Mashable: Latest 23 News Updates - including “26% of iPhones Break Within 2 Years [REPORT]”

26% of iPhones Break Within 2 Years [REPORT]
Twitter for iPhone Now Supports iOS4 Multitasking
Eventbrite Grows from Birthdays to Bonnaroo [VIDEO]
Create Your Own Awesomely Weird Chocolate Bars
Bing Dives Into Entertainment With New Search Vertical
EA Drops Prices on iPhone Games Including Madden, FIFA and SimCity to $1
iPhone 4 Units Arrive Early [VIDEO]
“FrontierVille” Already Has 5 Million Players
Firefox 3.6.4 Released: Flash No Longer Crashes Your Browser
Famous Line-Sitter Already Waiting for iPhone 4 at NYC Apple Store [VIDEO]
Condé Nast Revives Gourmet — As An App
Google Building Music Download Service with an Android Twist [REPORT]
Newspapers Are Still Dying, But the News Is Not Going Anywhere
Where NOT to Get the iPhone 4 on Thursday: AT&T Stores
iPad + Sonos = A Music Junkie’s Gadget Heaven [VIDEO]
Vevo Launches New Music Channel to Discover Emerging Artists
3 Things Facebook Does Very Well
Social Media Day Giveaway: Win a Sony Dash
JibJab Lets You Rap with the Founding Fathers for July 4th [VIDEO]
Shopping Faceoff: Amazon vs. eBay vs. Craigslist
Google Voice Now Available to Everyone in U.S.
FourWhere Adds Yelp and Gowalla Support
Microsoft Lists Kinect for Xbox 360 at $150
iOS 4 vs. Android FroYo: Which Is the Better OS? [POLL]

26% of iPhones Break Within 2 Years [REPORT]

Posted: 23 Jun 2010 04:27 AM PDT

According to SquareTrade, the warranty provider for the iPhone and other electronic devices, 25.6% of iPhone owners experienced a failure in the first two years of use.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s actually below the industry’s average. Even more importantly, the iPhone is improving with this regard: the expected failure rate over 2 years was 33% one year ago, when SquareTrade only examined the iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

Finally, most of the failures (18.1%) result from accidental damage, while only 7.5% are a result of a hardware malfunction.

As far as what’s breaking, it’s interesting to see the significant differences between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS. By far most of the failures of the iPhone 3G have to do with the touchscreen, followed by buttons, power, and battery.

Looking at iPhone 3GS, power is the biggest source of problems, followed by the touchscreen, battery and the buttons. It seems that Apple has improved the buttons and the display significantly between the two versions, but power and battery-related problems have actually worsened.

Read the full report from SquareTrade here [PDF]

[Images by SquareTrade]

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Tags: apple, iphone, trending

Twitter for iPhone Now Supports iOS4 Multitasking

Posted: 23 Jun 2010 02:11 AM PDT

Twitter for iPhone – a piece of software formerly known as Tweetie – has a new version out, and it brings support for iOS4 multitasking as well as the iPhone 4’s Retina Display.

Although we assume most apps will be updated to support the new features in iOS4 soon, with Twitter it’s doubly important, since many users (including us) yearned for the ability to have the app quietly await you in the background while you do other tasks.

Besides these new features, the new version of Twitter for iPhone brings a fix for the “stuck top tweets” bug and promises more secure tweeting and photo/video posting, meaning it’s now using Oauth for all communications with Twitter and hosting partners.

Check out Twitter for iPhone here.

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Eventbrite Grows from Birthdays to Bonnaroo [VIDEO]

Posted: 23 Jun 2010 01:44 AM PDT

Eventbrite has done something few startups truly manage to do in their first years of operation: It has succeeded. It has also grown — in personnel, in revenue, even in the physical size of the space needed to accommodate it. And the size of events that use Eventbrite for ticketing has grown, too.

These days, the company’s staff is just as passionate about helping you plan your 12-person yoga class as they are about helping professional event planners with their next concert. We even hear they’re working on a ticketing solution for the next iteration of Bonnaroo, the massively multiplayer, four-day, music-cum-camping festival held each year in Tennessee.

What has made Eventbrite so successful? Does it matter that their employees are passionate about live events of all kinds? Is it the founders’ careful management of money and conservative choices on funding? Is it their new sales team’s efforts with larger events? Or is it the fact that they’ve learned to integrate social media to keep their growth steady?

Check out our interviews with two of Eventbrite’s co-founders, Julia and Kevin Hartz, and Tamara Mendelsohn, the company’s marketing director, about their secrets for success.

Disclosure: Mashable’s events staff use Eventbrite for ticket sales for our events.

[music credit: Incompetech]

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Tags: bonnaroo, eventbrite, Events, ticketing

Create Your Own Awesomely Weird Chocolate Bars

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 10:49 PM PDT

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: Chocomize

Quick Pitch: Chocomize is like an online chocolate factory and you’re Willy Wonka. You create a chocolate bar with only your favorite ingredients.

Genius Idea: If you’ve ever longed for a chocolate bar that contains both potato chips and Pop Rocks, Chocomize is the site for you. The site lets you take the classic chocolate bar and customize it with your choice of up to five ingredients. The resulting combination can then be shipped directly to your home or to someone you love as a gift.

You start by selecting what kind of chocolate you want to use (your choices are dark, milk or white) and then you can add a variety of add-ins to make the candy bar truly unique. With a range of ingredients as diverse as hot curry powder and Strawberry Gushers fruit snacks, you can create something really, really weird or really, really good.

Chocomize also has a collection of “favorites” or pre-configured popular flavors. I really like the looks of the Smores Bar, which combines Teddy Graham crackers and mini marshmallows with milk chocolate.

The site is easy to use and it’s easy to select what ingriedients you want to add to your bar. Pricing starts at $3.85 for the basic chocolate bar and ingredients vary on price. If you’re wanting to order lots of bars for special events, you can bulk order and even design your own label.

The idea is really, really cool and this is the sort of gift that could be a real treat for weddings, birthdays or other special occasions. I think I’m going to order what I’m calling the “C-Mac Special:” milk chocolate with gummy bears, toffee, Nerds and Pop Rocks.

What’s in your dream candy bar? Let us know!

Video

Close-Up

[img credit: Loyal Moses]

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Tags: apple, iphone, iphone 4, loopt

“FrontierVille” Already Has 5 Million Players

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 04:34 PM PDT

Apparently FarmVille meets Oregon Trail is a winning combination — Zynga’s FrontierVille game has reached five million active daily players on Facebook in less than two weeks.

FrontierVille launched on June 9 as a sort of spin-off to FarmVille, though it was developed by Zynga’s Baltimore studio — a different one than the one responsible for FarmVille. In fact, its lead designer is an esteemed strategy game designer known for his work on Civilization and Rise of Nations, according to VentureBeat.

The game adds some features and levels of complexity that its predecessor doesn’t have, such as the ability to control multiple avatars — an entire family.

The game’s huge initial growth is due in part to the way the game encourages players to invite their friends. When I signed up for the game, I was prompted to invite my Facebook friends three times in my first five minutes of play. Given the association with FarmVille (which has more than 200 million active users), it’s not a surprise that FrontierVille has spread quickly.

Note that Zynga says that five million is the number of “daily active” users, however. That’s not the same as the probably higher number of people who’ve at least signed up to begin with.

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Tags: facebook, frontierville, gaming, online games, social games, Zynga

Firefox 3.6.4 Released: Flash No Longer Crashes Your Browser

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 03:43 PM PDT

After some delays, Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6.4, the newest version of the popular web browser. It comes with one big addition: protection against crashing due to third-party plugins, most notably Adobe Flash.

The updated browser, which you can download here, comes with dozens of bug fixes and stability upgrades. What the average user will care about most though is Firefox crash protection, something that is a prominent feature of Google Chrome.

Crash protection utilizes out-of-process plugins technology to run third-party plugins (specifically Flash, Quicktime, and Silverlight) in a separate process. In the past, a plugin crash would take down your entire Firefox browser. With crash protection however, “the browser will stay running while the portions of websites controlled by the plugin will be disabled.” It only takes a refresh to restart the plugin.

There is a catch, though: only Windows and Linux users have access to crash protection. According to Mozilla, making crash protection available to Mac OS X users would require major changes to Firefox’s infrastructure. However, the non-profit promises that it will become available for Mac users in Firefox 4, which should ship by the end of the year.

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Tags: adobe flash, browser, Firefox, firefox 3.6, Flash, mozilla, trending, web browser

Famous Line-Sitter Already Waiting for iPhone 4 at NYC Apple Store [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 03:08 PM PDT

Texas may have New York beat when it comes to waiting in line for the iPhone 4, but that doesn’t mean the plaza outside the 5th Avenue Apple Store is bereft of customers/campers. As per usual, Greg Packer — storied line-sitter extraordinaire — has queued up to get his hands on Steve Jobs’s latest magical device. Mashable visited Packer this morning to see how he’s faring so far.

Last time we saw Packer, he was parked out in front of the very same store in anticipation of the iPad — all on his lonesome. This time, however, he has a little help: Packer is being sponsored by Gazelle, a service that allows consumers to recycle unwanted electronics responsibly, and to get cash for selling them. (According to Gazelle reps, the service has seen more than 10,000 iPhone trades since June 7 — we wonder why.)

Gazelle has outfitted Packer with company gear (as you can see from the video) and camping equipment, is paying him $250 for every day he waits in line as well as purchasing his new phone, and has given him a runner to fetch food and other essentials. In short, he’s sitting a lot prettier this time around.

Watch the video below to see what Packer has to say about waiting in line, as well as the new phone. Also, check out his competition: a trio of fresh-faced kids from Boston. We smell a showdown, and it’s only Tuesday.

[video credit: Jehangir Irani]

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Tags: apple, Apple Store, ipad, iphone 4, video

Condé Nast Revives Gourmet — As An App

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 02:30 PM PDT

Nine months after shuttering lifestyle and cooking magazine Gourmet, Condé Nast President and CEO Charles H. Townsend unveiled Gourmet Live, an HTML5-based “immersive and interactive content experience” composed of Gourmet’s large existing library of content and some flashy — if vague — new features.

Gourmet Live isn’t just a backlog of Gourmet articles formatted for the iPad with some high-resolution photos and videos thrown in for good measure, Townsend assured press in a statement. The app will be compatible with a number of HTML5-friendly devices and incorporate many features that take it beyond the traditional magazine model. For instance, users will be able to “unlock” new content as they interact with the app and purchase premium content with a virtual currency. Gourmet Live will also utilize social sharing, geo-location and adaptive personalization technology.

“Gourmet Live is profoundly different,” Townsend said. “We approached this like a tech company, utilizing the rich assets of a media company, keeping Condé Nast at the forefront of content innovation."

Because Condé Nast already has one strong-selling food magazine, Bon Appetit, it can afford to experiment with the Gourmet brand a little. What Conde Nast may discover is a new model for delivering the premium content of its magazines.

Gourmet Live will launch in the fourth quarter of 2010. It will be free to download with registration, with paid content options available within the app. In the meantime, the company will add content to the demo site at live.gourmet.com.

What do you think of the Gourmet Live venture?

Video Demo

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Tags: App, conde nast, gourmet, gourmet live

Google Building Music Download Service with an Android Twist [REPORT]

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 02:08 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal reported some new details about the long-rumored Google music service, this time with a tasty Android twist.

Google’s plan, it seems, is to launch a download service first — one that is tied to the company’s search engine — and then to progress to an online subscription service by 2011. The ultimate goal is to have a cloud-based subscription service that could stream directly to Android-based devices.

While rumors and reports about Google formally entering the music sales or subscriptions space have been ongoing for years, this time the talk might be for real. In October, Google launched its music discovery search features. At the time, we discussed its implications on the music business as a whole.

Additionally, VEVO (a partnership service between YouTube and Universal Records) has at least theoretically created better relationships between the major labels and the search giant. However, when trying to assess Google’s overall music strategy, Android appears poised to be the biggest catalyst.

At Google I/O, Google showed off technology that would allow Android users to stream music off of their desktop computers right on to their phones. That’s very cool and offers a glimpse of what a cloud-based subscription service may offer. While Android can support direct over-the-air purchasing from the Amazon MP3 store, the overall music player and music experience still doesn’t quite have the finesse of iTunes and its integrated multi-device solution.

While The Wall Street Journal article mentions Android in relation to phone handsets and a streaming subscription, I actually think the implications for such a service are even greater on other Android devices.

Think about it: If your Android-based Google TV can also stream any music you want to your home stereo, that becomes an Apple TV without limiting users to their own libraries. And what about automobiles with Android-embedded systems? Those products aren’t on the market but manufacturers are interested. Having the ability to access that streaming subscription from your car, your home and your phone could make a Google-branded music subscription service succeed where so many others have failed.

What do you think about the potential for an Android-enhanced Google music service?

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Tags: android, Google, google music, music

Newspapers Are Still Dying, But the News Is Not Going Anywhere

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 01:59 PM PDT

Despite newspaper share prices seeing a 380% increase in the last year, don’t be swayed by the perceived recovery. The only way for newspapers to survive is by investing resources into innovation online.

Experiments are needed that not only challenge and test the behaviors of news consumption with digital and interactive forms of storytelling, but perhaps more importantly, business models are needed that are not limited to a silver-bullet hope that building a wall around their content will save them. With the exception of the few, the chances of pay walls generating revenue from readers who have grown accustomed to free content online are grim. Newspaper companies that continue to treat their websites as a dumping ground for news from their print product will meet their eventual demise.

While many in the industry were hoping the decline in ads was cyclical, the ad rebound has skipped newspapers. As Alan Mutter reported last week, ad spending on newspapers was down 9.7% (magazines were down as well), while Internet ad spending had increased 7.5%, as did TV (up 10.5%) and radio ads (up 6%). The future doesn’t look any better for print, with Internet ad revenue set to overtake newspapers by 2014 or possibly sooner.

A Failure to Innovate and Reach A New Audience

The Economist recently featured a story that highlights the newspaper industry’s ability to adapt and survive. That ability has unfortunately not been borne from innovation, but rather from cutbacks and trimming — American daily newspapers have lost 13,500 journalists since 2007, reports the American Society of News Editors. Though the decline slowed in recent years, online staff haven’t been spared either, and the result is fewer resources to cover the news.

And when it isn’t the bodies that are being cut, then it certainly is their pay. Print and online advertising has dropped for newspapers by 35% since the first quarter of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America. On top of the pay cuts, survival has come from slashing the number of words in the paper or printing fewer pages or slimming down the size of the paper itself — all to reduce costs. This trimming will eventually result in the extinction of these papers, forcing publishers to pay more attention to the web. Instead of being on the defensive, newspapers need to take strategic risks; getting comfortable every time print ad revenue makes slight recoveries isn’t exactly strategic.

The problem lies not in a stubbornness to evolve and recognize value in digital media, but a lack of resources. As a result of cutting, newspapers now have fewer resources to take advantage of new opportunities, such as that of mobile distribution on smartphones and their content walled-off from the web, and some are concluding that the best application on the iPad is the browser itself.

Admittedly, things do appear to be gaining traction for some newspaper companies who are experimenting with these tools, such as The New York Times’ recent release of The Scoop iPhone application, which integrates location-based features to provide a guide and service beyond content distribution for New York City residents (Disclosure: I previously worked at The New York Times). But smaller, local newspapers don’t have the resources that the Times does to create such applications. For them, experimenting with new distribution channels is difficult or infeasible.

There’s also the issue of a shrinking audience, which doesn’t help the grim advertising numbers. Of course, it doesn’t apply to all markets — in Japan the newspaper is still the main game in town when it comes to news, for example — but in most places, the average audience age is 50 and older and already declining. Younger people are still reading, but they’re consuming information in new ways, sometimes through social media sites.

The New York Times’s David Carr’s words on the subject are perhaps the most telling, “Newspapers executives generally speak about a lack of visibility going forward, but as the picture becomes clearer, it also seems to be becoming darker.”

Impending Death of “Blogger vs. Journalist”

With a combination of downsized newsrooms and the new-found value in curation, newspapers are starting to curate more news to account for losses in resources. This brings up the question of how the gap of reduced news coverage will be filled. Poynter’s Rick Edmonds said in October that newspapers have created a $1.6 billion deficit in news coverage versus just three years ago. But that is assuming that only traditional/print journalists can fill that gap, and that the great divide and distinction between journalist and blogger is as clear as ever. But it’s not.

The two roles and distinctions are merging and eventually we may no longer see the shallow and stereotypical references of bloggers who sit in their basements and write about what they had for breakfast. The truth is more bloggers are going out and doing original reporting, while traditional journalists are beginning to see the value in curation and are blogging themselves, though probably not from their mother’s basements.

Michele McLellan, a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and an expert on trends in community journalism, said that journalists displaced from newspapers are often starting their own blogs to cover news in their community through reporting and curation, while more bloggers at news startups are starting to integrate professional reporting standards in their work. She recently wrote about Oakland Local as one such example that mixes community building and professional reporting.

Content Creation From ‘Sprouts’

Of course, to truly fill the gaps of lost coverage, it will take time. It isn’t going to happen overnight. Perhaps a good analogy is to think of it like a forest, McLellan said. The tall trees are old journalism (newspapers), which will eventually wither and die. But slowly all around us, we’re beginning to see “sprouts” that are quickly growing and starting to get more light (as the tall trees wither around them). That light is coming from recognition that the work they are doing is important and valuable.

Some of this is at the local level from civic groups who want to figure out how to support news coverage, McLellan said. It also doesn’t hurt to point out that they are also being recognized by journalists, such as the Pulitzer Prize being awarded to an online-only publication for the first time, and Edward R. Murrow Awards being given out to recognize excellence in online journalism. Many efforts won’t be impressive at first, and some may not even survive. But some will, McLellan said. She’s keeping track of some of these initiatives with a list of local news startups. And of course, in many ways success is less dependent on trained journalists who break great stories, and more on finding a business model that can support the work.

Learning From News Startups

Despite new media companies and technologies filling some of the gaps created by downsized newspapers, the problem of funding innovation and the work of journalists is persistent. We’ve seen many great examples of innovative ways of producing and displaying content, or calls to enlist the audience more deeply into the process. But what about innovative ideas in producing revenue? Perhaps there are creative ideas that traditional newspapers can gather from online news startups, such as the Real Time Ads model from nonprofit news startup Minnpost.com and recent Knight News Challenge Winner NowSpots, but it is difficult to know whether such ventures will scale and whether advertisers will be interested.

“I think it’s scalable,” said Karl Pearson-Cater, director of operations at Minnpost.com, a nonprofit news startup in Minnesota.

He told me that businesses have responded well, specifically to buying real-time ads on targeted, niche portions of the site. The idea is simple, Pearson-Cater said, small businesses in the community were already marketing themselves using social media, and so this was meeting them halfway. They could buy ad space in the form of widgets that pull an RSS feed from their Twitter, Facebook or blog.

The site launched Real Time Ads a year ago as a side project and sells the widgets for a flat weekly fee, a method popular with blogs for years, rather than the traditional standard of charging per one thousand impressions served to readers. On their Book Club Club blog, it was sold for $3,000 a year for the top spot and $1,000 a year for the one below it, for example. Pearson-Cater eventually wants to enable other publishers to use the platform, but needs to make sure it actually makes money.

“No one’s gonna use it if it doesn’t make money,” Pearson-Cater said. “With anything, the goal is always to create a sustainable model that supports journalism.”

It certainly will be an interesting experiment to watch, but may result as simply a small piece of a big pie that is quickly becoming depleted.

Funding Innovation and Journalism

Some worry that there simply needs to be more funding to support innovative ideas in journalism and for newspapers that are struggling, which then have the potential to eventually solve the looming revenue problem. Josh Stearns, the program manager at Free Press, a media reform nonprofit, is one of those people. He said the Knight Foundation’s funding of innovation is great, but that journalism needs a bigger fund, something like the NSF. People have great ideas for journalism, but aren’t able to fund them, he said.

“There needs to be more federal funding or a combination of multiple foundations supporting a bigger fund. We’re not fostering innovation by talking about it.”

Journalism is a profession that is a service to society, and most that decide to fulfill that service are not doing it to get rich. Perhaps in the golden age of newspapers they were, but with the changes to technology and social media, the barrier to entry to being a writer is almost non-existent and the former audience is now contributing to that service as well, and without complaint.

The reality is that newspapers are still a valuable resource to communities that do not have access to the Internet, a reason that prompted the San Francisco Public Press to publish a print edition. But sooner or later, the costs of printing a paper will outweigh the tangible benefit and more newspapers will take the plunge into online, exploring the murky waters that news startups are getting their feet wet in now. Whatever the result, news will and is being produced, it just may look and feel different while this revolution takes place.

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Tags: digital media, new media, newspapers, realtime ads, startups

Where NOT to Get the iPhone 4 on Thursday: AT&T Stores

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 01:31 PM PDT

Unless you pre-ordered your iPhone 4, AT&T stores will not be the place to go in the wee hours of Thursday morning in hopes of obtaining a device. In a statement issued this afternoon, the company says that it will not have any iPhone 4's available for retail purchase in stores until June 29 –- next Tuesday.

The news isn’t overly surprising given what we saw with iPhone 4 pre-orders, where AT&T’s servers were overwhelmed by requests (along with a spat of other issues the company is still working to sort out). As has been widely reported, 600,000 of the devices were pre-ordered on the first day.

Meanwhile, for those that were able to pre-order the device through AT&T for home delivery, customers should be getting an e-mail when it's shipped. If you selected store delivery, you'll get a call from an AT&T rep when your iPhone 4 is available for pickup.

Of course, Apple stores will have the new iPhone, though given the types of lines we've seen in the past for other Apple launches, you best get there early if you're hoping to get a device on launch day. At this point, it also looks like Best Buy, Walmart and Radio Shack will also be options for trying to snag an iPhone 4 on Thursday, though quantities may be much more limited than at Apple stores.

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Tags: apple, att, iphone 4

iPad + Sonos = A Music Junkie’s Gadget Heaven [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 01:14 PM PDT

Today, Sonos brought over two of its brand-new S5 audio monitors along with an iPad to demo the pre-beta version of every music lover’s wildest dream: A superior controller that enables users to play music from any service — whether that’s from a website, web radio, iTunes, you name it — from any room and at any volume.

The S5 is the company’s latest feat. At $399, it functions as a cool iPod/iPhone dock for “unleashing” your music library on your home and hapless guests. The price point is just right for audiophiles, and the setup process isn’t too hard on technophobes, either. Sonos sets up its own wireless network for the speakers and controllers, so you won’t have to plug in a bunch of wires and cables. The sound quality is great, and given the size of the package, we’re happy to report that the S5 still achieves great volume. You can also buy multiple S5s and set them up to play in stereo.

The coolest part of today’s demo, however, was the kick-butt iPad interface. It lets you view album art, drag-and-drop music into any S5 in any room of your house, control volume anywhere with a single swipe (great for the parents of metal-loving teenagers, we’re assuming), and search for your favorites.

Of course, Sonos’s iPad experience is integrated with Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.fm and a long list of other cloud-based music services. It’ll also play nicely with your iTunes library.

The Sonos iPad controller app will be available free in the App Store in about two months, depending on the length of the approval process.

The Sonos controller costs $349. The S5 monitors, as mentioned, are $399 each. And iPads, as we’ve all heard ad nauseum, start at around $500. This is a sound system that quickly adds up to serious change if you’re starting from scratch. However, for the large intersection of the Venn diagram of music lovers and gadget geeks, we can see this system being a winner.

You can also control Sonos with your iPhone, and we’d be extremely naive to think that the Sonos folks aren’t also working on Android solutions. We can’t wait to see what they cook up for Android tablets in the months to come.

What’s your take on it? If you’ve already got an iPad or Sonos system, would you want to use this app?

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Reviews: Android, App Store, Facebook, Pandora, Rhapsody, Sonos, Twitter

Tags: apple, ipad, itunes, music, pandora, rhapsody, S5, sonos

Vevo Launches New Music Channel to Discover Emerging Artists

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 01:00 PM PDT

Music video website VEVO, a joint venture between three major record labels and YouTube, is looking to expand its reach beyond Lady Gaga and other established singers with a new music channel dedicated to discovering and showcasing emerging artists.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the new channel, officially dubbed “The Next Wave presented by Schick Hydro,” is essentially a showcase for upcoming artists.

The content of the channel is limited, however — only artists that are part of major or independent labels affiliated with Vevo can be showcased. In essence, these artists have already been discovered, but haven’t become breakout sensations like Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift. We’d love to see a system where Vevo users choose their favorites and elevate them to fame, American Idol style.

Vevo has been making big waves of its own in the web video arena — one in four people who watched web video last month saw a Vevo video, but it relies heavily on a few star artists for its traffic, primarily Gaga.

The Next Wave is a good start to diversifying its video base, but we hope we’ll see more social elements for discovering artist out of the joint venture soon.

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Tags: EMI, Lady Gaga, music video, sony, vevo, youtube

3 Things Facebook Does Very Well

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 12:39 PM PDT

In recent months, Facebook and its young CEO have received a bevy of criticism from users and press following the company’s decision to automatically opt all users into its Open Graph initiative. In spite of all the ruckus however, Facebook continues to thrive.

Web denizens may be financing the next Facebook alternative, but right now the majority of the Facebook population has yet to abandon ship.

We stay because it’s hard to leave. It’s hard to leave because Facebook has become a digital repository of everything that matters to us. Our friends and family use Facebook, preferred brands give us freebies through Facebook, our favorite games make us come back for more, and whenever we’re passionate about something, Facebook helps our message reach the world.

We stay because at the end of the day, Facebook gets right a few core components that separate the service from its competitors. These components are engaging features, the agility to make quick changes and handle enormous traffic, and the resoluteness to stay true to the original vision for the site with each new feature release.

Engaging Features

Facebook is a time suck. According to Nielsen data from April 2010, the average person spends six hours on Facebook per month.

There is a simple reason people spend so much on Facebook — engaging, borderline hypnotic features. Login to Facebook to add a friend and suddenly you’re sucked in by notifications of friends commenting or “Liking” your posts, photos of friends and family members and news flowing in from your favorite Pages.

Facebook — moreso than any other social network — has mastered the art of building features that demand attention and speak an emotional language that extends beyond a single country or demographic.

The News Feed, a controversial feature when initially released, is perhaps the most engaging of all, as it draws the user’s attention to the flow of content from his or her friends. It eliminates the “what now?” moment that online users face when logging into any site. Even with just a handful of friends and a few “Liked” Pages, the average Facebook user is presented with a myriad of things to do, most of which have a feel-good quality about them.

On the features front, Facebook has also managed to build the world’s largest social platform, extending users’ social graphs to their favorite games, applications and websites both inside and outside of Facebook. Whether you use an iPhone or iPad app to check the feed, or fire up a new round of Farmville, your Facebook friends are right there with you. It’s this relationship-oriented context that makes everything — even the most bleeding edge ideas — seem familiar, if not fun.

Agility

Facebook is fast to act, making it one of the most agile companies online, especially considering its massive size.

This agility is most often seen in reactionary circumstances. It has become a somewhat predictable pattern for Facebook to release a huge update — whether it be a feature or change to the terms of service — that passionate users react to with vocal cries of outrage. Facebook then swiftly responds with blog posts from executives and a few changes that help to pacify members.

Most recently we saw this agility in Facebook’s quick reaction to growing privacy concerns. In a matter of weeks, the company managed to drastically simplify site privacy settings that had become impossible to manage after years of modification. While the company’s speedy privacy control overhaul may not have addressed the primary concern behind the upheaval, it was an aggressive change that did quiet much of the anti-Facebook rhetoric.

For a site with nearly 500 million members, Facebook does a remarkable job at listening to user feedback and implementing changes when it deems them appropriate.

Of course, the company should be credited for more than its reactionary maneuvers. Over the years, Facebook’s user base has ballooned to astronomical proportions, and along the way the site’s done an impressive job keeping the lights on, firing off new features, experimenting, supporting businesses with Pages and releasing international versions.

This agility is all the more obvious now as Facebook remains constant while Twitter continues to buckle under traffic pressure.

Vision

Like it or not, Facebook has a vision of making the world more open. This vision reportedly dates back to Facebook’s 2004 origins at Harvard.

In the book, The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick writes that just a short time after “Thefacebook” launched in February 2004, Zuckerberg had already explained his vision to Tricia Black with Y2M, an early advertising partner.

The excerpt reads:

“Even then he had his own vision for the potential of Thefacebook, and it didn’t have a lot to do with money. “We’re going to change the world,” Black remembers him saying. “I think we can make the world a more open place.”

This vision is one that we’ve been hearing more and more about in recent weeks. Zuckerberg has taken to public forums to express his steadfast commitment to this vision, especially when coming to the defense of Instant Personalization. Zuckerberg also proudly dons the now famous company hoodie that is branded with the Facebook insignia, as depicted above. The insignia captures the company’s vision of making the world more open and connected through [Open] Graph, Platform and Stream.

In hindsight, it’s easy to tie Zuckerberg’s grandiose vision to the evolution of the site. Just look at the News Feed, Facebook Platform, the “Everyone” option, and now the “Like” buttons. The News Feed made content from friends more accessible, Platform introduced third-party application integration, the “Everyone” option began to acclimate users to the idea of publishing content publicly (to the Stream) and the “Like” buttons serve as digital rewards for those who engage with third-party content.

Clearly, Facebook has stayed true to its vision over the years, and while everyone may not agree with it, it’s this consistency that’s led to focused innovation on the feature front.

For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

- How Facebook Makes Edgy Concepts Mainstream
- Why Facebook Can't Genuinely Connect People
- How Does Facebook View the World?
- Why Facebook Must Get Serious About Privacy
- 4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook

[img credit: Thomas Hawk]

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, pages

Tags: facebook, instant personalization, mark zuc, news feed, social media, trending

Social Media Day Giveaway: Win a Sony Dash

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 11:30 AM PDT

Are you signed up to attend a Mashable Social Media Day meetup on June 30? If you RSVP for a meetup in your local community, you’ll have a chance to win a Sony dash, a personal Internet viewer.

You can sign up to attend one of the 460+ meetups, or organize your own to celebrate Social Media Day — a global celebration of the revolution of media becoming social. Our staff will be attending meetups in New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin, so come say hello.

If you want a shot at winning the Sony dash:

1. Simply click the “Like” button below for our Facebook Page,
2. Sign-up to attend a local Meetup for Social Media Day;
3. And let us know in the comments where you’ll be attending so that we may confirm your RSVP (This contest is limited to U.S. residents).

Please use your real identity so that we may contact you via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook. We’d also love to hear how you plan on celebrating at the meetup and if you’re doing anything else special on the day.

We’ll pick and announce the winner on Social Media Day next Wednesday.

About Social Media Day

Social media has changed our lives. It has not only changed the way we communicate, but the way we connect with one another, consume our news, conduct our work, organize our lives and much more. So why not celebrate? As far as we know, there is no official Social Media Day. But we do think there should be one. So we invite you to celebrate the revolution of media becoming social by attending or organizing a Social Media Day meetup in your area on June 30. What better way to celebrate social media than connecting with other enthusiasts in your area?

How To Participate in Social Media Day

Meetup Everywhere Mashable: Sign up to attend or organize your own event on the Meetup Everywhere Mashable.
Use our Logo: If you’re planning a meetup, use our Social Media Day logo for the event. Why the alpaca for the mascot you might ask? It’s among the most social farm animals.
Comment via Facebook: Go to Smday.com and leave a comment either promoting your meetup or tell us what you’re doing for your event.
RSVP to the Facebook Event: RSVP and upload photos from your meetup to our Facebook event page.
Upload to Flickr: Upload photos to Flickr and tag them with #smday.
Follow @mashSMday: Follow @mashSMday on Twitter for updates and developments on the celebration.
Tweet: Use the #smday hashtag on Twitter. With so many participating, we should be a trending topic on Twitter on June 30. Also, we’ll soon be announcing a prize for those that tweet or post to Facebook.

For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter

Tags: contest, Events, giveaway, smday, sony

JibJab Lets You Rap with the Founding Fathers for July 4th [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 11:13 AM PDT

With all the excitement surrounding the World Cup and the iPhone 4 launch in the air, some of you Americans may have forgotten that next weekend is the Fourth of July. Well, don’t worry, JibJab remembered for you, and now you can commemorate the day with a brand new toy.

JibJab — who also brought you Star Wars Starring You, among other diversions — has released a shareable video called Founding Father’s Rap in honor of July 4th.

We tested it out with our own founding fathers, Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore and Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow. You can check it out, make your own, and then share it via e-mail or Facebook.

Oddly enough, this is exactly how Adam sounds when he raps.

For more entertainment coverage, follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: App, humor, JibJab, software

Shopping Faceoff: Amazon vs. eBay vs. Craigslist

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 10:57 AM PDT

This Web Faceoff series is supported by Buick.

Last week, as part of our Web Faceoff series, we asked which you preferred: Google TV or Boxee?

Google TV trounced Boxee with 600 votes, or 51%. Boxee garnered 395 votes to take 33% of the poll, while neither votes made up 16% of last week’s poll (188 votes).

It’s a new week, so it’s time for a new faceoff. This week, we turn to a new topic: shopping.

While there are many websites for buying or trading your things, three stand out with completely different models: Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist.

Which do you prefer the most: the straightforwardness of Amazon, the auctions of eBay, or the classifieds of Craigslist? Cast your vote in the poll below by Thursday, June 24 at 12:00 PT and let us know your rationale in the comments.

Which do you prefer: Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist?online survey

Faceoff Series: 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)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
- Gmail vs. Outlook
- WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
- Boxee vs. Hulu
- WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
- Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
- WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Week 18:
- Foursquare vs. Yelp vs. Gowalla
- WINNER: Foursquare, 1182 votes, (Yelp: 661 votes, Gowalla: 509 votes, Tie: 143 votes)

Week 19:
- AIM vs. GTalk vs. FbChat
- WINNER: GTalk, 2189 votes, (AIM: 1257 votes, FbChat: 511 votes, Tie: 203 votes)

Week 20:
- Music Ownership vs. Music Subscription
- WINNER: Ownership, 533 votes (Subscription: 299 votes, Tie: 237)

Week 21:
- Match.com vs. PlentyofFish
- WINNER: Plenty of Fish, 430 votes (Match.com: 334 votes, Tie: 187 votes)

Week 21:
- Google Buzz vs. Facebook Vs. Twitter
- WINNER: Facebook, 3353 votes (Twitter: 1828 votes, Google Buzz: 1298 votes, Tie: 651 votes)

Week 22:
- HTML5 vs. Adobe Flash
- WINNER: HTML5, 3892 votes (Adobe Flash: 1779 votes, Tie: 660 votes)

Week 23:
- Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move
- WINNER: Project Natal, 1268 votes (PlayStation Move: 668 votes, None: I don’t like motion controllers: 170 votes, None: I prefer the Wii: 150 votes)

Week 24:
- Chatroulette vs. Hot or Not
- WINNER: Chatroulette, 742 votes (Hot or Not: 281 votes, Tie: 99 votes)

Week 25:
- iPad vs. Netbooks
- WINNER: iPad, 3098 votes (Netbook: 1969 votes, Tie: 605 votes)

Week 26:
- Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks
- WINNER: Apple iBooks, 1227 votes (Amazon Kindle: 928 votes, Tie: 118 votes, Neither: 276 votes)

Week 27:
- Next-gen iPhone vs. Droid Incredible
- WINNER: iPhone 4G, 9765 votes (Droid Incredible: 8175 votes, Tie: 1318 votes)

Week 28:
- Facebook “Like” vs. “Become a Fan”
- WINNER: “Become a Fan”, 3161 votes (“Like:” 1634 votes, Indifferent: 719 votes)

Week 29:
- Physical keyboards vs. Virtual keyboards
- WINNER: Physical QWERTY keyboard, 2563 votes (Virtual keyboard: 2010 votes, Prefer T9 typing: 176 votes, Tie: 346 votes)

Week 30:
- Google TV vs. Apple TV
- WINNER: Google TV, 1674 votes (Apple TV: 617 votes, Neither: 341 votes, Both: 242 votes)

Week 31:
- Twitter vs. Newspapers
- WINNER: Twitter, 1005 votes (Newspapers: 418 votes, Neither: 282, Equal: 211)

Week 32:
- HTC EVO 4G vs. iPhone 4
- WINNER: HTC EVO 4G, 5091 votes (iPhone 4: 3,680 votes, Tie: 556)

Week 33:
- Google TV vs. Boxee
- WINNER: Google TV, 600 votes (Boxee: 395 votes, Neither: 188)

Series supported by Buick

This Web Faceoff series is supported by Buick.

For more business coverage, follow Mashable Business on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Amazon.com, Bing, Boxee, Chrome, Craigslist, Digg, Facebook, Firefox, Foursquare, Gmail, Google, Google Buzz, Google Docs, Gowalla, Gtalk, Hulu, Pandora, Posterous, Seesmic Desktop, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, TweetDeck, Twitter, TypePad, Windows, WordPress, Yelp, aim, eBay

Tags: amazon, craigslist, ebay, online shopping, shopping, web faceoff

Google Voice Now Available to Everyone in U.S.

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 10:20 AM PDT

Google Voice is now available for everyone (provided you have a U.S. phone number).

The service, which started life out as GrandCentral, acts as a unified phone number. It can be used to make free calls to the U.S. and Canada, to send free text messages and more. Its voicemail system can even be checked by e-mail.

Now, after more than fifteen months of testing with invite-only accounts, Google Voice is ready for the masses.

As great as the service is, it hasn’t existed without controversy. Last summer, Apple was criticized when the company barred the Google Voice iPhone app from its App Store. The battle over Google Voice was arguably the first shot in the current Apple-Google war.

And earlier today, Business Week reported that Frontier Communications is suing Google over alleged patent violations within the Google Voice service.

For many users however, Google Voice is a wonderful solution to the increasingly complex web of communication profiles. Instead of having to try to maintain separate phone numbers, users can just have one central number forwarded to different devices based on time of day or location.

What do you think of Google Voice?

For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: App Store, Facebook, Google, Google Voice, Twitter

Tags: Google, Google Voice, trending, voip

FourWhere Adds Yelp and Gowalla Support

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 09:56 AM PDT

The Foursquare-Google Maps mashup FourWhere has just added support for Gowalla and Yelp. The data from the three services is then displayed on a Google Map.

While this in and of itself could be helpful and cool — especially for finding additional information or reviews about a location — Sysomos (the company that created FourWhere) has also used intelligent matching to combine similar venues. So if a location appears as one name on one service and under a slightly different name on another, FourWhere will merge them into one entry.

That technology doesn’t work reliably 100% of the time (I was able to see additional Foursquare entries for the same restaurant, even though the addresses were the same), but a certain amount of that is due to duplication issues on the part of the location services.

The site itself remains highly usable and this is a great resource for people looking to find more information about a venue, without needing to log in or belong to all of the different location-based services. It would be really cool if there was a mobile or tablet-based version of FourWhere, although we understand that might be difficult from a development standpoint.

What do you think of location-based mashup services like FourWhere?

For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter

Tags: foursquare, fourwhere, geolocation, gowalla, location based social networks, yelp

Microsoft Lists Kinect for Xbox 360 at $150

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 09:32 AM PDT

Five big retailers have listed Microsoft Kinect’s controller-free interface for Xbox 360 at a price of $149.99, including Microsoft’s own online store.

The price is slightly lower than the $200 tag suggested by a Swedish retailer some time ago, but it falls in line with numerous previous rumors that put the device at $150. Note that when a retailer lists a price for an unreleased product, that doesn’t mean the price is accurate. Sometimes they post educated guesses to entice would-be buyers.

It’s unusual if not unprecedented for a manufacturer’s own online store to do that, so Microsoft gave the rumor greater credibility when its store pulled the trigger. Nevertheless, the retail and product teams at the company might be out of sync.

Microsoft rep Aaron Greenberg tweeted,”No Kinect price announced yet, retail price estimates are purely speculative, final price & pack-in details are not yet determined.”

The Microsoft store still lists the device at $150. Do you think it’s legit?

[via Joystiq]

For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: gaming, kinect, microsoft, motion controller, price, pricing, project natal, video games, xbox, Xbox 360

iOS 4 vs. Android FroYo: Which Is the Better OS? [POLL]

Posted: 22 Jun 2010 09:03 AM PDT

iOS 4.0 has arrived just in time for the launch of the iPhone 4 this Thursday. The newest version of the recently renamed OS brings a slew of new features, such as multitasking, folders and a universal inbox.

Of course, Android owners have been enjoying these features for a while now. While Google has been playing catchup for years with iOS, this year has been different. Android 2.2. (FroYo) was revealed with much fanfare last month at Google I/O, complete with a speedy interface, better performance, cloud syncing and, yes, Adobe Flash 10.1.

As we stated at the time, Google essentially declared all-out war against Apple and the iOS, and it’s a war that’s quickly heated up. While Google touts 100,000+ Android activations per day, Apple can simply point to unprecedented iPhone 4 demand. There’s huge demand and interest on both sides.

Now that both OSes are out, we want to know: Which one has your loyalty? Do you love the iOS and its vast app library or do you prefer the choice and open nature of Android? Let us know in the poll below, and don’t forget to leave a comment explaining your choice.

Which Is the Better OS: iOS 4 or Android FroYo?survey software

For more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Android, Facebook, Google, Twitter

Tags: android, android froyo, Froyo, iOS, iphone

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Rabu, 23 Juni 2010