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SITE NEWS: Droid, iPhone, and Pre: meet the new Techmeme Mobile

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:23:39 -0800

Today we're introducing Techmeme Mobile, a new mobile version of Techmeme optimized for popular smartphones. Techmeme Mobile loads much faster on phones thanks to a sparser page format in which tabs and "Discussion" links load on demand. In addition, button-sized headline links make it nicely suited for touchscreens. We've tested it on the iPhone, Droid, Palm Pre and other devices and believe most people on the go will find Techmeme Mobile preferable to Techmeme's standard page.

Techmeme Mobile is available for all browsers at http://techmeme.com/m, but simply browsing http://techmeme.com/ will redirect there depending on your mobile device. If for any reason, you prefer to view the standard Techmeme page, a link at the bottom of Techmeme Mobile will send you there.

Mobile versions for memeorandum, WeSmirch, and Ballbug are available too, again by appending "/m" to the url.

There's an icon for that

Though Techmeme Mobile is a web page, and not a native app, iPhone users can still add a nice icon to their home screen. Just press "+" at the bottom of the browser, then "Add to Home Screen" and Techmeme Mobile will always be one tap away.

We're keeping that older mobile version too

Still using an old dumbphone? Good old barebones Techmeme Mini will remain available, since it's still better for devices with small, nontouch displays. Introduced in 2006, Techmeme Mini dispenses with "Discussion" links to tidy up the browsing experience on the most basic phones.

What do you think?

We'd love to hear any suggestions and want to be aware of issues you might be having. If you've noticed Techmeme Mobile isn't working right on a modern javascript-capable smartphone, please send a note to and be sure to mention the device model in the subject line.

Cisco iPhone Security App Reaches Across the Network

Alex Williams — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:49:34 -0800

iPhones are becoming a standard in the enterprise. And with the the iPhones, we are seeing a number of applications for a variety of different uses.

The latest is an application for security managers made by Cisco. The application alerts managers to threats in the enterprise so they may respond in real-tme to incidents that merit attention. It's now available in the iTunes store.

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Threats to the enterprise come in all forms. Malware is perhaps the biggest concern for security managers. Its various forms are constantly changing.

The Cisco app is networked to its Security Intelligence Operation (SIO). This group has different functions. It includes a threat monitoring network that includes 700,000 globally deployed Cisco security devices; a database of 40,000 vulnerabilities and 3,300 IPS signatures. Third-party data feeds are also watched. The SIO also includes a global team of more than 500 security analysts.

Real-time updates deliver information to the security manager.This information includes information from security devices, along with best-practice recommendations and other information for tracking threats and analyzing intelligence.

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Sponsor Post: Build a Better Personal Brand With Your Own Domain

Admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00:57 -0800

Editor's note: we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

The concept of personal branding online has become a part of many conversations about social media and social networking recently. The popularity of social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and various smaller niche sites has continued to skyrocket, offering individuals a chance to create a more robust online presence. The age of anonymity online has all but ended, and individuals should seek to gain further control of their online identities.

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A great deal has been written about how to engage in social media to establish a name for yourself online, but a commonly overlooked piece of the puzzle is also one of the simplest: owning your own domain name. A domain name complements the rest of your online presence through branding, using yourname.com or a similar variation.

Some Personal Branding Background

Personal branding is inherently somewhat egotistical, but not necessarily more so than networking at a conference or sharing business cards. The influence that personal branding online can have has continued to grow as people change the way they seek and consume information. Just over a decade ago, social circles were limited to face-to-face interactions and numbers in a phone book. Now, you can have a much larger reach and audience online. Think of personal branding simply as conducting some marketing as the president of Brand You.

The key to successfully branding yourself online is sharing. This could include contributing valuable information to an online conversation, creating original content, passing along great content from others or sharing knowledge from your experiences. Whatever your interests, social networking provides the opportunity to connect with others who share those same interests and want to hear what you have to say. The tools you can use are nearly infinite, but some of the larger social sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are great places to start if you're not already there.

Where a Domain Fits With Personal Branding

Whether you're just starting out online or you're a social media power user who has more social profiles than you can keep track of, a domain is an essential part of owning your brand online. Domains were around long before social networking sites, but many people have never owned one, and they're more relevant now than ever. Owning a domain is very affordable, at under $10 per year, and well worth the cost as long as you put it to use. If you don't already own yourname.com, do a domain search to see if it's available. If yourname.com is already taken, the .net or .me extensions are also great options for a personal site. If all else fails, you can use a middle initial, nickname or other variation. Once you've found the perfect domain, consider registering other extensions (.net, .org, .tel, etc.) as well and redirect them to your primary domain.

Once you own your domain, you might wonder how best to use it. The option that comes to mind for many people is to build a website. If you have some knowledge of HTML or a website-building program, then creating a basic website is relatively simple. Content management systems like WordPress and Joomla are increasingly popular among people who want to build personal websites or blogs without learning HTML or Web coding. Here are just a few ideas of what you can do with a personal website:

Showcase your work in an online personal portfolio.
Build an online resume that highlights your strengths and creativity.
Make a website that features your hobbies and interests.
Create a hub that links to all of your social networking profiles.
Start a blog about a professional field or subject that you have expertise in.

If you don't want to create a website or blog with your own domain, there are still many other uses for it:

Brand yourself with custom email (you@yourname.com). You can even hook up services like Gmail to your domain using MX records, if you don't want to use separate email hosting.
If you already have a blog set up with a service like Blogger, Posterous or WordPress.com, use URL forwarding to direct visitors to that blog when they type in your domain.
Forward your domain to your Facebook, Twitter or other primary social networking profile.

Regardless of what you use the domain for, connecting your name to your online presence is important. When you connect with someone in your everyday life, you can share your domain name rather than having them search for you on Facebook. Use your domain on business cards, resume and other professional materials. Whatever the purpose, your domain can be an essential part of your online identity, without you having to rely on numerous online profiles. As Marshall Kirkpatrick puts it, "I'm in charge here at Marshallk.com and that's the way I like it."

Why Create a Personal Brand Online?

Personal branding has a great number of applications, particularly in the professional world. If you're searching for a job, having a well-rounded online presence is an increasingly important factor that many companies consider. Businesses often take more than a peek at what comes up in Google search results for candidates, whether you think they should or not, so use your domain name to rank well in Google to put the content that you want potential employers to see front and center.

Similarly, use your domain and social media profiles to network on a professional or personal level with others who share the same interests and goals. If you have consistently useful knowledge and content to contribute online, you can come to be known as an influencer and thought leader in your field. If you aim to start your own business or new project, having an established presence and network of online connections that trusts you can make a huge difference in your ability to succeed. Regardless of the direction you take with personal branding, a domain name is a great place to start and can serve as the backbone of your online presence.

Have another innovative use for your domain? Please share it in the comments.

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Google Testing a Permanent Search Sidebar

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:20:19 -0800

According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, Google is looking to streamline its search experience. Using a jazz metaphor, Mayer explains that customers aren’t happy with the fact that Google’s search interface is too unpredictable (much like jazz, especially if you aren’t into it) at times.

To rectify this, Google is testing an overhauled interface for its main product, Google Search. The new interface, that’ll soon become available to a small portion of users, will contain a sidebar on the left side, somewhat similar to the one you get when you clicked on “Show options” after conducting a search, but far more polished.

The sidebar, pictured below (courtesy of Search Engine Land), lets you narrow your search to various types of content (images, books, news, maps etc.), includes various options (such as time frame for the results) and gives you suggestions for related searches.

It’s a big change for Google, a company that’s notoriously shy when it comes to changing its tried and true less-is-more approach, so don’t expect this to roll out for everyone very soon. However, as the number of Google’s various services grows and its search results start to vary more and more based on factors such as your geolocation, we like Google’s idea of adding some order and discipline into its search experience.

Reviews: Google

Tags: Google, Search, trending

Adobe's Upgrades Acrobat.com, Launches New Mobile App

Sarah Perez — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:43:30 -0800

Adobe's online office suite, Acrobat.com, is getting its first major upgrade since the service left beta back in June of this year. The new release, launching tomorrow, is an entirely unified experience thanks to the addition of a much-requested file organization tool, explains the service's Director of Project Management Rick Treitman.

Also new are 35 user-requested features, including file searching capabilities and integrations with web services like Flickr and Google Image Search. However, one of the most exciting pieces to the upgraded service is the newly launched mobile component. With Acrobat.com's smartphone application, users won't just have access to their files on the go - they can also scan in new documents with their phone's camera.

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The New File Organizer

The one major new feature in this release of Acrobat.com is the file organizer. Before, files could live in three different places on the service. Now all files are accessible through one main interface.

The file organizer itself includes some handy features, too. Instead of using a traditional folder structure like you have on your computer's hard drive, the service introduces something called "collections." These are more like iTunes playlists than file folders (or even labels in Gmail) because files can be assigned to multiple collections instead of having to sit in just one folder.

Another key component to the organizer is a file search tool. Believe it or not, the online service had no way of helping you find your files until now. Although the current search capabilities don't yet offer full text search of your documents, Adobe says that may come further down the road.

Also new is the organizer's "import and edit" feature which lets you open external files directly into the appropriate program so you can begin to work on them online. In the past, you had to first launch the program, then import the file. This time-saving step is more akin to what rival Google Docs offers via their upload feature except that in Acrobat.com, you don't have to click a link to open the uploaded file - it happens automatically.

Other New Features

The various online office programs themselves have seen improvements as well in this new release. Buzzword is leaving beta and now it, along with Presentations, lets you import images from online services like Flickr and Google Images in addition to the images found on your computer. One drawback to this feature, though, is that the online image searches don't offer filtering by license type, so a user could easily get into trouble by adding a copyrighted or otherwise licensed photo into their document if they neglect to check permissions first.

The Tables app, still in beta, now has the ability to do more data sorting and filtering. It also adds new views including a print layout view that shows what the document will look like on the printed page.

Acrobat.com Comes to iPhone, Blackberry

One of the more exciting developments is the new Acrobat.com mobile application which will be made available to Blackberry and iPhone users shortly. Built in conjunction with a company called scanR, the mobile application lets users take advantage of their mobile phone's camera to add new files to the service. After taking the photo, the app uses OCR technology to convert the image to text. How well this works is unknown at this time because the app has not yet arrived in the respective app stores.

The app also lets users view their files in a read-only mode, convert them to PDFs, and share them with others via fax or email. There will be two versions of the app made available - a free version and a premium offering which will allow for more PDF conversions and faxes.

According to Adobe, the Acrobat.com service is faring well. They already have 6 million users and add around 100,000 more each week. While a lot of users are students and SMB owners looking for a free alternative to more expensive Microsoft Office software, the company says they're also seeing the service picked up and used in small workgroups at larger companies. However, Adobe admits that they're not an enterprise play yet and they also won't reveal how many people use the premium version of the service - only that they're "happy" with the number thus far.

If you want to try the upgraded online suite, you can do so at www.acrobat.com as of tomorrow (Saturday, November 21st) at 6 AM EST.

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Twitter and Facebook Client Brizzly Now Open to All

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:00:39 -0800

Brizzly is a web-based Twitter and Facebook client that has been gaining some momentum and buzz over the past couple months.

It has some slick features like being able to view photos and videos in-line in your Twitter stream, threaded DMs, and built-in photo uploading. It also recently added support for Twitter Lists. However, it’s remained in invite-only mode. That changes today though, as Brizzly is flipping the switch and allowing anyone to sign up for an account.

The company tells us that they’ll “still be in beta for a bit, which just means we’ll be continuing to experiment as usual.” One of those experiments, which launches today, is on-the-fly translation of tweets, which in theory lets you follow people who tweet in different languages and have them translated into your language of choice in your stream.

Brizzly is trying to compete in a very crowded space, but have an exceptionally strong team including Jason Shellen, who worked at Blogger with Evan Williams, and Chris Wetherell, who’s credited with having created Google Reader. Today, the company also announced they’ve added another ex-Googler to the mix, Ben Darnell, who was most recently working for Facebook via the social network’s acquisition of FriendFeed.

If you’re not yet familiar with the product, this video gives a brief overview:

Let us know what you think of Brizzly in the comments.

Reviews: Brizzly, Facebook, Google Reader, Twitter, blogger

Tags: brizzly, facebook, social media, twitter

Sony Wants a Bite Out of Apple’s iTunes

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:12:46 -0800

Sony is one of world’s best known brands when it comes to home electronics, gadgetry, and entertainment.

However, the landscape has changed in recent years. You can have the best media player around, but if you don’t offer users a place where they can easily get content for it, it won’t be competitive. And it’s been proven twice (first with the iPod, then with the iPhone) by Apple’s iTunes. Although a bit late to the game, Sony has now revealed its plans to launch its own iTunes-like online store, imaginatively called Sony Online Service.

The folks at Sony hasn’t given details about the store’s look or features, but they’ve said it will sell music, movies, books, and apps for mobile gadgets. Furthermore, it’ll also let users upload content (such as photos and videos) to their online accounts, making the store a cross between YouTube and iTunes.

The company also expects the new service to improve their faltering revenues. “We know we have to restore profit in our game and TV business. We must deliver sustainable financial results,” said Sony CEO Howard Stringer, speaking at a news conference at Sony’s headquarters in Tokyo.

Sony has been quite successful with its PlayStation Network, a digital content delivery service that lets users (33 million of them) download games and other content on their PS3. But Sony is a company with many blunders on the software side – for example one needs only remember the rootkit incident or SonicStage, the awful software that comes with the company’s MP3 players. After all those ups and downs, it’ll be interesting to see if Sony can transfer PSN’s formula to other areas.

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: itunes, sony, Sony Online Service

HOW TO: Prepare a Thanksgiving Feast With Help From the Web

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:27:16 -0800

It’s almost time for Thanksgiving, and that means family traditions. But what if your family doesn’t really have any, or you simply want to start your own new ones? This might be the year where it’s your turn to up the heat and put together a Thanksgiving feast. With social media and the web, we’re lucky to have everything we need at our fingertips, through videos, online invitations, and online recipe collections. Shoot, if you want to throw a proper Thanksgiving dinner and want to avoid squabble over the wishbone, you can even order Plastic Wishbones online!

Here are all the resources — recipes, videos, menus, and tools — you’ll need to put together your own traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Inviting Your Guests

You could always go with the traditional standby means of inviting the family via telephone, but if your family is technically savvy you’ll want to utilize the newer tradition of creating a Facebook Event or sending Thanksgiving-themed eVites.

I’m a big fan of the clever electronic cards from SomeeCards.com, and they’ve recently added the ability to use them as invitations. If you want to get more into it, MyPunchbowl.com lets you do a full-course of Party Planning and have even recently integrated Facebook and Twitter into their product to offer new ways to send your invites.

Got a family full of iPhone addicts? Check out the iHost Thanksgiving app, which lets you send invites, as well as plan your menu, create a shopping list, make a budget and even helps you organize your recipes.

Decorations and Drinks

I recently threw a party without any tables or chairs, but if you’re more concerned about the comfort of your guests than I am, then you might be just as interested in the decor for your Thanksgiving festivities.

Etsy.com has a Thanksgiving section which has some cute, handmade decorations, like this 5-piece Thanksgiving Pom Set or this Felt Turkey for the kids. If you’re into a more standard look, though, check out the centerpieces offered at flower retailers like 1800Flowers.com. And if you want to get really fancy, both Country Living and Better Homes & Gardens have photo collections of creative table settings and decorations. Like arts and crafts? Then do-it-yourself with Thanksgiving decor guides from HGTV which has everything from centerpiece ideas to printable place cards.

As for drinks, Jones Soda will personalize bottles of soda for you and your guests for $16.99 per 6-pack or $29.99 for a 12-pack. For the brave they also offer special “Tofurkey and Gravy” flavored soda. More grown-up guests may appreciate PersonalWine.com, where you can get your own private label wine — you can choose the type of wine and design your own label. What says “Happy Thanksgiving” better than your own personal vintage?

Of course, if personalized wine is a bit too much, my Internet celebrity crush, Gary Vaynerchuk, host of WineLibrary.tv, has a section called GaryVee’s 2009 Thanksgiving Wine Picks to help you figure out which wine to serve with your meal.

What to Make and How to Make It

In families like mine, we never had family recipes passed down from generation to generation. As a kid, I didn’t watch anyone cook a turkey, because for all I knew, the turkey’s name was Butterball and it was delivered by a magical Thanksgiving stork into our oven, fully dressed and stuffed.

The first time I tried to cook a turkey, it required heavy-duty dishwashing gloves and a few grown-up tears. Now that the web is chock-full of turkey video tutorials, well, my gloves haven’t yet come off, but at least the turkey preparation doesn’t require group therapy afterwards.

One thing that the Internet is not lacking is an abundance of “Thanksgiving Guides,” with recipes, tips and videos for all of your holiday cooking and entertaining needs. Martha Stewart’s Everything Thanksgiving guide has in-depth videos and instructions on everything from how to make a turkey (good for the first-timers) to desserts, how to lay your table, and what do do with leftovers. AllRecipes.com has a Thanksgiving Traditions guide that offers tons of recipe and menu ideas as well as a Q&A section.

Epicurious.com offers a Thanksgiving Guide, as well, with recipes and videos on how to cook everything from turkey to pies. I’d call this the most helpful of all the guides, simply because they have everything for the 101 cook. If you’ve been cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 30 years, you’re probably not going to need a website for moral support anyway.

The Food Network also has a Thanksgiving 2009 Guide that includes menus and recipes from all of your favorite chefs. They also have a section to submit your questions via video (or email if you’re camera-shy). Rachael Ray offers a collection of her favorite holiday recipes from the traditional — like mashed potatoes — to the original — like a spicy fajita nacho appetizer. Real Simple pitches in with a great selection of Thanksgiving lists, how-tos, and checklists. Don’t miss their how to guide on fixing common holiday problems.

If you’re a collaboration junkie, SpringPad has put together a Springsgiving page that unites food bloggers all in one place to share their favorite Thanksgiving dishes.

Videos That Will Help You Survive the Holiday

If you’re not home to watch the Food Network during the day, don’t fret, because Epicurious has an invaluable set of videos that teach you all sorts of cooking basics. The Food Network’s guide is also stuffed full of helpful videos. Another video gem is Food2.com’s How2 Holidays collection.

If you’re really committed to blowing tradition out of the water, then how about deep-frying your turkey? eHow.com has an entire series for that (as well as basting, cooking, and other topics). I’ve never deep-fried a turkey before, but after watching these videos, it seems a whole lot more gratifying than waiting six hours for an oven turkey.

iPhone Apps and Portion Calculators

Maybe way back in 2002 you had to be defeated in your independence and call Mom for pointers on how to pick out the right-sized bird — but not this time!

If by some kind of miracle of common courtesy, all of your guests have RSVP’d and you know the exact amount of people that you’ll be serving on Thanksgiving, then Butterball has you covered with their portion calculator (found right on the home page). You can tell it how many adults and kids you’ll be feeding, plus your preference on leftovers and whether you’re heavy or light eaters and the calculator will come back at you with how many pounds of turkey to cook, and how much stuffing it’ll take to fill the bird.

Now consider that everyone has RSVP’d and you have a mix of vegetarian eaters, traditionalists, and dieters all at one table. Disaster, right? Not when you have the web in your arsenal. Either of the interactive menu planners put together by Epicurious or Bon Appetit will help you figure out what to make.

And of course, if you have an iPhone, and it’s Thanksgiving — there’s an app for that. Don’t have a stove, microwave or standalone kitchen timer? No worries, the Chef’s Timer iPhone app lets you set up to four different timers at one time for all of your side dishes and turkey cooking needs.

Don’t want to waste countertop space with a laptop or your printed recipes? The Turkey Recipes iPhone app gives you a collection of recipes as well as the ability to submit your own and create a shopping list. Still trying to save counter space, but desperately need those video tutorials? Expert Video: Holiday Cooking offers video tutorials for recipes right on your iPhone.

And for all of those who couldn’t make it to your (totally tech savvy) Thanksgiving feast, you can just go ahead and tweet a few good TwitPics, or upload a new Flickr set and over-tagged Facebook album showing them all the fun they missed!

What other Thanksgiving tips can you share? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, iStockphoto, springpad

Tags: Food, List, Lists, thanksgiving, turkey

Was Chrome OS a Disappointment?

Sarah Perez — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:28:27 -0800

It's the morning after the big Chrome OS event where Google executives and engineers revealed a myriad of details about the company's first attempt at creating their own operating system. The highly anticipated news conference was tracked all over the web, liveblogged by technology sites, and Twittered so much that it's still listed as a "trending topic" as of this morning.

But now that the news is out, has Chrome OS lost its shine? People had high expectations for Google's new operating system but the end result doesn't look like the revolutionary, "change the world" product many had hoped for.

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Yes, Chrome OS is Different

Don't get us wrong - Google's OS is different than whatever Windows, Mac, or Linux build you have running on your computer today. The new OS does away with desktop applications entirely - everything you use on Google Chrome OS runs on the web. Of course, the company hopes you'll use a lot of Google products like Gmail and YouTube, but it doesn't limit you to just Google-branded services. In the built-in applications area, there are also links to other web apps like the online TV streaming service Hulu.com and music sites Lala and Pandora. To be fair, Chrome OS even links to Yahoo and Microsoft's webmail offerings right out of the box.

Google's major goal with Chrome OS is to moving computing off our personal hard drives and into the cloud...the Google cloud. To accomplish such a feat, they've made the web browser the OS. Everything you need (in theory) is accessible through the included Google Chrome browser, the same browser the company currently offers to Windows users with Mac and Linux versions expected by the end of this year.

As exciting as that vision is, we have to wonder if people - especially the mainstream netbook users the OS is aimed at - are ready for this big of a switch. And more importantly, is the technology itself ready to make the change a comfortable and seamless experience?

...but is it Better?

After digesting yesterday's news, some lingering questions remain. Was this the OS everyone was hoping for or has Google let us down?

You Can't Just Install Chrome OS - You Have to Buy a New Netbook

To begin with, one of the more surprising reveals that came out of yesterday's news is that the OS cannot be installed on your own computer. Oh sure, there are downloads available that use Google's open-sourced code to create bootable builds tech-savvy users and developers can play with, but the official word from the search giant is that anyone wanting to use the "real" Google Chrome OS will have to purchase a new netbook to do so. You cannot simply download it from the web and install it on any machine.

Part of the reason for this restriction is driver support. Google is working with carefully selected manufacturers to offer a handful of netbooks running the OS in the coming year. By going this route, they don't have to provide an entire ecosystem of drivers for every piece of hardware out there - they can pick and choose which ones to support. They'll likely limit the number of peripherals supported, too. According to what was said yesterday, the company will support "mass storage devices" (think USB flash drives and digital cameras) but were cagey on how they plan on offering printing support. All they would say is that they're planning on an "innovative approach" when it comes to printing, whatever that means. Hopefully, they're planning to do something more than just integrating with Kinko's and FedEx's online document services, for example. Printing, (sorry Google) is not a web app just yet.

No Other Web Browsers Supported

Another big disappointment is the company's decision to limit all web surfing to the one included browser, Google Chrome. Firefox and Safari users are out of luck - no other browsers will be supported. But before you cry out "antitrust!," be warned - Google has this covered. The code base used to build the OS is open-source - that means anyone take the code and create their own version of Chrome OS. As was carefully - and haltingly - explained by Google's VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, other browser makers can take the code and build their own OS if they want to. But let's get real - Firefox Chrome OS? We don't think so. The reality is that fans of other browsers are simply out of luck if they want to use this operating system.

Offline Access is Limited. Your New Netbook is Now a Brick.

One of the questions that got glossed over during the Q&A session at the end of the event is how Google's OS plans to deal with offline access. The world is not blanketed in Wi-Fi yet, so what can this web-based OS do without the web? Surprisingly, the answer given didn't refer to any subsidized deals with cellular providers regarding deals to offer built-in 3G connectivity for the new netbooks. Instead, Pichai explained that the OS was built for use with Wi-Fi.

Of course, a handful of Google products use Google Gears, a technology that makes websites available offline. For example, Gmail uses Gears to create an offline version of your webmail inbox which you can use to read and respond to email until internet connectivity becomes available again. At that point, all the changes are synced back to Google's servers. Although Google didn't specifically refer to Gears when answering the question, there's no reason to doubt that it will work in Chrome OS's web browser the same as it does now in the standard Chrome browser.

However, Pichai did make note of Chrome OS's support for HTML5, an upcoming revision to the core markup language used to build the web. In the new specification, a key feature is offline support for web apps. However, web application developers will have to rebuild their apps in order to use HTML5, so users will be dependent on each individual company to make this change. While it's believed that one day this spec could make the whole web an offline app, the reality is that most developers have yet to implement this technology in their services yet. Even by Chrome OS's launch next year, there's no reason to believe the landscape will have changed significantly by then.

Do You Really Need an OS or Just the Chrome Web Browser?

Finally, the big question regarding Chrome OS is why? What can the OS do that any operating system running the Chrome browser cannot? Based on what was shown yesterday, the answer is very little. Chrome OS's brand-new features consist of two things: application tabs and panels. The panels are persistent windows that pop-up in front of your web browser's main window. For example, Google Chat, the company's IM service, can live in a panel that stays on top no matter what window you're viewing.

Application tabs, meanwhile, are special tabs that give you easy access to your most frequently used web apps from the browser. Any page tab can be made into an application tab with one click and the resulting "tab" is represented with the colorful icon for that site or service. While that's certainly a cool feature, it alone isn't a major selling point for the OS. That would be like saying you have to buy Mac OS X because of the dock or Windows because of the taskbar. You need a million of these little features combined to add up to a compelling reason to buy an OS.

That's not to say that Chrome OS itself doesn't have worthwhile features of its own - like its built-in security mechanisms or its auto-update system, it's just that these aren't the kinds of things that sell it to an end user. The questions consumers want answers to are what does it do that's special? What does it look like? And for now, the answer is "it's basically just a web browser."

Revolution? Maybe Not Just Yet.

At the end of the day, Chrome OS is an exciting, but not fully realized, vision. Although it has potential, the world may not be ready for a web-based netbook right now. Also, the technology needed to make the Wi-Fi only netbook useful without an internet connection isn't up to full speed either. At the end of the day, the netbook will be marginally more useful than an iPod Touch - when connected, it's amazing. Offline, not so much.

While you might not rush right out to buy a Chrome OS netbook when they first launch, there could come a time - sooner than you think - when it becomes a reasonable choice. When the majority of apps work offline and you've fully transitioned away from desktop apps, a web-connected netbook, especially one that's affordable, could easily become your everyday computer. That day hasn't arrived yet. For now, Chrome OS is an exciting glimpse at the future of computing, but not a practical device for the majority of users.

Disclosure: Sarah Perez freelances for Microsoft's Channel 10 blog, but is not a Microsoft employee. Her primary web browser is, in fact, Google Chrome which she uses exclusively.

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Mac Twitter Client Socialite Adds Twitter List Support

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:10:31 -0800

In the month or so since Twitter started rolling out its Twitter Lists feature, a number of web and Adobe AIR based clients have added support for it.

However, we haven’t seen any native Twitter apps support Lists. Today Realmac Software released Socialite Beta 3 for Mac OS X, including, among other enhancements — basic list support. Realmac acquired Socialite (then named EventBox) back in October and expects to release the first version of the program by the end of the month.

Socialite is a multi-purpose social media client, and like Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck and Brizzly, it lets you track and update your Facebook and Twitter accounts. But Socialite goes a little further — adding support for Google Reader, Flickr, Digg and even RSS feeds.

The nice thing about Socialite is that it is a native Mac OS X app, which means it runs faster and has better performance and stability than some of the other multi-service clients. In Socialite 1.0, Beta 3, Realmac has fixed some bugs, changed how some of the authorization system works and added some new features.

The biggest new feature is support for reading Twitter Lists. Right now you only have the ability to watch lists that you’ve created because the Twitter API doesn’t let developers access all subscribed lists. If that changes in the future, Realmac will update List support accordingly. For version 1.0, Socialite won’t have the ability to add or edit your own lists, but that’s something the team is working on for future releases. Finally, although not in Beta 3, Retweet support (as Twitter officially supports it) is due in the final release of Socialite 1.0.

You can try out Socialite for free right now if you have Mac OS X 10.5 or Mac OS X 10.6. The program has come along way in just the last six or seven weeks and we look forward to seeing what else the app brings.

What do you think about the state of list and retweet support in different Twitter clients? Let us know!

ALSO: Be sure to check out Mashable’s Lists on Twitter!

Reviews: Brizzly, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck, Twitter

Tags: realmac, Socialite, twitter, Twitter Lists

FastPencil: Turn Your Blog Posts into a Published Book

Frederic Lardinois — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:42:43 -0800

Writing a book will never be easy, but FastPencil's mission is to make things easier for authors by bringing this process online and to collaborate with others. FastPencil takes writers from idea to published book. The service offers features for collaboration, editing and design, as well as professional consulting services for authors. One cool feature of FastPencil is that it can import blog posts and turn them into books and e-books that bloggers can then sell through all the major book distribution channels.

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Features

The areas where FastPencil exceeds are online editing, collaboration and distribution. Fast Pencil offers a surprisingly comprehensive online editing suite. While this editor isn't quite as fully-featured as Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or Apple's Pages - there is no feature to create headlines or tables of content, for example - it's more than enough to power the service's online collaboration tools.

In it's latest update, which launched earlier this week, FastPencil introduced a number of interesting new features. These include new templates, new roles for collaborators (co-authors, project managers) and forums for prospective authors to meet and discuss their work.

Turn Your Blog Into a Book

If you import your blog feed, FastPencil will turn every blog post into a chapter. The service also imports images from these posts. These images have to be inserted at the beginning or end of a post, however. You can't have your text flow around an image.

Publishing: Hardcover, Paperback, E-Book

Once you have finished your book, you can publish it as an e-book and printed book. These services, however, do cost. These paid services include printing, obtaining ISBN numbers, and organizing the distribution of your book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram Digital and other retail partners. FastPencil also offers a number of editing services like design, illustration and editing services. Besides printing hardcover and paperback books, FastPencil can format books for virtually any digital platform, including DRM-free ePub e-books and the Kindle.

Don't Need All These Services? Try SmashWords

If you don't need all of these services from Fast Pencil - or if you have already finished your book - another service worth looking at is SmashWords. Smashwords specializes in e-books. Thanks to deals with Barnes & Noble and Sony in the US and Indigo Books & Music's Shortcovers in Canada, self-published authors can get their e-books into traditional distribution channels, or sell their books directly on SmashWords. Smashwords acquired the New Zealand-based e-book self-publishing service BookHabit earlier this week.

Discuss

New Moon Videos Have Already Been Viewed 400 Million Times Online

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:47:00 -0800

New Moon might go down as one of the biggest movies of the year, but it’s also quickly becoming one of the biggest online events ever, at least in the world of online video.

Visible Measures, which tallies what it calls the “True Reach” of an online video (the original, official trailers, copies of the trailers, fan-made trailers, fan commentary, etc.), now reports that New Moon is the second biggest event of all-time, trailing only the omnipotent Soulja Boy in term of total views. In all, the firm estimates that New Moon inspired videos have now been viewed in excess of 400 million times.

Looking at the charts, it would appear that Soulja Boy’s position at the top is likely to remain secure, but if you tally the totals for both the first Twilight movie and New Moon, the franchise combines to take the top slot, beating out the likes of Beyonce’s Single Ladies video, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Susan Boyle. The domination is likely to continue for a while – the third Twilight movie has already been filmed and will be released next summer.

Reviews: twilight

Tags: new moon, twilight, video

Target Facebook Page Updates by Location or Language

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:49:52 -0800

Here’s a neat new feature we noticed on our Facebook Page this morning: the ability to target updates to users in specific locations or users who access the site in a specific language.

You can imagine this being useful for situations in which you’re promoting an event, or, posting content in multiple languages. By targeting only those that an item is applicable to, you reduce your chances of overwhelming your fans with unnecessary information to the point that they start hiding your updates.

To use it, there’s now a pull-down next to the “Share” button with the option of “Everyone” or “Customize.” Everyone lets you post a message to all of your fans as normal, but Customize lets you enter in a location (all the way down to the city level) and/or a language to post only to those that the settings apply to.

At the moment, it doesn’t appear you can create more than one custom group, so you’ll have to edit it each time you want to try a different location or language. You can however target multiple locations and languages simultaneously.

How might you use the new targeting capabilities? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: facebook

The Future Is All About Context: The Pragmatic Web

Guest Author — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:14:15 -0800

The semantic Web has long been heralded as the future of the Web. Proponents have said that Web experiences will some day become more meaningful and relevant based on the AI-esque computational power of natural-language processing (NLP) and structured data that is understandable by machines for interpretation.

However, with the rise of the social Web, we see that what truly makes our online experiences meaningful is not necessarily the Web's ability to approximate human language or to return search results with syntactical exactness. The value of the semantic Web will take time because the intelligent personal agents that are able to process this structured data still have a long way to go before becoming fully actualized.

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This guest post was written by Alisa Leonard-Hansen.

Rather, meaningful and relevant experiences now are born out of the context of our identities and social graph: the pragmatics, or contextual meaning, of our online identities. My Web experience becomes more meaningful and relevant to me when it is layered with contextual social data based on my identity. This is the pragmatic Web.

We need to better understand our identity as it begins to define our experience of the Web and the networked-enabled world we inhabit. Our online identity will increasingly be defined by three "pillars": who I say I am, what I do and say, and who I connect to (and who connects to me).

To clarify, our online identities are comprised primarily of three specific kinds of data:

Explicit or prescriptive data (i.e. the data that I input about myself: name, age, occupation, etc.);
Activity or behavioral data (i.e. what I do and say online);
Relationship data (i.e. my social graph and what my connections say about me).

If we consider the power of this pragmatic Web (a highly relevant and individualized Web experience based on the ubiquity of our identity data), we find that it not only impacts individual user experience, but that it opens up entirely new opportunities for business online. The future is not "business as usual." Business models will be based on what Elias Bizannes of the Data Portability Project calls the "information value network-economic value," derived from services that focus on activities with comparative advantage and that leverage free access to data.

Consider this: as media companies scramble to identify new and innovative ways to advertise to the sea of nameless, pixeled users who graze through their content each day, a rich supply of highly valuable identity data lies just beneath the surface, left unmeasured and unmonetized.

Facebook is nothing more than perhaps the largest single database of this kind of online identity data: explicit, activity and relationship data. With the development of Facebook Connect, which allows for the "open" exchange of Facebook user data between Facebook and third parties, Facebook could conceivably (and will) create an Facebook Connect ad network (read: data exchange), supplied by the valuable and highly targetable user identity data that is currently siloed on Facebook's servers. This identity data within Facebook is what makes the activity in "social media" so valuable.

But the centralization of identity data on one or two major networks (such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace) won't realize the vision of the pragmatic Web. So, how will the pragmatic Web come to be? How do we realize the power of a dynamic Web that is based on our identities? We do so by empowering individuals to access and control their identity across any site or service, through standards that enable data portability and open Web inter-operability. The resulting vision is that of a highly personalized, dynamic, relevant and remixable Web experience, yielding greater access to information through discovery, communication and collaboration. For enterprise, this could mean the rise of innovative new business models, based on data-driven value exchange.

One final note on identity data as it relates to enterprise. As Bizannes points out, the value of this kind of identity data rests on the key factors of time and timeliness. Essentially, identity data is valuable only if it is recent. Facebook wouldn't be able to sell your (permissions-enabled) data to advertisers if it used your explicit data from a year ago rather than from today. So, Bizannes argues that real-time "access" to someone's identity matters most, and it's no longer about data "capture." Thus, as new business models arise out of monetizing permissions-enabled identity data, the value of the business models will depend on these entities having real-time access to the data.

Guest author: Alisa Leonard-Hansen is a digital strategist and Social Media Evangelist at iCrossing, a leading global digital agency. She is also the Communications Chair for the Data Portability Project and blogs about the social Web on her blog, TheWebisSocial.com. Follow her on Twitter @alisamleo.

Discuss

New Moon Reviews: What Twitter Thinks [CHART]

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:23:01 -0800

Twilight-mania just won’t stop! More than 400 million “New Moon” videos have been viewed online, the film is expected to beat all midnight opening records, and Twitter continues to be abuzz with “New Moon” chatter.

On Wednesday, we reported that more than 81,000 tweets were sent out about “New Moon,” most of them positive. So how did the Twitteratti respond to the debut of “New Moon” last night? Our friends at Crimson Hexagon ran the numbers and this is what they figured out.

Out of 4500 tweets sent regarding the film, this was the breakdown:

41% can’t wait to see it
14% are sick of the whole thing
6% want to know how it was
24% loved it
10% expected more
7% are really tired after going to the midnight show

It will be interesting to see if these figures line-up with overall fan reactions or if this is any sort of indication as to how well the film will do this weekend as a whole (aka – “The Twitter Effect“)

Have you seen “New Moon” or are you planning on seeing it tonight? Let us know!

Tags: crimson hexagon, new moon, twilight, Twilight: New Moon, twitter

Memento: Protocol-Based Time Travel for the Web

Frederic Lardinois — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:45:49 -0800

The Web constantly changes and evolves. That, of course, is what makes the Internet so exciting, but it also means that finding older versions of a website is hard. The current push towards the real-time web is making this problem even more apparent. Memento, a project based at Old Dominion University, wants to make it easier to access older versions of a web page without having to go to the Internet Archive. To do this, the project is using a relatively obscure feature of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).

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The Memento project wants to give browsers a 'time-travel' mode. Currently, the only way to find these pages is the Wayback Machine. According to an interview with Memento's Herbert Van de Sompel, the mission of this project is to make it far easier for users to find older pages without having to go through the hassle of putting the right URL into the Wayback Machine's search engine.

HTTP Content Negotiation

To do this, Van de Sompel and his colleagues are exploiting a feature in the HTTP content negotiation specs that allows them to add date-and-time negotiation to the standard negotiations that already happen whenever your browser connects to a web server. Instead of just asking for the current page, a Memento-enabled browser can also ask for an older version of that page. Some servers and content management systems already offer this feature and the Memento project has developed a demo that shows how this feature would look. According to Van de Sompel, it only takes four extra lines of codes in Apache to make this work.

While it is relatively easy for browsers to ask for an older version of a web page, content owners would have to store these older versions of their sites on their servers as well. With static sites, this is easy to do, but today's highly dynamic web doesn't make it easy to create an archival version of every page.

You can find more technical information about how the team envisions the future of the Memento project in this paper.

Discuss

3 Creative Ways SMBs Can Use Social Media for Holiday Discounts

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:46:35 -0800

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Every year consumers turn to the web to scour for the best holiday shopping deals. Black Friday has practically become a holiday of its own, with retailers jumping on the bandwagon earlier than ever to satisfy deal-hungry consumers. This holiday season you have an opportunity to leverage social media channels for trackable giveaways and discounts that can not only boost your holiday sales but improve your social media presence.

1. Direct Message Discounts

If you’re looking for fun and innovative ways to drum up your follower count on Twitter, or create more engagement between you and your customers, consider offering direct message-only holiday discounts.

Here’s how this could work. Come up with a holiday deal that is significantly better than any of your existing promotions and make sure to share it with your entire team. Then use your social media channels to send out shareable clues about the promotion. You could tweet something like, “exclusive holiday Twitter deals on X,Y,Z, DM us for details.”

For this type of promotion to work, it’s all about the details. First, make sure you follow new followers back so that they can send you a direct message. Also, determine whether or not you want this to stay underground, or whether you’re open to having the deal spread online. The benefit of the former approach is that select customers feel privileged, but the downside is that you’ll need to generate a new discount/offer code or “password” for each person.

On the flip side, if you have one password/coupon/discount code, then anyone can get it via direct message and share it with their friends, which means you could get more mileage and buzz, but fewer followers. Figure out what your goal is and go with it, full steam ahead.

You might even get more mileage out of the deal if you offer a double deal (double whatever the original deal was) when you hit X amount of followers before a certain date. That could give deal-seeking customers the incentive to promote you in the hopes of saving even more.

2. Facebook Freebies

We’re seeing more and more brands use their Facebook Fan Pages for fan-only deals, discounts, and coupons, and there’s no reason why you can’t use the holiday season to do the same for your small business.

This works for both online and offline retailers, but should you have a physical store, using your Facebook Fan Page to create a holiday coupon for an extra X% off already discounted merchandise would be an instant way to gain more fans and please holiday shoppers on the hunt for a bargain.

Since Facebook is so ubiquitous, if you go this route, make sure to inform your team members to tell customers about the deal while they’re shopping. You can even teach employees how to show customers how to become your fan on Facebook from their mobile phones, thereby making them eligible for the extra savings instantly as well as getting a new fan on the spot.

3. Social Media Sharing

Whatever your sales goals are this holiday season, chances are you want to sell more of your products and services, but usually it’s your customers and super fans who do all the real selling for you. Here’s where social media can help.

Use your email newsletter, Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page, and website to encourage your customers to share what they love most about your small business online. Encourage them to upload a photo, create a video, or pen a blog post about the products or services they love most. Also make sure to instruct them to tag the content with a predetermined tag. You can make the incentive whatever you want it to be, but offering each participant an X% discount off existing sale prices would be well received.

This approach works best if you make the announcement on your own blog and request that participants include a link to their shared media in the comments section of the post. Also, remember that due to new FTC guidelines, you should encourage participants to disclose the deal or discount.

More business resources from Mashable:

- Why Social Media Is Vital to Corporate Social Responsibility
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- 5 Important Web Video Lessons for Small Business Owners
- Top 5 Must-Read Social Media Books
- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

iStockphoto, YinYang

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: business, Holiday, List, Lists, small business

8tracks to Launch Playback API and Developer Program

Dana Oshiro — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0800

It appears that the time for freemium music services in the US has passed. Earlier this week streaming music site Imeem sold to MySpace for under $10 million dollars while laying off a large number of staff. For a company with all four major record labels signed, more than 15 million uniques a month and well over 5 million tracks in its catalogue, it came as a sobering blow to the industry. While many companies move to a subscription model, 8tracks continues to forge along in what some describe as a convenient loophole. As of this weekend the company is publicly launching its API for Boston's Music Hack Day</>.

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Similar to the original concept for Muxtape, 8tracks allows users to trade 30 min (8 track) playlists. But unlike Muxtape, because 8tracks songs are not identified prior to play, the company is treated as an internet radio station. This status as a radio station means that it avoids the high licensing fees plaguing the streaming music sites. While Muxtape was forced to close in 2008, 8tracks continues to thrive.

This weekend 8tracks is publicly launching its music playback API in the hopes of leveraging the collective brain power of Music Hack Day attendees. Some of the tools already built using the API that will be demoed include an iPhone player, a player widget for Facebook and a weekly Hype Machine mix. For those interested in getting involved with 8tracks on Music Hack Day, the developer API is available tomorrow at developer.8tracks.com.

Discuss

50 Cent Symbolizes the Impending Live Video Explosion

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:13:37 -0800

Some of the recent numbers being put up by live video events on the Web are giving TV a run for its money. Take for example the New Moon Premiere, which attracted 3 million viewers in total, a U2 concert on YouTube that reached 10 million, and the red carpet event for This Is It, which saw 1.8 million tune in.

Today, we have yet another big number to share, this time from last night’s Ustream premiere of 50 Cent’s movie “Before I Self Destruct.” In total, more than 255,000 users watched at least part of the 90 minute screening, which included the hip hop mogul answering questions live from fans.

Although not as huge as some of the other events, it’s perhaps more significant. As opposed to debuting the movie on MTV, VH1, or BET, 50 took to the Web and reached an audience of comparable scale to what he might have found on TV. Granted, he’ll still use other mediums for promotion, but in light of his numbers and those of others, expect a lot more events like the Self Destruct premiere in the near future.

That’s not to say the Internet is going to be as destructive to television as it’s been to print media, but we’re certainly starting to see it emerge as a strong compliment, if not competitor, to more traditional means of video distribution. We knew this was coming, but a combination of bandwidth proliferation and integration with social sites seems to be pushing live video to a tipping point. And where 50 goes, the money typically follows.

Reviews: ustream

Tags: 50 cent, live video, social media, ustream, video

Seesmic Launches Mobile Apps for Android and BlackBerry

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:28:36 -0800

Hot on the heels of the launch of the Windows desktop app preview, Seesmic has brought its Twitter client to the mobile arena as well with the launch of clients for the Android and BlackBerry platforms. Both apps are available for free — get the Android version from the Android Market and the BlackBerry version by pointing your BlackBerry to Seesmic.

We had a chance to test out the Android build on the Motorola Droid and came away impressed. The interface is well-designed and easy to use. Read on for our impressions and a demo video below.

Four buttons at the top take you to timeline, replies, direct messages or profile views. Drilling down into an individual tweet allows you to reply, DM reply or retweet using the “original” RT style. Composing a tweet includes the ability to add location information, include a photo or video from your gallery or one on the spot from the camera, and shorten included links using bit.ly, J.mp or Tinyurl (you can make your selection in the Settings along with your choice of photo and video service).

From the profile view of yourself or another Twitter user, you can drill down into their tweets, favorites, followers and who they’re following, plus reply, direct message, unfollow or block them. It’s a nice level of detail, with one small omission which we’d love to see added at some point — support for Lists. Since Seesmic Desktop and the web version both added support recently, we’re sure it won’t be long before mobile clients get an update as well.

As compared to the current leader on the Android platform, Twidroid, Seesmic compares quite favorably to the free version. The app display is high-definition (the first high-def Twitter client on the platform, according to Loic Lemur, CEO and founder of Seesmic) which makes it more visually attractive — quite stunning on the Droid screen, for example. It does lack the search capability and trending features on Twidroid, but nevertheless the app is solid and a worthy addition to the Twitter client arsenal on the Android platform.

We’ll be testing out the BlackBerry version as well (pictured, below, along with a demo video of both clients), and Loic says sit tight for an iPhone version coming soon. We’d love to hear your impressions on both clients if you have a chance to check them out. Are you a Seesmic user excited about your Twitter client experience coming to the mobile? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Android, Seesmic, Seesmic Desktop, Twidroid, Twitter

Tags: android, blackberry, Mobile 2.0, seesmic, twitter, twitter clients

Thanks to Mashable’s Socially Savvy Supporters

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:57:29 -0800

Thanks to this week’s advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources. Mashable’s sponsors are as social media savvy as our readers!

Advertise with us and get noticed.

Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking out site sponsors for our large, diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, early adopters, developers, bloggers, and many more. You’ll receive hundreds of thousands of views a day in addition to weekly recognition to thank you as our premium sponsors. Are you interested? Contact us for more information and to receive our media kit and rate card.

This week, our valued sponsors are The NY Times Reader 2.0, Leapfish, Web 2.0 Expo New York, nimbb, MOTOBLUR, Conduit, Clickatell, Influxis, EdgeCast, Microsoft BizSpark, MailChimp, Sun Startup Essentials, and Eventbrite.

Times Reader 2.0, powered by Adobe AIR, is a downloadable software application offering a digital experience of The Times that’s very much like reading the printed newspaper. Whether you’re using Windows, Mac OS or Linux, Times Reader gives you everything you’d expect from The New York Times in print, delivered to your computer in less than a minute. After you’ve synched, no Internet connection is needed, so you can take the most insightful journalism with you wherever you go.

LeapFish is an evolved search engine that provides a single, connected, multimedia experience for both searching and sharing traditional, social and real-time content making the new web easier to navigate, more integrated and ultimately more efficient.

Nimbb is the easiest way to add video recording to your Web projects. Using our Nimbb Player and API, any developer can integrate webcam video recording in their site easily. Our Flash player can be embedded using a few HTML lines and we host everything on our server. Developers can create a free account and our subscription prices start at only $9 per month. Our company is located in Montreal. We created Nimbb to answer our own needs to have a video recording widget that we could use in many projects to lower our development cost. Anyone that subscribes to our “Platinum” package before November 13th will get 5000 additional videos as a bonus (that’s a $599 value)! To get your videos, simply use our contact form, specify your account’s email, and mention “Free videos with Mashable”.

MOTOBLUR from Motorola was built expressly for the way people communicate today. It’s the only service that automatically delivers and organizes your conversations, contacts and content from all your favorite sites and sources in easy-to-manage streams. Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, text messages, Gmail or work e-mail, MOTOBLUR keeps track of it all and serves it up on a customizable home screen and integrates it through the phone. Plus, with MOTOBLUR you have peace of mind, because all of your info is backed up and secure. Discover MOTOBLUR on Motorola CLIQ available at T-Mobile. It’s time to spend less time managing life and more time living it.

The Conduit On-Demand Marketing Platform offers web publishers of all sizes various solutions, including creating and publishing a branded community toolbar, sending your community desktop alerts, sharing and distributing content from the Conduit Marketplace, and much more. The platform is free, easy-to-use and very powerful, and is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari browsers. Anything you can put on a website can also be deployed on a community toolbar and offered to your users wherever they are on the web, including: your logo, content, gadgets, feeds, social media tools, chat windows, games, services, links, and more. Every community toolbar also comes complete with a search-box powered by Google, to ensure your users have easy access to the most popular search on the web. Click here for more information on how to set up your own community toolbar, send desktop alerts, and find cool content and gadgets – for FREE!

Clickatell offers bulk sms and mobile marketing solutions. Over 700 networks and over 200 countries covered.

Influxis is an official Adobe hosting partner and resource for the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server. Influxis provides Flash hosting plans for all levels of use – beginner to enterprise. With a reputation for exceptional customer service, Influxis provides an extremely reliable international network of FMS servers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

EdgeCast Networks offers a superior, cost-effective, global content delivery service that gives our customers competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media. Our world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while liberating them from ISP contracts, capital investments and operational hassles.

BizSpark is a program which offers new software businesses and entrepreneurs access to Microsoft design, development, and production tools with no upfront costs for up to three years. Members can also connect with a nationwide community of Network Partners – investors, incubators, service providers, and entrepreneurial organizations – who are keen to help.

For more information, or to connect with a Microsoft BizSpark advisor, please visit MicrosoftStartupZone.com/BizSpark.

MailChimp is a powerful, easy-to-use email marketing service. You design, me deliver.

If you’re working for a startup, Sun can help you get it off the ground fast. We created the fee-free Sun Startup Essentials program offering deep discounts on industry leading, power efficient systems and storage products, optimized open-source software, massively scalable Web hosting services, plus free visibility via Sun’s co-marketing engine. It’s time to build your business on the kind of infrastructure that can scale right along with the skyrocketing demands of success. Find out about Sun Startup Essentials today!

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Mashable would also like to thank AttentionPR for their PR support. AttentionPR proves that PR today is measurable, transparent, and yes, social. Learn more about AttentionPR.

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Reviews: Facebook, Firefox, Gmail, Google, Internet Explorer, Mashable, MySpace, Safari, The Conduit, Twitter, adobe AIR, linux

LUNCHTIME POLL: What’s Your Favorite Video Sharing Service?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:58:22 -0800

It’s Friday, people, which means that not only is it Follow Friday, it’s also time for the Lunchtime Poll! Last week we wanted to know about your favorite news reader (or whether you use RSS at all). We’ll have the results for you later today, but let’s get a head start on the new poll: what’s your favorite video sharing service?

We’ll start off with some responses from the staff here at Mashable, and let you fine folks have at it in the comments. Be sure to let us know along with your vote why you chose it as your favorite. We’ll post the results next week to show the zeitgeist from Mashable readers.

Are you in? Let’s roll the question!

What’s your favorite video sharing service?

Mashable Faves

Adam Ostrow: YouTube or Ustream. It’s all about the content.

Pete Cashmore: YouTube.

Sharon Feder: I’m not a power user, but Vimeo is definitely my favorite.

Ben Parr: Viddler, YouTube, and Ustream, depending on the situation.

Christina Warren: Vimeo, because it has the best quality.

Barb Dybwad: I like Qik for mobile, Flickr for short visually-interesting clips, and YouTube for an endless stream of distractions punctuated by hilarious cats.

Tamar Weinberg: YouTube because it actually can process Kodak Zi6 videos (Flickr and Vimeo cannot), but Vimeo has a really awesome GUI.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ericsphotography

Reviews: Flickr, Mashable, Vimeo, YouTube, iStockphoto, ustream

Tags: flickr, lunchtime poll, qik, ustream, viddler, video, video sharing, youtube

HOW TO: Use Social Media to Find Black Friday Deals

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:33:41 -0800

Susan Payton is the Managing Partner of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog, and teaches marketing courses at Marketing EggSchool. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.

We’re a week away from Black Friday and just a few years ago, if you wanted to find the best deals, you had to wait for the sales flyers to hit your newspaper or mailbox. You’d make a list of what you wanted and get your game plan together. But that’s all changed because of social media. Tools like iPhone apps, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook will be key in helping competitive shoppers get a leg up against the thousands of shoppers vying for the deals of the century this season. And with holiday spending projected to be down 3% from last year’s low numbers, stores are doing whatever they can to make it easier for shoppers to spend their money with them.

Blogs and Websites

Weeks before Black Friday, blogs and websites like Black Friday 2009 and BlackFriday.info have been uploading sales flyers from every store imaginable to help shoppers plan out their attack on the biggest shopping day of the year. For gadget-lovers, Gizmodo’s #blackfriday feed has the latest posts about the best electronic deals to be had.

Mom-related blogs and forums, such as MomsLikeMe, a geography based networking site, or Triangle Mom2Mom, focus on the strategies for what to do with the kids when shopping on Black Friday, local sales and events, and advice on how to stretch that dollar even farther.

The benefit to blogs is that they are updated constantly, with deals being posted every day. Find one or two you like and subscribe to their RSS feeds to stay abreast of the latest Black Friday news and offers.

My Black Friday Deals takes a sprinkling of social media and mixes it together with a dash of blogging to create a place for shoppers to interact. The site uses the mobile photo slide show app Whrrl to allow bloggers to take pictures of the best deals they can find in stores and upload them to the site to be voted on by deal seekers. The best deals will then be shared on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook.

Full disclosure: Susan works with Collective Bias, which runs My Black Friday Deals.

Social Media

Bloggers, consumers, and brands alike are all using Twitter and Facebook this year for Black Friday. Staples has been “leaking” its own Black Friday deals on its Twitter and Facebook accounts for days, and a search for the term #blackfriday on Twitter nets an endless stream of deals, tips, and links that will help shoppers save on Friday. You can also check out the @blackfriday account, which tweets Black Friday news from across the web.

Macy’s too has been priming its followers on Twitter for its Black Friday sales, as well as its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Wal-Mart, which has claimed it won’t be beat on price on Black Friday or after, is tweeting its deals already in place, and will likely do so through Black Friday.

The dedicated Black Friday blogs and web sites (such as the ones mentioned above) are also getting a piece of the social media pie by creating Fan Pages on Facebook, like the one for Black-Friday.net. Pages like this really put the power in the hands of the people, who can share deals as they find them.

YouTube is chock full of videos about Black Friday, as well. The site has a large library of clips from both consumers and major news networks, with advice on handling the crowds on Black Friday, what to expect at the stores, and tips on which stores have the best deals.

There’s an App for That

Now that I have an iPhone, I get excited about functional, useful applications like the Black Friday apps that have come out this year. DealNews has a free Black Friday app that lets you sort deals by “Early Bird,” “In Store Only,” and “Limited Availability,” as well as see photos of the sale items.

The Toys R Us Big Book Favorites app lets users make wish lists, find deals, and share deals (it’s free, too). The $0.99 BF Deals app, meanwhile, lets you see a map of other users at stores so you can find a less crowded one (assuming a lot of the shoppers have the app), and it sends your deals to your Twitter account. There are others (do a search in the iTunes store for “Black Friday”), and stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart may incorporate Black Friday deals into their existing iPhone apps.

Wrapping It Up

If you’re planning to brave the crowds on Black Friday, be smart. Get on Twitter, Facebook, or the dozens of Black Friday blogs to find the deals you want. Take your iPhone with you to reduce the number of stores you go to in fruitless search of items that were sold out at 5 AM. And most of all, good luck to you!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarcusPhoto1

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto

Tags: black friday, deals, List, Lists, shopping, trending

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A good example of this trend are small companies like Roambi that can now reach into the enterprise by integrating with Salesforce.com and other cloud platforms like Google Apps.

We caught up with the founders of Roambi for a quick demo of their new pro product and how it syncs with both on-premse applications and SaaS services.

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Droid Does: A Price Drop

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:04:02 -0800

When it was released earlier this month, the retail price for the Motorola Droid was $200 for new activations on Verizon. Although Verizon is staying firm with that price point for now, it appears that some of its retailers are not.

Specifically, Amazon and Dell have both cut prices on the smartphone to $150 and $120, respectively. The news comes just one day after news broke of price cuts by online retailers on other devices not named iPhone: the Palm Pre and Pixi.

Of course, the device cost shouldn’t really play a huge role in consumer’s decision given the total costs of ownership for all of them are well into the thousands of dollars over the life of the wireless contract. Nonetheless, if retailers are slashing prices, meaning they’re making less on each sale, it could be a sign that these iPhone alternatives aren’t selling as well as anticipated.

So far, it’s been estimated that the Droid sold about 100,000 handsets in its first weekend and 250,000 in its first week on the market.

[Disclosure: Motorola is a sponsor of Mashable's Open Web Awards.]

Tags: droid, Mobile 2.0, Motorola, smartphones, verizon

3 Great Light Blogging Tools Compared

Dana Oshiro — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:35:59 -0800

Once the service for those serious enough to pay for the privilege to post, TypePad recently released a free "Micro" service. The company made the decision to offer a free product realizing the demand for a platform more formal than Twitter and less formal than Wordpress or Typepad's original product. ReadWriteWeb compared TypePad's Micro against 2 other leading light blogging tools. Below are our thoughts:

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TypePad Micro: In addition to being able to blog via email, iPhone app, "Blog It" bookmarklet and the general WYSIWYG dashboard, this tool also allows users to cross post to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook. My only complaint with TypePad is that there are only 2 design themes to choose from. For someone like me with very little design sense, it's a long process to find something right. As well, if you'd like to add another blog or add new design themes you are required to pay for a monthly subscription service.

Tumblr: This service offers users publishing via iPhone app, desktop widget, the Tumblr bookmarklet, text message, email, AIM and even via audio call-in. Tumblr's theme gallery offers hundreds of options for design. Users can also add their posts to Facebook and Twitter via the free customization. Tumblr allows users to create more than one blog and add more than one contributor for free; however, all edits show up in the same dashboard in chronological order. This means you may have to dig to revise an older post.

Posterous: Posterous is the original email publishing microblog. Users can email posts, publish them via the web editor or upload them from the PicPosterous iPhone app. The service allows users to set up auto posting to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress and Xanga. You can also choose to post to just one service in addition to your Posterous account by emailing flickr@posterous.com to specify Flickr or twitter@posterous.com to post to Twitter. Of the three services, Posterous offers an advantage in its ease-of-use and while it's lacked design abilities in the past, the company recently launched themes and theme import from Tumblr.

Other notable light blogging services include Soup.io, Vox and Noovo. If we've missed your favorite service let us know in the comments below.

Discuss

Fido Factor Finds Dog-Friendly Places in Your City

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:31:41 -0800

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Fido Factor

Quick Pitch: Fido Factor is a dog-specific local search and review site and iPhone app built for dog owners. It’s a “Yelp for dogs.”

Genius Idea: We dog owners love our canines: it’s really that simple. We raise them, feed them, play with them, sleep with them, and fall in love with them. We want to take them almost everywhere we go too, but that’s where you start running into problems.

The problem is also simple: there aren’t a lot of places where you can take your dog. It’s only appropriate to bring your pup to certain restaurants, parks, and hotels, but it’s practically impossible to know which places are OK for your loyal companion.

That’s where Fido Factor comes in. The site calls itself “the ultimate guide to dog-friendly locations.” Its purpose is really clear: to tell you where you can bring your dog in your city. Fido Factor goes beyond that, though, with a well-designed website and companion iPhone app.

Fido Factor compiles a user-generated list of dog-friendly locations. Currently, it’s only available in four cities: Boston, San Francisco, New York City, and Portland, but that list is growing. Simply search for a location type (i.e. restaurant) and you’ll find a list of dog-friendly locales, along with ratings, reviews, and a filled-in Google Map. It really is a lot like Yelp, but for dog lovers.

There are few other cool features to note. The biggest one is the Fido Factor iPhone app, which not only tells you about nearby locations for your best friend, but even has a feature called “Pooch Pics,” where you can take a picture at a location and upload it for all to see on the website. The website also boasts Facebook Connect integration.

Fido Factor is still small, and it is very simple, but it really solves a constant issue for dog owners effectively. Finding a place to gather with your dog-loving friends has never been so easy.

Spark of Genius Series Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Reviews: PHP, Yelp

Tags: bizspark, dogs, Fido Factor

UNDERDOG: Google Android Smashes Apple iPhone in Reader Vote

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:20:32 -0800

We’ve been matching up popular web services, applications and mobile apps against each other in heated one-on-one battles here in our weekly Faceoff Series. Last week Microsoft Office bested Google Docs in a head to head race for the title of office suite champion.

This week we turned our attention to a rather timely battle being waged on the mobile front, between Apple’s still wildly-selling iPhone platform and Google’s slower to boil Android mobile operating system. Apparently the latter has been gaining some ground, resulting in our first unexpected upset victory in the Faceoff series.

… Google Android is the winning platform by a more than 2:1 margin. Out of 5045 total votes, Android walked away with 3323 of them or 66%, while the iPhone platform only netted 1494 or 30%. The tie vote included 228 or 5% who just couldn’t choose between them. Many people cited the openness of the platform and third-party development process as well as Android’s versatility, being able to be put to use not just on phones but also netbooks, tablet devices, eReaders and more.

Still, given the popularity of the iPhone we were a little surprised by these results. Are you? Let us know in the comments.

Web Faceoff: Overall Results

Week 1:
- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Reviews: Android, Chrome, Facebook, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, Google Docs, Mozilla Firefox, Pandora, Posterous, Seesmic Desktop, Tumblr, TweetDeck, Twitter, TypePad, WordPress

Tags: android, apple, Google, iphone, Mobile 2.0, web faceoff

Tila Tequila Continues Her Ustream Video Meltdown [LIVE VIDEO]

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:19:49 -0800

Social media is a double-edged sword. Due to its unfiltered nature, it can be a powerful promotional tool. However, it can also publicly expose our problems. Former reality TV star Tila Tequila is an unfortunate but prime example.

Some backstory: Tila Tequila is one of the most popular artists on MySpace, was the subject of an MTV reality show, and most recently filed assault charges against San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman, which were subsequently dropped.

Fastforward to Wednesday, November 18th. That night, Tila had a very public meltdown on her Ustream page. She waved around a gun, played around with a knife, ranted about Shawne Merriman, and stripped naked, all live for thousands of people to see (the video was immediately taken down).

Despite claiming that she would never use her Ustream ever again, Tila is back on live video, and this time it’s even more bizzare. She is streaming as “Jane Cordovez,” which seem to be her alter ego for the evening. She is not only waving around a gun once again, but is dancing around with a sword. Yes, a sword. And that’s only half an hour into the live stream.

It’s unfortunate that she’s allowing her breakdown to be publicly streamed. While her brand has always been racy, the last few days have been simply bizzare. If she indeed has issues, we hope she gets some help.

The live, unfiltered video stream is below:

Reviews: MySpace, ustream

Tags: live video, Tila Tequila, ustream, video

Weekly Wrapup: Google Chrome OS, Obama's Twitter, Blogging Statistics, And More...

Richard MacManus — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0800

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we report on President Obama's (non)-use of Twitter, take a look at the past decade in the media industry, review the latest statistics about blogging, question if Oxford Dictionary should've chosen "unfriend" as its word of the year, and more. We also check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

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Web Trends

Obama: "I Have Never Used Twitter"

Barack Obama spoke to a group of Chinese students this week at a town hall in Shanghai. The meeting was streamed live, worldwide on the Whitehouse website and on the Whitehouse's Facebook page. He was asked a limited number of questions by the audience and one was about Twitter, which has been blocked in China since July. President Obama has never used Twitter, despite his account being the most followed there.

Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media

It's November 2009 and we're nearing the end of a decade. It's been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web. Over the past 10 years, news media has undergone a seachange akin to the invention of the printing press in 1440.

How Blogging Has Changed Over The Last 3 Years (Stats)

Reader engagement with blogs has changed dramatically over the last three years, primarily because of the rise of online social networks, according to new numbers released by analytics firm Postrank. Postrank published an analysis based on metrics for signals like comments, trackbacks, shared links and online bookmarks for the top 1000 most-engaging feeds online and for 100,000 randomly selected blog posts in each year since 2007.

Unfriending: Are People Online Shedding Friends? (Debate)

The New Oxford American Dictionary announced its Word of the Year this week. Its selection? unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. Has Oxford Dictionary made the right selection? ReadWriteWeb's Founder Richard MacManus thinks not. Marshall Kirkpatrick disagrees with him. Both make their cases in this post and invite you to cast your vote in a poll.

Do You Think "Unfriend" is a Good Word of the Year?(online surveys)

The Top 10 Mobile Applications of 2012

Research firm Gartner has put out a list of the top ten mobile applications of the future. Well, not the distant future, but the far off year of 2012. Nothing on the list is all that surprising or, in many cases, even all that new. Instead, the list includes the sorts of technologies that are just now coming into their own and haven't yet seen widespread adoption as well as the already common technologies that are still experiencing growth.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

Google Sites Offers Templates; Claims It's Easier Than Sharepoint

Google Sites is getting an upgrade. Starting this week, Google will provide templates that make it possible for users with no technical background to create web sites with a degree of functionality that includes page layouts, adding links for navigation and embedded gadgets. Templates are available for intranets, project sites, team sites, employee profile pages and other sites that people would use within the enterprise.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Future of Music Coalition's Brian Zisk: The Do's of Streaming Music

In 2008 the idea of another subscription-only music service was enough to get your knickers in a torrent. Sure Rhapsody was doing well, but they'd been around for forever and in 2008, freemium was the music model du jour. With a year to reflect, co-founder of the Future of Music Coalition and longtime San Fran Music Tech Summit organizer Brian Zisk tells us what it takes to survive in today's music environment.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

The Google Chrome OS Press Event

Google held a press event this week outlining more details about its Google Chrome OS. Google plans to launch Chrome OS next year. Google is positioning Chrome OS as "just a browser" - that is, all of your data is in the cloud. Chrome OS will be focused on speed, simplicity, security; every application on Chrome OS will be a web application. Google sees Chrome OS as targeting 3 trends: netbooks, cloud (everything is a web app today), phones getting computing capabilities.

Twitter.com Is Still the Most Popular Twitter Client - TweetDeck a Distant Second

Twitter's own homepage is still the most popular tool for users to update their status on Twitter. Around 46% of all updates are made directly on the site. Social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomos analyzed 500 million tweets it collected over the past 5 months and found that TweetDeck is the most popular third-party client. TweetDeck has a comfortable lead with a 8.48% share of the market, followed by Tweetie, Twitterific and Seesmic.

A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP's Ambitious Sensor Network

HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company has announced a project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE). It's a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors."

Microsoft Launches Pivot, A Radically New Visualization of Online Objects

Microsoft Live Labs' latest creation has just launched. Pivot is a fun, powerful discovery tool, built on Seadragon and powered by Silverlight, that runs in Vista or Windows 7 with IE8. It looks impressive and allows for truly intuitive exploration of information.

Droid Becomes Fastest-Selling Android Phone to Date

The Motorola Droid is the newest smartphone on the market to compete for the iPhone's crown. Released by Verizon Wireless on November 6th, the Droid's advertising campaign has been a full-frontal attack on the popular Apple smartphone with a heavy focus on what the iPhone doesn't do. "iDon't run simultaneous apps, iDon't have a real keyboard, iDon't take 5-megapixel pictures," taunts Verizon's Droid ad.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss

GrandCentral Website Shuts Down Next Month: Download Your Data and Contacts

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:26:03 -0800

Google has already transitioned GrandCentral users over to Google Voice, and now comes the final step in that move: Google is shuttering the GrandCentral website and telling users to download any old messages and contacts they have on that site. The GrandCentral site will be closed on the last day of the year – December 31st – and a further reminder will be sent before that date.

In a mail to users today, the company advised:

The GrandCentral website is shutting down – GrandCentral is now Google Voice.

Dear GrandCentral User:
We’re writing to let you know that we will be closing down the GrandCentral website as of December 31, 2009.

All GrandCentral accounts were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but since that time, you’ve still been able to log-in to your GrandCentral account and listen to old messages there. You will no longer be able to log-in to your GrandCentral account after December 31. Because of this, we strongly suggest downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days.

We will send you another reminder before closing down the site, but we suggest you take action now to download any information you want to keep.

- The Google Voice Team

It seems the end of 2009 will also bring an end to the GrandCentral name, but the excellent telecommunications service continues to flourish under the Google brand.

Reviews: Google, Google Voice

Tags: Google, Google Voice, grandcentral

Smoking Near Apple Computers Creates Biohazard, Voids Warranty (Laura Northrup/Consumerist)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:20:06 -0800

Laura Northrup / Consumerist:
Smoking Near Apple Computers Creates Biohazard, Voids Warranty — Unless you've just arrived in 2009 on a time machine, you know that smoking isn't good for you. Did you know, that smoking isn't good for your computer, either? It's true, at least according to Apple.

Bing Accused of Censoring Simplified Chinese Language Searches

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:25:24 -0800

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is controversially asking web users to “Boycott Bing“, claiming that Bing is censoring Simplified Chinese queries even outside the People’s Republic of China.

Last night, Bing responded to Kristof’s Friday afternoon posting, citing a programming bug but failing to deny the censorship claims.

To us, both sides of the argument seem lacking.

Boycott Bing?

Kristof’s complaint is part of an ongoing debate: should US companies censor their search results to appease Chinese authorities? Those in favor say it’s simply good business sense to be present in China, and censored results are better than no results at all. Others see search engines compromising their values.

But that debate concerns search results within Chinese borders: Kristof says Simplified Chinese results are censored wherever you search from:

…conduct the search with the simplified characters used in mainland China, then you get sanitized pro-Communist results. This is especially true of image searches. Magic! No Tiananmen Square massacre. The Dalai Lama becomes an oppressor. Falun Gong believers are villains, not victims.
What’s most offensive is that this is true wherever in the world the search is conducted – including in my office in New York. If Microsoft felt it had to bow to Chinese censorship within China’s borders, based on the IP address, that might be defensible. But when Microsoft skews its worldwide searches to make Hu Jintao feel better, that’s a disgrace. It becomes simply a unit of the Central Committee Propaganda Department.

Kristof then somewhat undermines his argument by admitting that Google does much the same thing, albeit to a lesser extent: “Google censors results on its search engine used within China, google.cn, but offers mostly uncensored results using simplified Chinese characters on its worldwide browser, google.com. However, some searches on google.com, such as images for Falun Gong, are also censored.” Should we boycott Google too?

Bing Responds

Bing’s response is unconvincing, vague and evasive, suggesting simultaneously that “some results” are fine, and that a bug might be partly to blame.

As Mr. Kristof reported over the summer, we did fix a bug in web search that addressed this issue. There are some queries that provide very balanced web results, for example 六四天安门 (June 4th Tiananmen). We recognize that we can continue to improve our relevancy and comprehensiveness in these web results and we will.

In addition, today’s investigations uncovered the fact that our image search is not functioning properly for queries entered using Simplified Chinese characters outside of the PRC. We have identified the bug and are at work on the fix. We expect to have this done before the Thanksgiving holiday.

If Bing is in the clear here, their response is poor. The answer they should have given if there’s no case to be made: “We don’t censor Simplified Chinese search results outside China. It’s a bug and results will be improved by Thanksgiving.” To respond in these vague terms implies Bing has something to hide.

Reviews: Bing, Google

Tags: bing, Google, Search

Oracle $7.4 Billion Sun Takeover May Be Blocked by EU on Competition Issue (Matthew Newman/Bloomberg)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:10:00 -0800

Matthew Newman / Bloomberg:
Oracle $7.4 Billion Sun Takeover May Be Blocked by EU on Competition Issue — Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. may be blocked by European Union regulators because of concerns Oracle might be able to eliminate Sun's MySQL database product …

Video Demonstrates Wired's Concept iTablet App (Brian X. Chen/Gadget Lab)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:25:00 -0800

Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Video Demonstrates Wired's Concept iTablet App — Who takes Apple's rumored touchscreen tablet seriously? Wired's parent company Condé Nast. Earlier this week, the corporation revealed its plans to work with Adobe to repurpose magazine content for upcoming digital devices, including the Apple tablet (if it is indeed real).

Turtles with Facebook Urged to Vote in #openwebawards [VIDEO]

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:48:48 -0800

The finals of our annual Open Web Awards are hotly contested, with 170,000+ votes cast since Wednesday. Among the most active categories: the top videos and channels on YouTube.

Popular YouTube channel CardGamesFTW has a strategy to help it beat out the competition: turtles. At least, a humorous clip linking turtles, Facebook and people called “Steve” aspires to drive more votes for the channel in the “Funniest YouTube Channel” category.

The competition is tough, however: competitors include top YouTubers ShaneDawsonTV, Smosh, loadingreadyrun and RayWilliamJohnson.

If you’d like to vote for or against CardGamesFTW this year, head over to the Open Web Awards site, and remember you can vote once per category per day.

Cast your votes in Mashable’s Open Web Awards 2009 >>

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: trending, turtles, youtube

Fishbowl Puts Facebook on Your Desktop

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:41:03 -0800

If you’re looking to bring Facebook to the Windows desktop and Twitter-centric update tools like Seesmic or TweetDeck are too limiting for you, you might want to take Fishbowl for a spin.

The app, built on Microsoft Silverlight 4, features photo browsing and zoom, photo slideshows, drag-and-drop image uploads and a completely ad-free way to browse and update the news feed. It works on XP, Vista and Windows 7, and just became available for download.

We’re already more addicted to Facebook than could be considered healthy, not to mention our affection for the Mac, but for those Windows users looking for a rich desktop experience, our friends at Download Squad are calling Fishbowl a “kick-ass Facebook client for Windows 7” – it’s free and built by Microsoft’s own developers, so it might be worth taking for a spin.

[Images via Download Squad]

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: facebook, fishbowl

eBay Search Down

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:26:19 -0800

If you’ve been on the web long enough, you’ll know that Twitter isn’t the first startup to have suffered scaling issues: the auction site had significant problems keeping the servers humming in its early days.

Today eBay is giving users a small reminder of that era: eBay’s search engine is down, meaning goods cannot be found without using the category structure.

With the holiday shopping season ramping up, eBay will be losing significant revenue through the downtime: no doubt its engineers are working the weekend to get things working again.

Are you having trouble with eBay search? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: eBay

Twitter.com traffic down? Seesmic Web is +30%/month (Loïc Le Meur/Loic Le Meur Blog)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:25:10 -0800

Loïc Le Meur / Loic Le Meur Blog:
Twitter.com traffic down? Seesmic Web is +30%/month — There are many reports that the traffic from Twitter.com would be going down. We see the opposite on the app side, at least for Seesmic. Seesmic Web is growing very strong as you can see the number of Tweets posted growing.

Apple to release iPod Touch with camera this Spring? (Examiner)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:15:00 -0800

Examiner:
Apple to release iPod Touch with camera this Spring? — We have heard from an inside source who claims the camera version of the iPod Touch 3G will be released this Spring. The source confirms to us that the iPod Touch 3G with camera had actually been planned for release this past September, but had problems passing quality control.

HOW TO: Use Twitter’s New Retweet Feature

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:29:35 -0800

One of the best things about Twitter is the way that it allows content and information to spread quickly across the network from person-to-person. This happened for two reasons: 1. because Twitter is a one-to-many communications platform and 2. because it allows for content to be easily repeated. In fact, the latter led to what we call the “retweet.” It’s safe to say that the founders of Twitter did not initially envision this as a use for their platform, but the retweet convention organized itself organically and was embraced by third-party apps.

Unfortunately, retweets were messy for a couple of ways. First, because of the 140 character limit placed on tweets, retweeting someone else’s content sometimes meant editing their text in order to ensure that the customary “RT” and “@username” attributions fit. Second, because there’s often overlap in who we follow, retweets many times led to redundancy in your timeline as more than one of the people you followed retweeted the same content. So a couple of days ago, Twitter rolled out a solution in the form of a completely new retweet system.

Retweets: Old vs. New

Retweeting someone used to be a completely manual process. You had to copy and paste their tweet, add the “RT” designation, and the “@username” attribution, then click the “update” button. Some third party Twitter clients had built-in retweet buttons, which would automatically add the proper attribution and designation text. Many times you would need to edit the original retweeted text in order to make it fit within Twitter’s 140 character limit. (This was because adding the “RT” and “@username” text would often push the tweet over the limit.)

The old style of retweets also led to redundancy within your timeline. For example, I follow a number of people that also follow @mashable. Many of these people routinely retweet Mashable stories, so whenever the @mashable account tweets a new link, my Twitter timeline is often filled with multiple identical retweets.

Twitter’s new official retweet feature fixes both of these issues. Now, instead of retweets being appended with the “RT” text designation, they have a special retweet icon. Further, they come directly from the original tweeter’s account — regardless of whether you are following that person. If one of your followers retweets User X, you’ll see that tweet in your timeline, with the icon designating it as a retweet and a message telling you which if your followers retweeted that tweet.

Further, Twitter has fixed the redundancy issue by grouping together identical retweets. You’ll only see that tweet appear in your timeline once, but the message telling you who retweeted it will let you know which two or more of your followers retweeted.

Is this good or bad? Twitter’s new retweets are undeniably cleaner and more organized than the original, manual method. Your timeline will be easier to read and less noisy as a result, and the new API means that third-party clients can build in native retweeting in a much cleaner way (some already have). Also, you no longer need to edit original tweet text, which means it is less likely you’ll anger someone by inadvertently changing the meaning of their original tweet or messing up the attribution.

However, it can also be somewhat jarring to see people you’re not following in your timeline, and the new retweets lack the ability to add commentary to retweets. In the past, when retweeting something, users would often add their own two cents before the “RT” text. Adding comments is not supported by the current implementation of retweets on Twitter (though there is a chance it will be in the future).

How To Retweet

Retweeting works a lot like replying to tweets from the web interface. If you hover your cursor over a tweet — in either your timeline or on any user’s profile page, a “Retweet” link will appear directly to the right of the “Reply” link that has always been there. To retweet the tweet, all you have to do is click on the link.

But then what happens? The tweet you just retweeted will appear in the timelines of your friends regardless of whether they follow the original tweeter. If you think twice about your retweet, you can undo it. To manage your retweets, click on the “Retweets” link in the right hand side navigation. That will bring you to a page with three tabs:

– Retweets by others – These are all the retweets by the people you follow. They’re arranged loosely by time, but the most retweeted posts tend to bubble to the top of the list. From here you can reply to or retweet any of the tweets listed

– Retweets by you – This tab shows all of the tweets that you have retweeted. From here you can reply to tweets or undo your retweet (simply hover over the tweet and click the “Undo” link that appears).

– Your tweets, retweeted – These are your original tweets that others have retweeted. From here you can delete your tweets. You can also see who retweeted you, and when.

While there is no way to turn retweets off completely, there are two ways to block retweets from from appearing your timeline on a user by user basis. If you block a user, you won’t see their retweets in your timeline, even if someone you’re following retweets that user. You can also block retweets that a user you are following makes from appearing your timeline.

To turn off retweets from a specific user, visit their profile page and click on the circular green retweet button that appears next to the “Following” message at the top of their page. Once you click on the button, it will turn grey, indicating that retweets from that user will no longer appear in your timeline. You can toggle this option on and off using this button.

What Twitter Hopes to Accomplish

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams wrote recently that he hopes the new retweet feature will solve the problems of attribution confusion, messy or broken messages, and will reduce timeline noise. Williams said that the new retweet feature should “make Twitter a more powerful system for helping people find out what’s happening now that they care about.”

If embraced by users and third-party Twitter clients, there is almost no way to imagine that wouldn’t be the case. However, the inability to add comments to retweets is an issue that Twitter may need to address, especially to appeal to the power users who often shape the use of the platform and evangelize it to others.

What do you think of Twitter’s new retweet feature so far? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Mashable, Twitter

Tags: how to, List, Lists, retweet, retweets, trending, twitter

A Friend's Tweet Could Be an Ad (Brad Stone/New York Times)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:00:14 -0800

Brad Stone / New York Times:
A Friend's Tweet Could Be an Ad — Tuesday was another typical day for John Chow, blogger and Internet entrepreneur in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Chow treated his 50,000 Twitter followers to a photograph of his lunch (barbecued chicken and French fries), discussed the weather …

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 21 November 2009

Andrew Lobo — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:05:49 -0800

Here is this week's ReadWriteWeb events guide. As always, you can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

19 November 2009: Mountain View, California

Under the Radar

Featuring the most cutting-edge mobile startups from around the globe, Under the Radar will get you dialed in to what the 2010 mobile innovation marketplace will look like. It's a must-attend event for dealmakers from global carriers, brands, media companies, and handset manufacturers responsible for helping their companies leverage new mobile technology and innovation in the fast-evolving digital landscape.

Save $200: book by 2 October 2009, and get the early-bird rate.

30 November 2009

New Way to Work

Do you have a great story about your work environment? Job marketplace Elance and Vator.tv have partnered to host the "New Way to Work" competition, with a grand prize of $10,000 in cash or health insurance for the most compelling story. You can tell your story on Vator.tv, the premier platform for entrepreneurs to broadcast their voice, by uploading a video, posting an update, linking to a blog entry, or sharing a photo. Hurry, the competition ends on 30 November 2009.

1 – 3 December 2009: London, England

Online Information & IMS 2009

Online Information and IMS together create the largest event dedicated to the information industry. Consisting of an exhibition delivering over 9,000 visitors from 70 countries, a conference and a show-floor seminar program, the event provides an annual meeting place for the global information industry.

Online Information is once again set to play host to thousands of information professionals, information end-users and publishers from around the globe, meeting suppliers of online content, e-publishing, and library management solutions. IMS provides a forum for IT, business, and information management professionals to find unlimited, relevant advice, educational content and compare solutions under one roof. Attend IMS and meet suppliers of content management, search solutions, and Web 2.0 technologies.

1 – 3 December 2009: Boston, Massachusetts

Gilbane Conference Boston

Join us at the sixth annual "Gilbane Conference Boston: Content, Collaboration and Customers."

Your content is your business, and you need to make your Web content part of an integrated platform for customers. You need to know solutions and technologies that are ready to be implemented today. Gilbane Conference Boston is built around the four major areas of how enterprises use Web and content technologies:

Web business and engagement;
Managing collaboration and social media: internal and external;
Enterprise content: searching, integrating and publishing;
Content infrastructure.

Visit www.gilbaneboston.com for conference details. ReadWriteWeb readers, use the discount code "GILBANE" to save an additional $200. Register today!

1 – 3 December 2009: San Francisco

Supernova

The Supernova Conference is the thought-leadership forum for the network age. It brings together over 500 business, government and technology influencers to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world. It's the only conference to focus on how networks have become the main instruments of change from both business and social perspectives. An ever-evolving network itself, the conference has become the place for highly interactive and spirited debates, making significant business connections and revelations on new innovation. ReadWriteWeb readers get a discount of $700 off the regular price when registering by 16 October 2009. Use code "RRW09". After October 16th, the discount changes to $200 off the regular price. Register here.

7 December 2009: San Francisco

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit brings together 600+ visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology eco-system in a proactive environment, highly conducive to deal making. Register with a great ReadWriteWeb 15% discount.

7 – 11 December 2009: Chicago, Illinois

Search Engine Strategies 2009

From social media to local search to video SEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago puts you in front of the experts who will help you sort which technologies and channel will take you to the next level and which are just hype.

Search Engine Strategies is the pioneer of educational conference series in search engine marketing. It's the venue where the industry visionaries and thought leaders gather each year to discuss the newest trends, share insights and present the strategic action plans you need to grow your business. Sessions include:

SEO Through Blogs and Feeds
Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues
What's the Link Between Search and Social?
Online PR: Where to Next?
Search Analytics

See more at www.SearchEngineStrategies.com/chicago. ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 15% discount when registering here using RWW15 code.

11 December 2009: Mountain View, California

Add-on-Con

Add-on-Con is a single-day conference focused on the future of the browser and its emergence as a platform.

Developer sessions will cover best practices, cross-browser development and mash-ups. Marketing sessions will focus on monetization opportunities, distribution strategies and stats. Join 200+ individuals involved in add-on development to help define an emerging new market in the Web's eco-system.

ReadWriteWeb readers save $50 by using the discount code "addoncon09RRW."

11 January 2010: Nashville, Tennessee

Social Fresh Nashville

This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Nashville will have 30+ speakers, including Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Gavin Baker of Ruby Tuesday and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart).

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15".

27 – 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI?

This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions.

The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include:

How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies?
Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media
Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques
Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix
Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs

8 February 2010: Tampa, Florida

Social Fresh Tampa

This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Tampa will have 30+ speakers, including Chris Barger of GM, Maggie Fox of Social Media Group and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart).

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15".

18 February 2010: Silicon Valley, California

Future of Funding

Active limited partners, top rated venture capitalists, and successful entrepreneurs are invited to Silicon Valley on February 18, 2010 to discuss the Future of Funding. The venture capital bubble has burst, and change is coming. Now is the time to have a constructive dialog about the future with all of the stakeholders at the table.

Don't miss the opportunity to partake in this exclusive event hosted by TheFunded. Please visit www.futureoffunding.com to see speaker and event details.

ReadWriteWeb readers use the code "RWW" and get 10% off.

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

Social Networking World Forum
Enterprise social media
Social TV World Forum
Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

Full workshop program within exhibition area
Evening networking reception
Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
Free pass for exhibition only

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

Discuss

Motorola Droid just $119 from Dell (Will Park/IntoMobile)

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:05:01 -0800

Will Park / IntoMobile:
Motorola Droid just $119 from Dell — We love seeing hot new smartphones getting their price tags slashed mere weeks after its initial launch. The latest price reduction on the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid comes from Dell.com, making it possible to put a Droid in your pocket for just $119 …

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Advertise with us and get noticed.

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