Trueshare.com - Secure off-site data backup, packages as small as 3GB up to 1TB.

Yuntaa.com - Sync your hard drive with your online storage, restore, or share. Free up to 1GB.

Sending Services

Arunalabs.com - Send large files to anyone on the net.

Bigfilez.com - Send a file up to 500MB in size to multiple recipients.

Bigupload.com - Send files up to 500MB in size, up to 2GB for premium members.

BoxCloud.com - Up to 1GB of free sending, more space with paid plans.

Driveway.com - Send an unlimited number of files up to 500MB each in size.

DropSend.com - Email files up to 250MB in size, subscriptions get you larger files and more storage.

FileFactory.com - Send up to 25 files at a time at 300MB per file.

JustUpIt.com - Send a file up to 120MB to up to four email addresses.

Jagbox.com - Upload a file up to 100MB in size, share the link, set an expiration time.

LeapFILE.com - Send files of various sizes, 7 day trial, subscription thereafter.

Localhostr.com - Upload a file up to 50MB in size, share it with friends.

MailBigFile.com - Send up to a 100MB file to one recipient, up to 2GB to 5 recipients if you subscribe.

MoveDigital.com - Store and deliver large files easily with a drag-and-drop interface.

Pandafile.com - Send a file, no limitations mentioned.

Send6.com - Send up to six large files at once for free, private branding available.

Sendspace.com - Send files up to 300MB in size, unlimited downloads.

SendThisFile.com - Subscription only, size and bandwidth vary with plan.

Sharebee.com - Upload a file, share the link, no mention of limitations on size.

YouSendIt.com - Email files up to 100MB in size for free, bigger limits by subscription.

YouSwap.com - Upload and send up to 1GB of files to multiple email addresses.

Storage/Sharing Services

4shared.com - Share a file or an entire folder for free, up to 1GB. More space available for annual subscription plans.Badongo.com - Unlimited file storage, inactive files files deleted after 45 days for free members, never for premium members.

BigFilebox.com - Free storage up to 100MB, more space available for a fee.

BooMP3.com - Free unlimited storage of audio files.

Box.net - Up to 1GB of storage of files up to 10MB size each, more space for monthly or annual fee.

BOXSTr.com - 10GB of storage of files up to 250MB in size each, 10GB of bandwidth.

DivShare - Upload a file, store it forever, embed it anywhere you want. Premium service allows you to brand your embeds.

Ewedrive.com - Store up to 1GB for free, more available at a fee.

Exaroom.com - Upload files, make a profile, let friends browse and download your files, access your files from anywhere.

FileDEN.com - 1GB of storage, files up to 50MB each, hotlinking allowed of all file extensions.

FileHo.com - Unlimited storage, you can choose to share your files or keep them private.

FileNanny.com - Store up to 500MB of files and share them with anyone.

FilePanda.com - Upload files up to 200MB in size, share them with others.

Flypicture.com - Unlimited hosting of pictures, audio or movie files, free use for blogs and auctions.

Freefilehosting.net - Free hosting of files up to 3MB in size, use anywhere.

GigaSize.com - Store up to 1.5GB, share files for up to 90 days.

I2drive.com - Plans as low as $4.99 for 500MB of storage.

In.solit.us - Upload your files, keep them private or opt to make them public so anyone can download them.

Jumbodir.com - Upload without even registering, up to 2GB of space and no time limits if you do register.

Mediafire.com - Upload up to 10 files of up to 100MB each at a time, unlimited storage, link and share if you like.

MediaMax.com - Up to 25GB of free storage, 10MB per file, more space and size limits available by subscription.

Megaupload.com - Up to 50GB of free storage and sharing capabilities for free.

Mofile.com - Up to 1GB of sharing storage.

MyDataBus.com - Upload up to 5GB of files for free and share, can integrate with Facebook.

MyFabrik.com - 1GB of media storage you can share and embed.

OneDump.com - Free hosting and sharing of up to 10 files of 5MB each.

QuickSharing.com - Up to 500MB per file, deleted after 30 days of inactivity.

RapidSahre.com - Share an unlimited number of files up to 100MB in size, an unlimited number of times.

Supload.com - Unlimited image hosting for use with sites such as eBay and MySpace.

TagAndFile.com - Store up to 100MB for free, more space available for a fee.

Tilefile.com - Upload and organize your files, share them with friends.

Upfordown.com - 20GB of storage with 50GB of bandwidth the first month for free.

Webcargo.net - Mail files up to 100MB for free, stay online for up to 7 days. More paid options.

WOOfiles.com - Up to 1GB of storage, share with friends.

Xdrive.com - Up to 5GB of storage, access from anywhere, share with friends and family.

zUpload.com - Share files up to 500MB in size, unlimited downloads.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jeff MacIntyre *)

Web2.0 is here to stay and we need a new browser that understands this new user environment. 

Jeff says... 

Flock advertises itself as a "social browser," meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It's a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user.

 

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Nextgreatthing *)

Posted by brian tiong at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 (* Source: Mark Baard *)

That hipster you always see talking into his Bluetooth headset might soon be able to use a similar device to leap into Second Life without even stepping out of line at Trader Joe's.

Researchers at a recent virtual worlds conference at MIT said that special eyewear, display "badges," and speakers worn about the neck will allow us to live more fully through our avatars -- those idealized versions of ourselves that typically boast better proportions than the saggy originals.

Second Lifers wearing the gadgets will be able to attend "in-world" parties and gallery openings, whether they are sucking down beers at Cornwall's or stuck in Fenway traffic. Motion detectors and other sensors in the devices will also show your virtual mates what you are up to in the real world.

It might sound like public safety officers will need to shift focus away from the risks associated with driving while chatting on cellphones to the inherent dangers of operating in two realities at the same time. But conference participants said such concerns are premature.

"It's like you're not going to be allowed to be in a virtual world while driving in the real world," said Robert Sutor, vice president of open source and standards at IBM.

Linden Lab vice president Joe Miller described one of the early products that will bridge the two worlds as a wearable box that creates a "3D sound field" that allows the wearer to hear voices from his virtual world without completely shutting out the real people around him.

The prototype speaker device presented to Linden recently by a developer "is not ready for prime time yet but it's working pretty well," said Miller, speaking at "Virtual Worlds: Where Business, Society, Technology & Policy Converge," sponsored by MIT and IBM.

Linden is encouraging open source developers to create client software for mobile devices. And Blizzard Entertainment, creator of the online multiplayer game World of Warcraft, is hiring developers with experience in Symbian and Adobe Flash Lite for its mobile interface initiative.

Conference participants said cellphones are likely to be the first mobile devices to create two-way connections between real and virtual reality.

More here:

Posted by brian tiong at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Joel Horowitz*)

Video game sales are gaining and will globally exceed music sales by the end of 2007 reports PricewaterhouseCoopers. The growth can be contributed to the fact that more and more devices like mobile phones, PDAs and laptops support broadband services, being able to download games.

The information not only reflects the gaming industry’s strong trajectory but also serves as a painful reminder that the music industry continues to suffer. EMI recently reported, however, that sales of its DRM-free songs and albums have been good since the launch of iTunes Plus, with CD sales of those same albums dropping during that time.

The comments below the article on Consumerist bring up a few very interesting arguments…

More at Arstechnica

Thanks, Consumerist!

Posted by brian tiong at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *)

Fix8, the webcam avatar service, is partnering with , the live webcam broadcasting community.

Now you can access fix8’s interactive avatar creator in Stickam to create the most interesting and entertaining live broadcast out there. This form of animated live video is sure to be a hit with teenagers, and even us adults. I’ve seen more interest in fix8’s avatar service than I ever could have imagined, and the fascination with this type of interactive customization placed in a live broadcast setting is not going to lose its novelty status anytime soon.

Stickam users will have to download the fix8 software, which is free, and can then dress up their avatars, add accessories and incorporate images as well. fix8 was already being used for video messaging and chat services including MSN, Yahoo and Skype. The animated avatar service has also partnered with Pringo Networks for wider distribution. A similar service is Gizmoz, which recently launched an updated beta version.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Fred Guillet *)

Super cool web & mobile applications that everyone should know about...

Thanks Fred!

1-800-GOOG-411

Google 411 is a free service for mobile phone users who want to get phone numbers or addresses while on the go.
http://labs.google.com/goog411

3Jam

3Jam lets mobile phone users do a reply-all to their friends via SMS.
http://www.3jam.com

4Info

4Info is a mobile alert service that can deliver SMS alerts to your phone for any news or sports feeds you're interested in.
http://4info.net

Cellfire

Cellfire delivers coupons to your cell phone that you can then show at checkout to get discounts.
http://www.cellfire.com

Google Gmail Mobile

A downloadable mobile version of Google's Web mail that runs on any phone with Java.
http://www.google.com/mobile

Google Maps Mobile

Get directions and find places online using your phone.
http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html

GoWare DoMo

GoWare's Domo lets you create a home page specifically for your mobile phone. You choose what content it contains.
http://www.goware.biz

JuiceCaster

JuiceCaster is a mobile media-publishing platform that lets you post pictures, videos, and text online.
http://www.juicecaster.com

KushCash

Manage your money on your cell phone. KushCash is a secured money management system that you can access while on the go.
http://www.kushcash.com

Kyte.tv

Kyte.TV lets users create their own TV network with photos, videos, and music. Users can publish content from their computer or on the go with a mobile phone.
http://www.kyte.tv

Mobivox

Mobivox lets Skype users keep in touch with their mobile phone. Using the service, they can chat with their Skype contacts and see who is online while out and about.
http://www.mobivox.com

Mundu Radio

Mundu Radio puts Internet radio stations on your mobile phone.
http://radio.mundu.com

MyStrands

MyStrands Social Player is a music player and discovery tool for mobile devices running Symbian. Users can listen to music, and keep track of what others are listening to in real-time.
http://www.mystrands.com/mystrands/mob-symbian/symbian.vm

 

 

Pinger

Pinger offers a variety of mobile services, including text messaging by voice, and group calling.
http://www.pinger.com

Plusmo

Plusmo delivers slide shows.
http://www.plusmo.com

Radar.net

Radar.net lets you share camera-phone pictures with your friends.
http://radar.net

ScanR

ScanR is a business service; it processes pictures of documents, whiteboards, and business cards, making them readable.
http://www.scanr.com

ShoZu

Shozu is a utility for getting media files (photos and music) on to and off of your phone.
http://www.shozu.com

SimulScribe

SimulScribe converts voice mail to text and can then send the text to your mobile device.
https://www.simulscribe.com

SoonR

Soonr connects your phone to your PC-based files and programs.
http://www.soonr.com

Tellme

Tellme's free 411 service works as a call-in number and as a Java application. Users can get directions and search for local businesses using their phone.
http://www.tellme.com

 

 

uLocate

Where provides customizable widgets for your phone that can display information that's customized to your current location using GPS.
http://www.ulocate.com

WidSets

WidSets makes content widgets for your mobile phone.
http://widsets.com

Winksite

Winksite is a tool for publishing mobile Web sites.
http://www.winksite.com

Yahoo OneSearch

Yahoo's OneSearch integrates all of Yahoo's mobile services in one lightweight application.
http://mobile.yahoo.com

Posted by brian tiong at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Dan Taylor *) 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Dan Taylor *)

Thanks Dan for a super round up of Internet TV today.

Dan says...

Posted by brian tiong at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Dan Taylor *) 

Posted by brian tiong at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Tangos *) 

Yeeyan is an excellent blog which I tracked daily and added into my RSS reader immediately when I found it in last year.

Why? Yeeyan is a group blog which intends to translate articles, mainly blog posts, on tech, startups and internet into Chinese, to help to bridge the language gap. So far, they have done a terrific job. They update blog almost every day, translate many informative posts from A-list English bloggers, such as Michael Arrington, Richard MacManus and Fred Wilson, thousands of readers subscribe their rss or read the blog, including me. They even got the Chinese copyright of Inside Facebook, and will translate and publish it in China.

But now, I would like to introduce Yeeyan to overseas readers as well, because Yeeyan launched its English version recently, that is to translate Chinese blog posts into English, to help foreigners to know opinions and analysis of Chinese bloggers, such as U.S. internet companies’ top 10 mistakes in China and Yahoo China’s Fiasco.

In fact, in late 2005, we have also tried to summarize some Chinese blog posts in English for our readers each week, but we just can not continue it for various reasons. So I’m extremely happy to see Yeeyan’s English version. I’m sure it would be a must-read for those who want to know more about Chinese blogosphere and internet market but bothered by Chinese language barrier. Forget Google translation, to subscribe Yeeyan.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Rachel King via Business Week *) 

The online tools for building collective info banks are making deeper inroads in corporations and rewriting the rules of collaboration

In late 2005, Intel engineer Josh Bancroft needed a tool that his colleagues could use to share company information, from historical highlights to progress of internal projects. Inspired by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia assembled by users around the world, he devised Intelpedia, an internal Web site that draws on the input of employees companywide.

Although it ruffled feathers—some employees don't like being edited by colleagues, especially those further down the org chart—Intelpedia caught on. In a little more than a year, Intelpedia has amassed 5,000 pages of content and garnered 13.5 million page views. "Employees can be frustrated that somebody else edited their work," says Jeff Moriarty, collaboration technical architect of Intel's information technology group. "It's a disruptive capability—it shakes things up."

Welcome to the world of corporate wikis. The sites that make it easy for people to add and edit information have revolutionized encyclopedia creation, evidenced by the growth of Wikipedia (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/7/04, "Wikis' Winning Ways"). And though they've been used by corporations for a few years, they're making deeper inroads lately and are gradually rewriting the rules of collaboration at companies as varied as Sony (SNE), Xerox (XRX), Disney (DIS), and Microsoft (MSFT). "If you did a comprehensive survey of Fortune 1,000 companies, you would probably find some sort of wiki in all of them," says Andrew McAfee, a Harvard Business School professor specializing in technology and management operations.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: David Feldt *)

Posted by brian tiong at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Steve Rubel *) 

I was lucky enough to get in on the Gmail beta when it launched and I haven't looked back since. Even though I've had an account  for almost three years and I get over 100 emails a day, I have chewed up only 18% of the generous 2.8 gigabytes of storage.

However, in recent weeks I have started using Gmail as much more than an email host. With its gobs of storage, speed and tremendous search/tagging capabilities, you can transform it into a personal nerve center that's available from any computer or mobile device. When you tap into this power and combine Gmail with some other tools, it is perhaps the most essential site ever developed. Most of the following life hacks have not been documented.

This series has several parts...

• How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
• How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
• How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
• How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal +  GTalk + iMified)
• How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)

Using Gmail as a Massive Database

I revel in information. Can't get enough of it. I like that I get a lot of email. I scan 275 RSS feeds in Google Reader and I use dozens of bookmarklets and shortcuts to help me manage it all.

Everyday I come across something on the web that I want to save for future reference. While previously I was using Yojimbo to manage all of this information, I found the solution wanting since I travel a lot and need to access my bits from a mobile device. Google Notebook also doesn't work on a mobile device and its search functions are rather lacking. Enter Gmail and the Google Toolbar.

The latest version of the Google Toolbar has a send to Gmail function. Select some text or graphics, right click on it and send it to Gmail.  The Toolbar then automatically feeds it into a new message.

Now, when I find something I want to save I use this feature and send it to a secret  contact in my address book. This is basically a steverubel+[secretphrase]@gmail.com email address (Lifehacker explains the value of these here).

Once the article arrives in my Gmail inbox, I have a filter whisk it a way into the archive and tag it with an @Database label. Further, I am toying with having the same filter also forward these to a premium  Google Apps account that has 10 gigs of space. Now all I need to do to call it up later is enter label:@Database and a keyword. Whammo - an instant personal database.

Here's a screenshot of a photo of Steve Ballmer's office that I felt like filing away for inspiration (I was amazed by its size). Note that the Google Toolbar automatically inserts the source URL. I also use this method to store notes, ideas and musings.

How to get real-time news updates in Gmail

I usually keep Gmail open in a tab in my browser. I also make heavy use of the integrated Google Talk IM client in Gmail. Further, I have become a fan of Twitter - a micro blogging tool which you can control using Google Talk and other IM clients.

Some enterprising folks have taken data feeds from the BBC and CNN and ported them to Twitter. So, as long as you have Gmail open, Twitter will IM you the latest news when it hits.

As I write this post, Defamer is providing live updates from the Academy Awards and these are streaming into Gmail as IMs. (Be sure to turn off SMS alerts if you use these feeds since they will pile up.)

How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail

It's easy to bookmark items in Gmail. However, did you know that you can bookmark on del.icio.us and automatically feed these into your Gmail database? In addition, if you're a Google Reader's shared items (yes, you Scoble!) you can feed these into Gmail automatically too. Then your bookmarks are easily mined from your nerve center.

All you need to do is run your del.icio.us or Google Reader shared feed through Yahoo Alerts.  You can opt for as-they-happen or daily emails Then, set up a filter to label these and have them automatically archived. This works for any RSS feed, not just bookmarks.

How to Manage Your Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail

Gmail does not have a to-do list feature - yet. Further, the Google Calendar isn't integrated either. However, if you use GCal and either Backpack or Remember the Milk, you can control these with the integrated Google Talk in Gmail and IMified.

All you need to do is add IMified to your Google Talk contact list and you can not only view your calendar and to-do's but add to them and delete items as well.

How to blog from Gmail

Last but not least, you can also blog directly from Gmail. This works if you blog on Blogger, Wordpress, Moveable Type or TypePad. Simply set up your moblogging settings so that your gmail address is recognized. In addition, you can also blog from Gmail using IMified.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do when you "hack" together a bunch of free tools. Eventually I could run out of space but I suspect Google will offer storage upgrades by the time I come close. What's unmistakable, is that Gmail is really the Internet's version of the Ginsu knife.

Posted by brian tiong at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Chroma *) 

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I love Twitter. The mini-blog within a blog allows me to keep feeding little blurbs of info, and provides an addictive level of intimacy with others (one friend's week-long work week was fun to keep up with, and I felt his pain at the train delays).

Over the last couple of days I've been thinking about what the balance is between providing enough frequently updated information and content, but not too much so as to become a burden on readers, fans (and I use that term loosely) or followers (ditto).  For instance, when running a weblog, one or two posts a day seems fairly reasonable. 15 or 20 is entirely different, requiring a much bigger level of commitment. It may just be asking for too much. Here at Chroma, I try to post roughly once a day, sometimes a bit more, and, like everyone, I often go a few days without posting at all.

Twitter changes this equation. It adds a parallel, but quicker, tempo to the info-pulse.  It demands so much less, both from the reader and the Twitterer. In some ways t is a natural fit for the way that I, at least, find myself scanning feeds, aggregators and other information: the headline is often as far as I get; I get the gist, then move on. If it sounds interesting, I'll dig deeper and read on, but for a lot of stuff, the headline is as far as it gets. 

Media and brands in general need to also get a handle on this, and figure out what the balance looks like for them. The constant one sentence feed on CNN is an obvious example, and the main trend with newspapers is to use their digital presence as the hub for all the continually updated pulses of information, while the print edition is where more long-form article will reside. But more is not always better. The Economist, The New Yorker and other publications have been maintained a less-is-more approach. It works for them, they avoid being diluted. (Last week the New York Times had a great article on how the NFL-and to a certain extent American Idol- have protected their brand by maintaining scarcity. By not overdoing it, the game, and show, remains  an event).

I know that all brands needs to figure out how much is too much as far as diluting goes. That's nothing new. But reading the excellent article ("Say Anything" by Emily Nussbaum in New York magazine) reminded me that for digital natives (under 30s in her view), how much to divulge is closely related to how often to reveal those intimate details. In Facebook, for instance, that private info-stream is fed via the popular News Feed.  The genius of Twitter is that it is the perfect widget for revealing the tiny bits of private information, which inevitably helps to slowly chip away at the public/private divide of our lives. In just a few short weeks, I realize that I know a lot more about folks on Twitter than my own family and friends.

As Nussbaum's article argues, living life in public online spaces has redefined privacy, memory, transparency and the very definition of identity.It may be the most significant generation gap since the birth of rock 'n roll. If brands are to be in sync with that mindset, how do they address expectations of being as open as the kids growing up this way?  Do they even need to do so? Will they have to rethink not only how much they open themselves up, but also how often, from a communications perspective. As media has been democratized, flattened and blurred, how will brands choose to modulate the tone, tenor and tempo of their voice, or voices? 

There's always talk of many little ideas being better than one big 30-second-mass-media idea, but who knows what the equation really is to look like as far as frequency and openess goes of these littel ideas? How much would be too much? Diluting the brand vs. protecting it, yapping along with the conversation vs. maintaining mystery: there probably aren't obvious answers here, only because we're not sure what this really means at the place where media/culture/brands meet. Clay Shirky, describing the generational shift (and "vast psychological experiment")that we are currently witnessing refers to the difference in pidgin versus Creole to explain what is going on.

Posted by brian tiong at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Chroma *) 

I'm not a huge fan of Digg, but I do love the sexy new bigspy info-graphic.

Posted by brian tiong at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Chroma *) 

More info-graph porn for the fetishists in the house:

Visuwords, the online graphical dictionary. Enjoy.

Posted by brian tiong at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: David Feldt *)

Posted by brian tiong at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Widgify *) 

Web 1.0 –> Web 2.0
[publication mechanism to platform for services]

The primary disruption associated with the DOT-COM boom, retroactively labeled Web 1.0, was the shift from traditional print publication mechanisms to the web as a pervasive publication mechanism. The Web 2.0 is the next step in this progression. Specifically, it is the transformation of the web from a publication mechanism into a platform for decoupled online services. Data and applications are quickly being atomized into reusable components that can be mixed and match to create new services. There is a shift from unstructured data (HTML) to structured data (web services/RSS/microformats).

Developers are experiencing this change via the increased proliferation of web services in formats such as RSS, REST, and XML-RPC. Developers are not the only ones benefiting from this change, however. Just as developers can mix and match web services to create new types of applications, tools are emerging for non-technical users to customize their web experiences – Widgets.

Web 2.0 –> Web 3.0
[Atomic services to integrated experience]

So the theme of Web 2.0 is atomization. If Web 2.0 is about atomization, then Web 3.0 will be all about integrated experiences in a world of atomic content and services. As the web continues to become disaggregated, there will be a burgeoning demand for tools that can help users effectively leverage these “information atoms,” together in a meaningful manner. Not only will there be a need for tools that help users aggregate widgets, but also tools that enable widgets to work together. Imagine a world where there are as many widgets as there are web pages. Won’t it suck royally if they don’t work together?

Tools like Netvibes, Pageflakes, and Uber represent the next generation of content aggregation platforms. Marc Canter has dubbed these tools as Digital Lifestyle Aggregators, or DLAs. DLAs will enable users to manage their content and services across platforms (desktop, web, mobile) and even across social networks. But what about inter-widget communication? Isn’t that part of that whole Semantic Web nonsense? Isn’t that impossible? Nope.

• Web 1.0 = Site owners code and publish, users consume
• Web 2.0 = Site owners code and publish, users consume and publish
• Web 3.0 = Site owners code and publish, users consume, publish, and code

More here. 

Posted by brian tiong at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I came across this wonderful video by HappySlip. It highlights how, today, a passionate consumer has the tools / the ability to reach out with a personal message that is more sincere and believable than a piece of corporate generated advertising. Steve Jobs was asked to describe Apple in an interview a year ago. His response was: 1. Apple is a company that takes complex technology and makes it easier and simpler to use 2. Our goal is to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities It’s about empathy and understanding consumers, not about selling to them. In a post-modern world, companies no longer really own their brands; it’s consumers who mold them; shape them to their needs. Watch this video and see this all come to life.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: b-side via Fred Guillet *)

Fred sent me a link yesterday to Ms Dewey, a black woman with attitude helping with your search. Is Microsoft getting a bit funky? Quite refreshing change from their new Live Search rebranding except for the fact that the flash app did not do so well and crashed after a few searches on my Firefox browser.   Try it out and tell me what you think?

Posted by brian tiong at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Daniel Modell *)

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(* Source: b-side *) 

The ColorCode project I have been working on for the past 6 months (that I could not talk about) has finally launch in Singapore (first country in the GSM world outside of Korea and Japan) with Singapore Press Holding. 

 

"Our aim is to make it a part of life in high-tech Singapore. Over time, we want these codes to be everywhere, in newspapers, on T-shirts, signages, name cards, birthday cakes, and so on, and zapping them will become as natural as breathing," says Mr Leslie Fong, Executive Vice President of Marketing, SPH.

While Europe and the US are still wondering what QR codes are, ColorZip has developed ColorCode to allow mobile phone users to launch, download and/ or purchase anything, from Wap/ Web pages to music ringtones, to mobile video, to purchasing concert tickets.

The information is not in the barcode itself, but on a remote server accessible through the code. So when you scan a ColorCode with your mobile phone, it connects to a server and downloads information, then presents it to you.

Try it out... all you need is a phone reader that you can download for free. 

Posted by brian tiong at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

(* Source: Adrian Lai *) 

Nokia has released some videos on Youtube conceptualizing what the future of mobile communications may look like. They're not meant to be showcases of products or devices currently in the works, but to stimulate discussion of the cool stuff we'll be able to do with our phones/mobile readers in the future.

It's a nice effort, even though the videos weren't that impressive. But here are some thoughts:

1) Companies embracing Youtube as a viable media channel. It's free, users can comment, share, and embed videos into other sites. Early this week, Virgin also tapped Youtube to get it off the ground.

2)  It's an example of Marketing Enthusiasm - Finding a bigger enthusiasm than your brand or product, and getting people involved.  Nokia is about new ideas for mobile communications, not just phones. Perhaps they could also get involved with this.

3) The touchscreen interface is shown frequently. I wonder if Nokia expected this technology to come out as early as June?

Watch the Nokia video: Here

Posted by brian tiong at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Pete Cashmore *)

Social networks are moving into the mobile space so fast that it’s hard to keep up. Montreal-based wireless messaging company Oz is announcing today that they’re taking a range of social networks mobile - Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, Blogger and others. The launch is really aimed at cellphone companies and handset makers, and it’s an extension of their existing services: offering mobile email and IM from MSN, AOL and Yahoo. Existing customers include Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, with around 70 million instances deployed in North America. The client will start appearing on mobile phones in early 2007, they say, allowing users to browse, post comments, upload photos and video clips, join discussions and receive alerts when their friends update their profiles and blogs.

MySpace users can already access the site on mobiles using specific phones from Helio, and MySpace now has a mobile division. YouTube Mobile is on the way for Verizon phones, and there are scores of third party services that will put social networks on your phone (Orb, for one). We can expect social networking to become a key feature on handsets in 2007.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Richard MacManus and Om Malik *)

I’m mildly whelmed by Yahoo Tech. Taking a more than a little inspiration from existing social software and Web 2.0 design, it’s a fairly attractive site (although admittedly a little cluttered - changing the screen width makes it far more managable). It comes complete with tagging, rating, saved items and - yes! - rounded corners.

The site aggregates content from Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Answers and content providers like Consumer Reports. They’re also employing a team of “advisors” to write blogs on tech topics. Unfortunately, the content isn’t that great. Engadget and Gizmodo provide much more depth and insight, even if they’re not so accessible to the mainstream. Personally, I think there’s an edge model that could work here.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)