Mashable: Latest 26 News Updates - including “Ridley Scott and YouTube Want You To Film One Day in Your Life” |  |
- Ridley Scott and YouTube Want You To Film One Day in Your Life
- Which Identities Are We Using to Sign in Around the Web? [INFOGRAPHIC]
- The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check Facebook [STUDY]
- Can a New Tool for Sellers Take on Etsy and Amazon Marketplace?
- Hulu Plus: Hands-On With the iPhone, HD and More [REVIEW]
- LeBron James Surpasses 150,000 Twitter Followers in 7 Hours
- What Should Mashable Ask Bill Cosby?
- Twitter’s @EarlyBird Account to Spread News of Special Deals
- Mashable Summer Tour Comes to Seattle This Saturday
- Twitter’s Official BlackBerry App Exits Beta
- Israeli Soldiers Dance to Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” Face Reprimands [VIDEO]
- Firefox 4 Beta 1 Released
- Foursquare and IFC Team Up for Indie Tour Guide Bliss
- How Social Media Has Prepared Us for Collaborative Business
- Loopt Now Lets You Download Your Location History
- How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising
- Are We Losing Interest in the Oil Spill? [STATS]
- Apple Boots Fraudster from iTunes Store
- YouTube Darlings OK Go Roasted in Parody [VIDEO]
- “Mad Men” Yourself with JibJab’s Animation Tool
- LeBron James Joins Twitter
- Indie Studio’s New Releases to Stream on Netflix Before Cable
- 5 Ways to Clean Up Your Social Media Identity
- Chatroulette Piano Guy Merton Returns: Now with More Omegle [VIDEO]
- 5 Handy iPhone Apps for Home Improvement
- Twitter Ad Network Tweetup Acquires Popurls and Twidroid
- UK Government Spends Thousands Developing iPhone Apps
| Ridley Scott and YouTube Want You To Film One Day in Your Life Posted: 07 Jul 2010 04:03 AM PDT      YouTube announced a project called “Life in a Day,” which attempts to document one day, July 24, seen through the camera lens of people around the world. The project will be executive produced by Ridley Scott of Blade Runner and Gladiator fame, and edited by Kevin Macdonald, best known for directing films such as The Last King of Scotland and One Day in September. The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival; if your footage makes the final cut, you'll be credited as a co-director, and 20 contributors will be selected to attend the premiere. If you’re hoping for financial gain, however, you’ll be disappointed: for this one, glory is your only reward. To contribute to the project, you need to capture July 24, 2010, on camera, and upload the footage to the Life in the Day channel sometime before July 31. As for what your footage should consist of, YouTube wants you to have no limits, to be personal, to film anyone you like, and to preferably film the footage in high resolution. You can find a full set of guidelines over at the official channel. Check out an introductory video for the project below. More About: Film, Ridley Scott, video, youtube For more Social Media coverage:
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| Which Identities Are We Using to Sign in Around the Web? [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 07 Jul 2010 01:50 AM PDT The days of having a separate login and password for each online service we use are behind us. Now, you can log into most sites and services using your social network’s ID. The most popular social identities are Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, but are they always being used in the same way? The infographic below, courtesy of social optimization platform Gigya, shows that users trust different identities on different services. For example, users are most likely to log into entertainment sites via Facebook, but when it comes to news sites, the social identity of choice is Twitter. Furthermore, the infographic shows what profile data is available to services after users log in using various online identities. Check out a bigger version of the infographic here.   Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter More About: facebook, gigya, Google, online identity, social networking, twitter, Yahoo For more Social Media coverage:
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| The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check Facebook [STUDY] Posted: 07 Jul 2010 12:49 AM PDT   Young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom. The study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits. While some of the results are in line with previous studies we’ve read, others simply shocked us (e.g. 42% of young women think posting photos of themselves “visibly intoxicated” is okay). Here’s a short rundown of how young women are utilizing Facebook and social media in general: Are Young Women Addicted to Facebook?While the study covers all of social media, it’s clear that women in the 18-34 range are focused on their Facebook accounts. More than half of young women (57%) say they talk to people online more than face-to-face. A full 39% of them proclaim themselves Facebook addicts, while 34% of young women make Facebook the first thing they do when they wake up, even before brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom. Here are some other interesting stats regarding young women and Facebook:
What conclusions can we draw from this data? It’s not just that young women are using Facebook religiously: it’s that they’re very open with what they post and who they accept as friends. Combined, it can lead to a privacy mess. Social Media’s Role in DatingWe already knew that Facebook has radically changed dating, and Oxygen Media’s stats only back up that assertion. 50% of women believe that it’s just fine to date people they’ve met on Facebook, compared to 65% of men. 6% of women use it to “hook up” (20% of men do the same). It gets murkier for relationships. 49% of women believe it’s fine to keep tabs on a boyfriend by having access to his accounts (42% of men think the same way). 9% of women have broken up their relationships via Facebook, as compared to a full 24% of men. Luckily, most women don’t believe that breaking up via Facebook is okay: 91% to be exact. I don’t want to meet the 9% who think it’s just fine. Women and PrivacyThe Oxygen Media/Lightspeed Research survey is filled with a lot of other interesting data points, but it all circles back to the privacy issue. 54% of 18-24 year old women do not trust Facebook with their private information, and 89% agree that “you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see.” That seems contradictory to the 42% that think it’s fine to post pictures of themselves drunk. Our habits are changing due to social media technology, particularly Facebook. It’s not just a connection tool for many women, but a research tool, a dating network, and a way to keep tabs on both boyfriends and enemies. What do you think of these stats? Do any of them surprise you? Let us know what you think in the comments. Reviews: Facebook More About: FacebookT, twitter
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| Can a New Tool for Sellers Take on Etsy and Amazon Marketplace? Posted: 06 Jul 2010 10:10 PM PDT   Mashable's Spark of Genius series highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, see details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.
Quick Pitch: Shoply is a free, quick and easy way for sellers to open a shop and start selling online. It’s also efficient and safe for buyers to discover and transact with them. Genius Idea: Setting up an e-commerce site can be an elaborate and time-consuming process for independent sellers — a process Shoply has sharply streamlined to attract businesses and individuals new to the e-commerce space. It takes all but a few minutes to set up a basic shop with an e-mail address and store name, logo, description and custom URL. Users can list up to 10 products, create an additional page (perhaps for an “about me” or a note on shipping policies) and accept payments through PayPal for free. Shoply charges a reasonable 6% sales commission plus a $1.99 flat fee for every item sold. The only major drawback? Besides the 10-product limit, users can only upload one image for each item. Shoply will soon begin offering premium options to relax these tight allowances, in addition to decreasing its cut of the sales. Unlike Etsy or Amazon Marketplace, there are no restrictions on what kinds of merchandise or services you can list. Shoply Founder and CEO Liad Shababo told us that some users have set up shops to quickly dispose of furniture and other goods because they’re moving between apartments or graduating from college. Given that Shoply is a recent startup, the site is of course well-integrated with a number of social networks. Sellers can add links to many of their social networking profiles and push out updates to Facebook and Twitter when they add new merchandise. In addition, Shoply’s Facebook app lets sellers add a tab to their Facebook profiles so that interested buyers can browse their offerings directly on Facebook — they’ll have to complete transactions on Shoply’s website, however. Although Shoply’s breezy interface, lack of listing fees and social networking integrations will appeal to many, the platform is missing some of the most-prized features of other marketplaces for independent sellers. Like a similar startup we reviewed a few months ago, Tinypay.me, Shoply lacks seller and product ratings, instead suggesting that users leverage the legitimacy offered by their social networking profiles to establish trust with potential buyers. And unlike eBay, Etsy and Amazon Marketplace, Shoply itself is not a destination site and will not drive significant traffic to its users’ stores, nor does it offer the same carefully engineered search and recommendations engines as its competitors, nor the community elements so prized by Etsy users. Like Tinypay.me, sellers must depend on their own networks to market their goods. Nevertheless, Shoply is off to a promising start. Since its launch last month, the platform has attracted about 800 active sellers with more than 3,000 products, Shababo informed us. Shoply also plans to introduce a full read/write API and customizable design themes for stores this month, with an affiliate marketing scheme and embeddable widgets to follow. What do you think of the platform? Does Shoply offer enough to compete against the likes of Etsy, eBay and Amazon Marketplace? What additional features could give it the upper hand?
[img credit: Annie Mole] Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
Reviews: Facebook, Twitter More About: bizspark, e-commerce, Etsy, shoply, spark-of-genius For more Business coverage:
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| Hulu Plus: Hands-On With the iPhone, HD and More [REVIEW] Posted: 06 Jul 2010 07:47 PM PDT   Hulu Plus is a breakthrough service for people who want to completely abandon traditional television in favor of an Internet-based alternative, but there are a few things holding it back for some picky users. We spend the weekend watching items in Hulu Plus’s library on multiple devices, and our impressions are generally positive, although there are a few kinks to work out. Not every complaint about Hulu Plus is a kink, of course. Some people will say that they refuse to pay a monthly subscription fee for ad-supported content on principle. We’ll talk a bit about what reasonable expectations should be there, but needless to say, if you feel strongly enough about the principle, Hulu Plus isn’t for you and none of its features will change your mind. But if you’re open to Hulu Plus if the features are strong enough, we can help you figure out whether it’s worth signing up once the service goes live to the public. Once you’ve signed up for Hulu Plus, you’ll see all the features and content on the website alongside the free content you were getting before. It’s not just partitioned off on its own site, although you can access a list of premium content at the Plus website. In addition to the ability to watch Hulu on several new devices, you’re paying for two things: an increased library of TV episodes, and the ability to stream them in 720p high definition on supported devices, including the web player.
 The library will change over time, we’re sure, but for now the exclusive content you gain includes all of the episodes from the following series: The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Law & Order: SVU, Grey’s Anatomy, Roswell, The Office, Arrested Development, Ally McBeal, Heroes, 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, 8 Simple Rules, American Dad!, Angel, The Biggest Loser, Dancing With the Stars, Eli Stone, Legend of the Seeker, Life, Lipstick Jungle, Miami Vice, My Name is Earl, Parks and Recreation, Prison Break, Quantum Leap, Reaper, Samantha Who?, Supernanny, The Office (U.K.), The Pretender, What About Brian, and episodes from many more programs. Whereas the free version of Hulu often limits viewership of current seasons to the five most recent episodes, Hulu Plus lets you watch every episode from the current seasons of Glee, The Office, House, Modern Family, 30 Rock, Family Guy and Grey’s Anatomy. There’s not much to say about this in our preview, except to say, yep, it’s all there, and it works just like you’d expect.  We watched several episodes of Modern Family in 720p on a MacBook Pro laptop, and while no one would mistake it for the quality of broadcast high definition, it was plenty sharp for a computer display. You will notice quality loss due to compression when watching on a large screen (we watched some episodes on a 40-inch Sony Bravia HDTV in a living room), but only true image quality connoisseurs will complain. Of course, early adopters of this kind of technology are likely to be connoisseurs of image quality too, so that’s not something to brush off completely. You shouldn’t expect anything different from streaming video right now, though. The bigger problem is the lack of surround sound support. That one hurts a little for people who want to watch Lost on their home theaters. Playback on a laptop — which is what most people use Hulu for anyway — is as fine as you’d ever expect on that platform, though. The ability to view the library on-the-go is arguably the most significant draw of Hulu Plus, and for the most part the iPhone app [iTunes link] does not disappoint. The video playback is consistent and clear — better in both quality and reliability than most streaming video apps we’ve used, even over 3G. The entire library is available on the app, and the playback options and tools are simplistic but easy to use. You can access your queue, subscriptions and recently viewed videos, plus browse the library by popularity or name. There’s also a search field, but the sorting and filtering options are limited so it’s only sometimes useful. At the time of this preview, there are 1,671 user reviews of the iPhone app in the Apple App Store, and the majority of them are negative. This isn’t because of the app’s features or stability. Rather, it’s a user backlash against Hulu’s decision to charge $9.99 per month for access to ad-supported content. We’ll get into that more later. There’s also an iPad app [iTunes link]. It’s not all about new features as compared to the iPhone version, but it does have a larger interface more suited for that device. Hulu Plus isn’t without its technical malfunctions and iffy design choices, and we’d be remiss not to mention them. The most frustrating of these was the tendency of the web-based player to freeze the image while still proceeding with audio playback. We were able to fix this by adjusting the resolution (for example, switching from 480p to 720p or to the variable bitrate option) but it’s a pain, and sometimes we even had to refresh the page, which forced us to watch the most recent commercial break again. The greatest flaw of the iPhone version is that it doesn’t always jump right back into the video when you return from another app using iOS 4’s multitasking tool. Sometimes it does, so that was clearly the intention, but other times you’re returned to the episode selector. You can tap on the episode you were watching and it will probably start playing where you left off, but you’ll have to watch another commercial first. These two complaints are clearly bugs, not design flaws, so we hope to see them fixed in the near future. There is one unfortunate design choice in the iPhone app, though; when you browse TV series alphabetically, the app downloads the list from the server — along with thumbnails — every time. This isn’t a problem on Wi-Fi, but on 3G it can be time consuming. Sometimes you want to reach a specific show and you’re stuck waiting for two minutes while the list loads. That’s not ideal for the pick-up-and-play style that’s necessary or a mobile app. You’d be able to bypass that by using the app’s search tab instead of browsing, but searches turn up individual episodes, not series. If you search for Buffy the Vampire Slayer you’ll have the same problem, but with a long list of episodes with thumbnails instead of series — and that list might not be sorted the way you want it to be to get to an early episode We also experienced some odd cropping when returning the app when we’d switched apps after leaving in landscape mode.
 As we mentioned earlier, there’s been a huge backlash against Hulu Plus because you still have to view ads even though you’re paying a monthly subscription fee. The folly is the argument that paying for ad-supported content is unprecedented. Cable TV subscribers pay a much larger monthly sum for shows that are loaded with many more commercials. Pay for a ticket to a movie theater or a sporting event, and you’ll still be hit with a long string of advertisements and promotions. The same goes for magazines and many types of video games. Hail a cab in a major metropolitan area and the backseat TV will throw quite a few ads at you too. Some paywall websites serve ads on the other side of the wall. It is admittedly unusual for web video, but then again, so is Hulu. The most obvious competitor to Hulu Plus is Netflix Watch Instantly, and it doesn’t have commercials at all. However, Netflix usually doesn’t serve every episode of a currently-running TV series before the season comes out on DVD. It’s likely that the team at Hulu was forced to make concessions with the business model to get immediate access to that stuff. Given the current business and legal climate for this stuff, it’s unprecedented and endlessly impressive that Hulu is able to offer all of this fresh content on this wide array of devices at all. And $9.99 per month is not a steep price by any means, especially when you consider that the only legal alternative for getting all these shows on all your devices in HD is buying each episode on iTunes at $2.99 a pop. You’ll know for yourself whether you’re willing to pay the fee and watch the ads, but we’ll go on record saying that we’re impressed enough that Hulu has pulled this off at all, that the model is not unprecedented for consumers of entertainment and that the price is about as reasonable as we would have ever expected, given the legal and financial hurdles involved in getting the service going. Playback: The Office NBC Playback: The Office 20th Century Fox hulu-plus-ipad-9 Browsing TV Movies Lie to Me Playback: The Office (U.K.) Playback: The Office (U.K.) Reviews: Hulu, Internet, Netflix Watch Instantly, The iPhone App Blog, iTunes More About: App, apple, apple app store, hulu, hulu plus, ipad, iphone, preview, review, subscription, television, tv For more Web Video coverage:
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| LeBron James Surpasses 150,000 Twitter Followers in 7 Hours Posted: 06 Jul 2010 06:14 PM PDT   His Majesty cannot be stopped, at least on Twitter. In just six hours, NBA superstar LeBron James’ Twitter account has surpassed 150,000 followers, outpacing the growth of other famous figures on Twitter, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates. This morning, New Orleans Hornets’ point guard Chris Paul tweeted that James had joined Twitter under the username @KingJames. Since then, James has been amassing followers, and there have been countless stories and tweets about the arrival of the NBA’s biggest star to the Twitterverse. James has been the center of the sports universe for the last week due to NBA free agency: any day now, he will decide where he will play next season. Some even speculated that he joined Twitter just so he could announce his decision through the microblogging network, but his publicist has shot down that possibility. It took just eight hours for Bill Gates to reach 100,000 followers, but James has already blown past that mark. If his rapid rise on Twitter is any indication, LeBron James could soon become one of Twitter’s most popular users.  img credit: rwbakercom Reviews: Twitter More About: lebron james, sports, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| What Should Mashable Ask Bill Cosby? Posted: 06 Jul 2010 05:39 PM PDT   Mashable is proud to present an evening with Bill Cosby and special guests tomorrow night at 7:30 pm ET live on Ustream, where the legendary actor/comedian/entrepreneur will be premiering his new iPhone App among other surprises. Following a discussion with Mashable's Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow (that's me), Cosby will be joined on stage by a few other entrepreneurs in the space to discuss his involvement in social media, which spans across Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, 12seconds, Ustream and more. You may remember that Cosby recorded a 12seconds video last year to prove to us that he was indeed paying attention and participating in the social media space, in spite of our initial skepticism. Tomorrow, we'll get to dig in and see what "the Cos" is up to now as part of a two-hour live event. We have a lot to discuss, but we’d love to know what you — our readers — would like Cosby and our panel (which includes execs from Ustream, 12seconds, Six Apart and Blog Talk Radio) to talk about. Let us know what you’d like to see us ask in the comments and tune in tomorrow night for some answers and some laughs. As a teaser, here’s what Cosby said about his new projects last week on the Today Show: Submit Your Questions
Reviews: 12seconds.tv, Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, Twitter, ustream More About: bill cosby, live video, social media, ustream For more Entertainment coverage:
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| Twitter’s @EarlyBird Account to Spread News of Special Deals Posted: 06 Jul 2010 04:33 PM PDT   If you’re a bargain hound, here’s a great Twitter account for you to follow: @EarlyBird, the latest official Twitter account from the company itself. It will tweet out time-sensitive and/or limited-quantity deals from various companies and brands — giving special advantage to the retail-obsessed who are also social-media savvy. How does the EarlyBird work? Twitter will partner with select advertisers to help them promote relevant, timely offers for Twitter users. The offers will vary in availability, price, product and other terms. Twitter will make money based on these partnerships, and users who follow the account will benefit by getting “first dibs” on limited-time and limited-quantity specials. EarlyBird — which was first spotted by ReadWriteWeb on Friday — marks yet another evolution in Twitter’s business model, with Promoted Tweets coming to life this spring to expose users of the site to relevant content from advertisers. Many businesses have included Twitter in their social media marketing strategies. “We believe that surfacing deals through the @earlybird account will help you discover the best of those deals,” reads Twitter’s statement on the new account. We’re pinging Twitter for more details, such as the kinds of deals to expect and how often to expect them. Stay tuned for updates! And in the meantime, let us know what you think: Is @EarlyBird a good idea for Twitter users who love a good deal, or is it the online equivalent of a mailbox stuffed with coupons and junk mail? UPDATE: A Twitter rep got back to us; while they can’t name specific advertisers yet, our contact did say, “You can expect deals in fashion, tech, travel and entertainment.” In other words, there’s likely to be something for everyone, like a Twitter-themed version of Woot. We look forward to learning more soon. Reviews: Twitter More About: advertising, earlybird, MARKETING, Promoted Tweets, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Mashable Summer Tour Comes to Seattle This Saturday Posted: 06 Jul 2010 03:56 PM PDT
For those that are not in Seattle, we hope you’ll join the discussion on Twitter via #summermash and a live stream with Watchitoo on Mashable.com. In fact, we want you to help facilitate some of the discussion on Watchitoo by joining us on-camera to help ask attendees questions and answer some social media trivia. If you’re interested in being on-camera to help ask questions, the details are outlined below. You’ll also have a chance to win tickets to attend the events. Mashable Watchitoo Summer Tour ContestContest Submission Criteria: Upload a 14-second YouTube video explaining why you should be brought on live to chat with hosts/attendees at the Mashable 2010 Summer Tour.
Summer Tour SeattleLocation: Hyatt at Olive 8; 1635 8th Ave; Seattle, WA 98101 Socialize
San Francisco | Washington D.C. | New York City | Chicago SummerMash Tweets
Thanks to our Local Sponsors: IDEA is a nationally recognized, full-service digital creative agency serving some of the biggest brands in the world. As trusted partners to our clients, we carefully weave creativity and technology together to help our clients build their brands and connect with their audiences in the digital space.  Bing helps you find the information you need faster, and with fewer clicks, so you can make better decisions. It's different than a typical search engine—it's your “decision engine.” A Special Thanks to Our Tour Sponsors Join Gotelo.com and choose where you want to be found, anytime, in one easy step. It's fast, free, and launching this summer. Gotelo simplifies the way you connect with people you know and businesses you like by directing you to their most current web page.  The Intel® Atom™ Developer Program provides software developers with everything you need to easily develop and sell applications for Intel® Atom™ processor-based products starting with netbooks, and eventually supporting tablets, smartphones, consumer electronics and more. Program features include: Powerful tools—including an SDK, easy deployment and validation, Revenue and marketing opportunities, Developer Catalog to buy and sell application components, Application Labs in addition to a vibrant online community for support.  Weber Shandwick is a leading global public relations agency with offices in 76 countries around the world. The firm's success is built on its deep commitment to client service, our people, creativity, collaboration and harnessing the power of Advocates – engaging stakeholders in new and creative ways to build brands and reputation. Weber Shandwick provides strategy and execution across practices such as consumer marketing, healthcare, technology, public affairs, financial services, corporate and crisis management. Its specialized services include digital/social media, advocacy advertising, market research, and corporate responsibility. In 2010, Weber Shandwick was named Global Agency of the Year by The Holmes Report for the second year in a row; an ‘Agency of the Decade’ by Advertising Age, Large PR Agency of the Year by Bulldog Reporter, and Top Corporate Responsibility Advisory Firm by CR Magazine. The firm has also won numerous ‘best place to work’ awards around the world. A Special Thanks to Our Multi-Streaming Partner Watchitoo is an embeddable, live multi-streaming platform that allows 10+ participants to communicate via a web-cam in real time, while collaborating around a custom designed rich media playlist. A passive audience of thousands can view the show online. Any viewer can be added into a show via a virtual green room, where a moderator can adjust their microphone, have a private one-on-one chat, and vet their overall suitability to participate. Streams can be inserted, removed, re-arranged and re-sized in real time. Watchitoo has a rich feature set that includes Twitter and Facebook integration, chat, questioning, recording, screen-sharing and white-boarding. Thanks to Our Official Ticketing Partner Eventbrite is the world's largest self-service online ticketing site. Eventbrite makes it easy for anyone to sell-out an event. Reviews: Bing, Facebook, Foursquare, Mashable, Twitter, YouTube More About: Events, mashable, seattle, summermash For more Social Media coverage:
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| Twitter’s Official BlackBerry App Exits Beta Posted: 06 Jul 2010 03:48 PM PDT   A couple of months after the BlackBerry Twitter app debuted in beta, device manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) is announcing its full launch and one update. BlackBerry users will be able to access any user’s profile via an autocomplete function. The app will also include language support for several additional non-English languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, German, EU and Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Korean and more. RIM reps said beta testers helped shape the app’s additional features a good deal during the testing period. They “offered incredible feedback and clearly shaped the evolution of this application,” we were told in an e-mail. Some of the features that were added during the beta program include the ability to edit retweets, image previews, geodata functionality, autocompletion for usernames and spam reporting.
The full launch of the app will begin tonight; rollout should be complete by tomorrow morning. You can find it on BlackBerry App World in the social networking category. BlackBerry users, are you looking forward to this new release? Have you been using the “official” app or another app for Twitter on your BlackBerry, and why? Let us know your opinions in the comments. Reviews: Twitter More About: blackberry, Mobile 2.0, mobile app, twitter For more Mobile coverage:
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| Israeli Soldiers Dance to Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” Face Reprimands [VIDEO] Posted: 06 Jul 2010 03:09 PM PDT Behold, the hottest viral craze around: Soldiers dancing to pop tunes during wartime. This time around, a group of Israeli soldiers break out into a spontaneous dance number in the streets of Hebron to Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” Although the video quickly went viral, it was taken off YouTube by the original uploader yesterday after media outlets started picking up the vid and contacting the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson’s unit, according to Israel News. The video is now back up on YouTube, but the six soldiers involved in the dance are facing disciplinary hearings. Reviews are mixed across the blogosphere — most people find the vid funny, a little levity amidst a lot of turmoil. Others think the men were grossly overstepping their bounds. (Just take a look at the title someone added to the vid…) As you may recall, the now-famous viral video featuring U.S. soldiers dancing to Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” was a-OK with the military. What do you think makes this incarnation different? The fact that the men were dancing in Hebron, a very holy — and turbulent — place, or that they were on duty? Share your thoughts in the comments. Reviews: YouTube More About: music, Political, pop culture, viral video, youtube For more Web Video coverage:
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| Posted: 06 Jul 2010 02:54 PM PDT   It’s finally here: Mozilla has released the first beta for Firefox 4. The new iteration of the world’s second most popular web browser, which can be downloaded here, has been hotly anticipated for almost a year. Today however, it transitions from concept to reality, with many more betas to come until its official release at the end of the year. As we have reported in the past, Firefox 4 is a major upgrade from its predecessors. It not only includes a redesign of the user interface (tabs are now on top except for the Mac version), but a wave of additional features, including enhanced HTML5 support, hardware-accelerated HD video, WebSockets and enhanced add-on support via Jetpack. There’s a lot more to Firefox 4, most of which you can see in this feature spotlight the Mozilla team put together to highlight the many upgrades the new browser contains. However, we want to stress that this is an early beta of the browser — it will crash and frustrate you, which is exactly what Mozilla is hoping to catch now before its final release. Mozilla needs Firefox 4 to be a winner; in recent months, Google Chrome has been stealing browser marketshare at Firefox’s expense. The new version could either reverse the downtrend or accelerate its fall. Are you going to download the new Firefox 4 beta? What do you think of the new features? Let us know in the comments. Screenshots Reviews: Firefox More About: Firefox, Firefox 4, mozilla For more Tech coverage:
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| Foursquare and IFC Team Up for Indie Tour Guide Bliss Posted: 06 Jul 2010 02:31 PM PDT   Foursquare has partnered with the Independent Film Channel (IFC) to create a crowdsourced virtual travel guide dubbed, “The IFC Always On. Slightly Off. Guide to America.” Much like Mashable’s own Foursquare page, the IFC guide offers up a collection of cool bars, restaurants and attractions from all over the country that all fit IFC’s indie perspective. IFC Fans can submit their own recommendations via IFC’s website. We think this is a great way for IFC to extend its brand and image while also connecting with its users in a very natural way. Geolocation + Entertainment = FunThe IFC and Foursquare partnership is indicative of a broader trend: entertainment properties pairing up geolocation services to offer branded tips or tie-ins with their core products. Last week, we discussed a similar partnership between HISTORY and Foursquare, which is also being promoted in television advertisements. Likewise, The Today Show has also partnered with Foursquare as part of its summer concert series, and fellow geolocation service Gowalla collaborated with the Travel Channel’s Food Wars. And it’s not just television networks or shows; movie studios are getting into the game too. Lionsgate is promoting its upcoming film, The Expendables, on Foursquare, complete with tips and specials in 11 different cities. For its forthcoming movie, Inception, Warner Bros. has teamed up with SCVNGR, allowing fans to “Play Inception on SCVNGR”, with Inception-inspired challenges in 100 major U.S. cities. These challenges, which take place at movie theaters and at tall buildings, let users earn points and special Inception badges. It’s a great way to promote the film while also tying in social gaming. What we find interesting about the uptick in geolocation tie-ins with media companies and entertainment brands is that it is happening at what is still the development stages of these services. This isn’t like Twitter, where brands waited until the service had reached a certain saturation point before embracing the service, or even Facebook, which also reached more mainstream usage before being used in cross-promotions. Companies are getting in on the geolocation market now. That’s promising because it shows that brands are more likely to experiment with other forms of social media and services than they were before. It also gives these brands the opportunity to target early-adopters, who often fit into the type of demographic that they most want to reach. What do you think about the way that entertainment properties are using geolocation? Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter More About: advertising, foursquare, geolocation, ifc, inception, MARKETING, scvngr For more Social Media coverage:
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| How Social Media Has Prepared Us for Collaborative Business Posted: 06 Jul 2010 02:15 PM PDT   Kraig Swensrud is senior vice president, product marketing at salesforce.com, where he is responsible for marketing strategy and execution across all products, including Salesforce Chatter. You can follow him on Twitter at @kswensrud. While Facebook and Twitter are often cited as distractions for employees, the networks’ immediacy, collaboration and community offer great hope for business. Today, a massive technological shift is underway — led for the first time by employees — to bring these benefits to the workplace. And this change has happened only very recently. Facebook has surpassed 400 million active users in just six years and Twitter counted 105 million registered users in just four. These networks have trained a generation for a new style of collaboration through profiles, status updates, groups, feeds, lists and filters. As such, they have changed our expectations of how we should be able to connect with others and collaborate in real-time. But when we come to work, we throw all of this out the window. The concept of immediacy doesn’t exist here, and arguably, this is where it matters most. Many businesses are stuck in the past, using antiquated technologies that were put in place before the web even existed. For new graduates entering the workplace, it’s counterintuitive to have to revert to these slow forms of collaboration. As a result, we are more productive with our personal networks than we are with our colleagues and customers. Bringing the Workplace Into the Social EraWhy shouldn’t we expect real-time collaboration at work? Business happens in real-time. Market shifts happen in real-time. Data changes in real-time. Why shouldn’t collaboration and learning in business happen in real-time, too? That question is the inspiration for new social tools entering the workplace that have the same look and feel as Facebook or Twitter. These social tools offer a new way to collaborate with people at work that is private, secure and relevant to business. Because we all use the public networks, there’s no learning curve. Instead of following friends or celebrities, you follow people on your team, the activity in your top customer accounts, your new marketing campaigns, and your critical business documents. You’re able to gain the insights you need from a real-time feed, all within a completely secure environment. And because these new social tools are based on the web, you can access them from anywhere, whether you’re on your laptop, iPad or iPhone. Imagine Facebook and Twitter-style collaboration in the workplace:
Employee-Powered ChangeUnlike past technology shifts, this one isn’t being led by IT departments, but by individual employees like you and me and our need for meaningful and simple collaboration tools. With new enterprise social tools, we can harness the power of real-time social networking to rebuild the workplace and create a collaborative forum where we can be inspired by real-time engagement, real-time innovation, and the strengthening of our workplace communities. It’s a daunting challenge, but an exciting, much-needed one. More Business Resources from Mashable
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Yuri_Arcurs Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, iStockphoto, social media More About: business, collaboration, facebook, small business, social media, twitter For more Business coverage:
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| Loopt Now Lets You Download Your Location History Posted: 06 Jul 2010 01:48 PM PDT   Geolocation service Loopt has just launched a feature that lets you access the last 30 days of your location history as a downloadable KML file. KML, which was developed for Google Earth, is a file that includes data associated with your location that can then be used when creating more interactive maps or trip logs. The feature is especially useful if you have background location, a new feature of Loopt 3.0 for iOS 4 [iTunes link]. You can customize who you want to share your location with (if you want to share it at all) and how often your location is updated and monitored. The really cool part of background location is that you can also get alerts if people you know (and who are sharing their info with you) are nearby.  By having the option to save your roaming history, in addition to what checkins you log, you have the potential to do some pretty cool things. For instance, you can create a map that pinpoints every place you visited while on vacation. Or, if you’re a photographer and you want to geotag your photos, you now match the time stamps with specific location information. Future versions will even let you attach other info or tidbits to the KML file, so if you attach a message or recommendation to a checkin, you can have that info integrated into the map file. If you want to enable location history, just go to the Settings panel on the Loopt website. From there, you can choose to turn on location saving and also have the opportunity to download your location file. You can turn off location saving at any time and you can also clear you location history outright. This information is only viewable to you and not to any of your friends. Reviews: Google Earth More About: geolocation, iOS, kml, loopt For more Social Media coverage:
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| How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising Posted: 06 Jul 2010 12:58 PM PDT   Hank Wasiak is a partner at the creative firm The Concept Farm, and the best selling author of the Asset-Based Thinking book series. He is a three-time Emmy award winning TV host, a teacher at USC's Graduate School of Business, and a Reiki Master. Social Media started out as a bit of a novelty — a playground for the “geekerati.” But it has taken hold as a game changing force that will reshape advertising at its very core. It's time to move past debates about traditional media co-existing with social media. Madison Avenue should see social media as a wonderful, if not disruptive, gift. It should run hard to catch up with the consumer, let go of legacy business models and build something better. My career in advertising started in February, 1965, right in the middle of the Mad Men era, and I am fortunate to still be doing what I love. Just when I thought I'd seen everything over the past five decades, along came social media. Here I am at age 67, cheering for change and eager to be a part of it. To put things into perspective, it's helpful to look back at the impact that TV had on the ad business in the mid 60s and draw some parallels with where we are today. That Was ThenWhen I arrived on Madison Avenue, the growth and expansion of television advertising was hitting its stride. An explosion of mass, controlled, "broadcast out and shout” communications was changing the face, function and finances of advertising. Madison Avenue embraced these changes in a big way and leveraged the power of television to launch a golden age of advertising. Creative people started seeing short-message story telling as a valued currency just as creative departments promoted collaboration between art directors and writers. TV production departments also grouped together producers, directors and technical specialists into collaborative teams. The client/agency relationship deepened as agencies took on proactive roles. Research also changed, and put more emphasis on measuring both the rational and emotional components of messaging. In effect, a new breed of Mad Men emerged to start boutique agencies that fueled a creative revolution and brought a new value system to the business. The Seeds of DisruptionWhile TV ushered in a new era in advertising, the business aspect evolved and reshaped itself along relatively predictable lines. All of that changed with the Internet, social media, and the rise of mobile devices. This quote from Jim Farley, the CMO of Ford, sums up the sentiment in most C-suites today: "We want to take that stupid little box we were forced into as advertisers, blow it up, and change the way we interact with the customer, and we want it to be around the experience.” Now it's time for Madison Avenue to embrace these social marketing opportunities with the same enthusiasm it had for the disruptive change of television. This Is NowMarketing has traditionally focused on the four “Ps”: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social media has morphed into the fifth, and possibly most important "P": People. A people strategy is at the center of today's dynamic and fluid social marketing mix. John Janitsch of Duct Tape Marketing has another take on the four Ps, and has turned them into four Cs for the social age: Content, Context, Connection and Community. A people strategy is much broader, deeper and more profound than consumer targeting. It involves listening to and engaging with everyone who can touch or influence current and potential customers at all stages of brand interaction. Jeff Pulver is a savvy guy who has had his finger on the pulse of this dynamic for some time. "The social media revolution is less about “we the people” and more about “me the people,” Pulver said. Social media has changed the way people interact amongst themselves and with their media. People play multiple — sometimes simultaneous — roles as receivers, creators, critics, advocates, transformers and transmitters of messages. Brian Solis' conversation prism helps to put this mash-up into perspective.  This Is WhyA "Me the People" mindset changes the way companies strategize, organize, monetize and commercialize their business. This recent statement from Bob MacDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, sums up just how far a "me the people" movement can go: "What I would like to have is a one-on-one relationship with seven billion people in the world and be able to customize offerings for those seven billion people. Digital allows that relationship." Seth Godin’s insight into how this is driving change in C-suites is brilliant — the role of the CMO has changed from Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Movement Officer. The stage is set. In 2010, social media has introduced the advertising business to its next big disruption. But this time the state of the advertising business is quite different. Advertising is struggling to recapture relevance. It is mired in murky fee-based compensation systems, dealing with loss of control and trying to keep up with the accelerating pace of media dispersion. A Much Needed Mindset ShiftFor Madison Avenue to make it through this change and emerge stronger there has to be a mindset shift away from deficit-based, downside thinking to asset-based, upside thinking. Madison Avenue needs to embrace the power of letting go, reaffirm core values that maximize the potential of what is working and experiment with new models. Here are five suggestions for that "up" mindset shift:
There are some other lessons we can keep in mind moving forward. Advertising is an art, made up of ideas that can move and persuade people. Technology, digital tools and metrics are useful but they cannot come up with those ideas for you. Energize creatives to go beyond just making ads. They should become masters of sustained transmedia storytelling. Involve media people at all levels of development. Lastly, invite consumer participation in the creative process through dialogue, inclusion and experimentation. Wisely directed user-generated content and crowdsourced ideas can be a huge asset. Ultimately, I believe that the advertising business is ready to enter its next golden age. Bill Bernbach, an influential and inspiring “Mad Man” I had the privilege to work for, had these words of advice: "An idea can turn to dust or magic depending upon the talent that rubs against it." Now is the time to be magicians. More business resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, RTimages Reviews: Facebook, Internet, Twitter, iStockphoto, social media More About: advertising, business, creativity, madison avenue, MARKETING, social media, television For more Business coverage:
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| Are We Losing Interest in the Oil Spill? [STATS] Posted: 06 Jul 2010 12:37 PM PDT   We’re losing interest in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill just a few weeks after it became a big media topic — and long before we’ve even made a dent in cleaning up after this mess — if Internet search and discussion trends are to be believed. An estimated 100 million gallons or more of oil have surged into the Gulf of Mexico. Spread by wind and underwater currents, the pollution has drifted toward coastal areas, coating wildlife and natural environments in thick layers of crude oil. Yet on Twitter, Google, blogs and even YouTube, we’re already wrapping up our collective discussion of the oil spill and how to repair its damage. On Twitter, the oil spill enjoyed a prolonged trending period thanks to @BPGlobalPR, a spoof account that snarkily lampooned the oil company’s woes and became a viral hit. This Trendistic chart, however, shows that while we might share a laugh over a corporate blunder, our attention span has about hit its limit when it comes to tweeting about the oil spill: At its June 15 peak, the term “oil spill” was found in .17% of all tweets. Currently, only .02% to .05% of tweets contain that term. YouTubeThe good folks at TubeMogul were kind enough to pull together some data for us. This month, people are uploading clips about the oil spill at a rate of 226 clips per day, on average. This might seem like a lot, but just last month, YouTube users were uploading around 1,021 oil spill videos each day. That’s a decrease of nearly 78% month-over-month. And we’re not really interested in watching clips about the oil spill as much as we once were, either. Here’s a chart showing views of videos from BP’s official YouTube account: As a web search term, “oil spill” is on the decline. It first began to peak around April 30, when news surfaced that oil was beginning to wash ashore. The term reached its apex of popularity around May 27 and has since begun to fall. Along with searches for this term, related news reports have plummeted. In other words, when public demand declines, media coverage follows suit. Not surprisingly, however, Louisiana residents are still searching for “oil spill” on Google, as are the residents of many other Gulf Coast areas. New Orleans-area Google users are by far the largest geographical group still searching for information about this disaster. Here, you can see the relation between web search and news articles:  BlogsFinally, the tireless bloggers of the web are also getting tired of talking about the oil spill. Nielsen’s BlogPulse shows that during the third week a June, .4% of all blog posts were about the oil spill. Now that percentage hovers between .15% and .175%, a significant and disturbing slide.  What You Can DoIf you’d like to get more involved, check out Sloane Berrent’s Six Ways to Help the Gulf Coast Today. Berrent is a New Orleans resident and social philanthropist, and she has the 411 on how to do your part in the cleanup process, from donating your money to volunteering your time. And at the very least, we should all continue this conversation until the matter is resolved — not just until we get bored and move on to the next hot topic. Are you and your friends still talking about the oil spill? Have you found any good ways to help with cleanup? Let us know in the comments. [img credit: marinephotobank] Reviews: Google, Twitter, YouTube More About: bp, cleanup, deepwater horizon, Google, oil-spill, trending, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Apple Boots Fraudster from iTunes Store Posted: 06 Jul 2010 12:00 PM PDT   Over the holiday weekend, one developer managed to game iTunes in a way that put his apps in 42 of the 50 top sales spots in the App Store’s book category. An Apple rep has just confirmed to Engadget that one developer, Vietnam-based Thuat Nguyen, violated the Program License Agreement in a way that rigged fraudulent purchases of his e-books. All of his apps have been removed from the store. Apparently, only a few hundred users were impacted by Nguyen’s actions, but some users were charged as much as $600 for e-books they never purchased. As a precaution, we recommend checking your iTunes purchasing history and any linked credit card account to ensure that you were not affected by this scam. However, if you were inadvertently part of this fraudulent activity, you’re pretty much on your own as far as recovering lost funds and maintaining the security of your iTunes account. Apple said you’ll have to contact your bank about chargebacks and change your iTunes password; the company didn’t offer any special help or reporting mechanisms. Various reports around the web indicate that the e-books in question were of suspiciously low quality to begin with. Between this factor — which should have surfaced before the e-books even hit the App Store — and the fact that Nguyen’s books rose so quickly in sales rankings, we wonder if this fraudulent activity couldn’t have been stopped earlier or prevented entirely. What do you think: Have we become complacent about the supposed safety of the generally locked-down App Store? Should Apple be doing a better job of fraud detection and prevention? Reviews: App Store More About: apple, e-books, fraud, itunes, scam For more Apple coverage:
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| YouTube Darlings OK Go Roasted in Parody [VIDEO] Posted: 06 Jul 2010 11:54 AM PDT When OK Go released their newest video/Facebook contest the other month, we wondered whether people would grow weary of the viral video-lovin’ band. Well, if Babelgum’s latest creation, “OK Go’s New Viral Video: Giant Pie,” is any indication, the answer to that query is: Yeah…probably… Babelgum’s parody seems to have two messages: 1) OK Go’s videos have become ridiculously complicated (Rube Goldberg, anyone?) and 2) Their music matters less than said videos (In the parody, the song “Giant Pie” is basically composed of gibberish and the words “giant pie”). OK Go has reaped a lot more of the spotlight than usual after YouTube and EMI disabled embed codes on the video for “This Too Shall Pass,” leading the band to partner with State Farm to create a new, embeddable video, and to subsequently leave EMI. They even won a Webby for their efforts. Although the band has been making videos like this for years, they’ve been thrust into the public eye a lot more due to these recent developments. While it’s not quite accurate that the band cares more about videos than music (they have expressed as much in interviews), we can see why Babelgum and others might be getting a little frustrated with the emphasis that’s being placed on their videos — much more than is being placed on their songs. Still, there’s an interesting sentiment nestled at the end of the video in one of the jokes: “A lot of bands have instruments, not many bands have really good videos,” says one of the faux OK Goers. Yeah, it was meant to be a joke, but how many bands — aside from mainstream acts like Lady Gaga — really make awesome, shareable videos? That’s something that could actually help a lot of indie bands get their music out there and one thing OK Go has done well — an opinion we can probably all agree on, even if we’re not a huge fan of their music. Enough serious talk — check out the vid. Men in colorful spandex are always good for a chuckle. Reviews: YouTube More About: humor, music, pop culture, viral video For more Web Video coverage:
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| “Mad Men” Yourself with JibJab’s Animation Tool Posted: 06 Jul 2010 10:55 AM PDT   Animated viral video masters JibJab have launched a tool that lets you use your friends’ faces to recap what’s happened so far on the critically acclaimed AMC series Mad Men. The “Mad Men Starring You” tool lets you upload photos or import them from Facebook, crop out the faces and tack them onto the bodies of the show’s Don Draper, Betty Draper, Roger Sterling and Joan Holloway. The result is a minute of goofy fun that also serves to promote the July 25 premiere of Mad Men’s fourth season. AMC spread the word about last year’s third season with a wildly successful social media promotion that had fans of the show creating cartoon representations of themselves decked out in the 1960s fashions and hairstyles that add so much to the show’s appeal. AMC is clearly trying to repeat its success with both this JibJab promotion and MadMenYourself 2.0, a new version of the old tool that lets you put your cartoon self in new scenes. JibJab is no stranger to viral memes, having produced the “This Land” political animation back in 2004 featuring John Kerry and George W. Bush, a tool that puts you inside a scene from Star Wars, and other “starring you” videos to celebrate both the World Cup and the 4th of July. In case you’re not feeling the drive to make your own JibJab Mad Men video, we’ve got a Mashable one right here for your entertainment. Mashable’s Mad Men Jib JabStarring Samuel Axon as Don Draper, Adam Ostrow as Roger Sterling, Jolie O’Dell as Joan Holloway and Betty Draper as Betty Draper. Reviews: Facebook, Mashable More About: JibJab, mad men, madmenyourself, Meme, television, tv, video, viral videos For more Entertainment coverage:
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| Posted: 06 Jul 2010 10:27 AM PDT   Yesterday LeBron James was a sponsored trending topic on Twitter –- today, the King himself has joined the microblogging service, setting up shop at @KingJames. The account is not yet verified by Twitter, but fellow NBA star Chris Paul says its him and CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell has confirmed the news with a publicist for James. What makes that interesting is that James is expected to soon announce where he intends to play next season. Might we see that news come via James himself on Twitter as opposed to a press conference or a leak to the press? That's not yet clear, but given it's going to be one of the biggest pieces of sports news this summer, it would be quite the social media splash for James — who has been mostly absent from the social web thus far in his career — to announce the decision himself. Although James is yet to tweet, his account has already surged to more than 25,000 followers in the hour since Paul dropped a link to it. Update: James has posted his first tweet, acknowledging Paul’s earlier message but not providing any clues as to where he might be headed: Update #2: Twitter has verified the account.  [img credit: keith allison] Reviews: Twitter More About: lebron james, NBA, trending, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Indie Studio’s New Releases to Stream on Netflix Before Cable Posted: 06 Jul 2010 09:07 AM PDT   Netflix has just signed a deal with Relativity Media to bring major theatrical releases exclusively to Netflix subscribers during the first-run window usually relegated to premium cable channels like HBO or Showtime. This is a big win for Netflix and its Watch Instantly service, as it positions it as an even stronger competitor to traditional and premium cable. Relativity Media is an independent film studio that often co-finances films with Universal Pictures, Lionsgate and Columbia Pictures. Some of its more recent productions or co-productions include Zombieland, Brothers and MacGruber. The Sordid Saga of Licensing Movies for Online StreamingIf you aren’t familiar with some of the inner workings of the film industry, here’s a basic primer of the current system. After a film is released in theaters, it is then released on DVD/Blu-ray and depending on the studio and the viewing window, to Pay-Per View, Redbox or Video-on-Demand. After the new-release window ends, bigger films go into what is called the first-run window, where they are then available on a premium cable channel like HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc. After this window, films are then dribbled down to basic cable, network television and so on. Although Netflix’s Watch Instantly library is growing all of the time, one area where it really falls short is in new releases. This is not the case with Netflix’s DVD and Blu-ray rental-by-mail service, however. Netflix has a vast catalog of Watch Instantly films, but most of them are older releases and the most up-to-date content is usually by way of television, which is easier to license for more recent viewing. The big exception in this area has been with Starz. Netflix was able to procure a deal with Starz to get movies (or Starz original broadcasts) as soon as they come to Starz subscribers. While Starz doesn’t have the first-run deals of the largest premium cablers like HBO, it does have some exclusive deals with Disney/Pixar and with a lot of Sony films. Because Starz retained ownership of how it licensed its content digitally (that is, over the Internet), the company was then able to license that content to Netflix, giving Netflix access to its first-run content. It was a brilliant run around the system. Unfortunately, it also made the major studios pretty unhappy. The current Starz deal expires in 2012 and it won’t be the same in the future. Instead, studios are now building more digital licensing agreements into their contracts with the premium cable outlets to avoid a Netflix-Starz scenario from happening again. The only recourse for Netflix is to make deals directly with the studios, which is exactly what is happening with Relativity Media. Death to Cable?Netflix signing a first-run exclusivity agreement with a mid-sized studio like Relativity Media is a big deal. It’s a sign that Netflix’s subscriber base of more than 13 million members is worth catering to. It’s also a sign that, at least for some studios, eschewing the traditional system and going straight to a digital service operator — rather than a premium cabler — might be worth experimenting with. As more consumer electronics devices either offering or coming with built-in support for Netflix, this avenue could become even more attractive to studios as time moves forward. Yet it’s important to put things in perspective. HBO has more than 40 million subscribers in the U.S. alone, its international offerings are much more robust than Netflix’s and it has long-standing first-run deals with many of the major studios. Likewise, both Showtime and Starz have more subscribers than Netflix. However, Netflix offers something that the other outlets don’t: convenience. While premium content from networks like HBO are available online via different cable operators, these systems vary from cable company to cable company. Additionally, Netflix is now on the iPad and will soon be on the iPhone. Sign of the FutureEven if the Netflix/Relativity Media deal ultimately has little impact on what films are available to Watch Instantly on Netflix, this is a sign that the industry is finally willing to look past the traditional cable company/premium channel paradigm and embrace digital distribution and subscription services. If nothing else, this is a sign that the cable industry needs to step it up and start embracing digital distribution and online streaming. Customers may still cancel cable, opting instead of things like Hulu Plus and Netflix Watch Instantly, but an easy way to avoid some of that churn would be to make it easy to access content from the couch, the computer and on the go. The studios are willing to bypass the system and take things directly to digital delivery. Will the rest of the industry follow suit? What do you think about the Netflix deal and what it means for the future of digital distribution for first-run feature films? Reviews: Blu, Internet, Netflix Watch Instantly, video, zombieland More About: business, digital distribution, Film, film industry, hbo, iptv, Movies, netflix, relativity media For more Business coverage:
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| 5 Ways to Clean Up Your Social Media Identity Posted: 06 Jul 2010 09:02 AM PDT This series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.   There's an implicit pressure on social media enthusiasts to be connected in more than one way. It's not enough to have a Facebook page, you need a Twitter account as well. What do you mean you're not on LinkedIn? Well, at least you have a blog on Wordpress or Tumblr, right? There is no requirement to spread your digital self thin, but many of us are still juggling more than one online profile (I'm currently balancing at least five). Each of these profiles offers us a chance to connect with new communities in different ways, but each network needs to be managed and updated. With so many online profiles, questions are bound to arise. Is your bio page the same across all platforms? Should it be? There are few hard and fast rules when navigating social media; a lot comes down to preference. For those starting out or just looking to make sense of their profiles, we've culled advice from five social media experts in a range of backgrounds. Mashable's given you ways to create your brand, face the challenges, track your reputation, and corral your profiles on the social web. Now, here are five ways to manage, consolidate, and clean up your online identity. 1. Keep it Consistent One of the best things you can do is to make sure your profiles are consistent. This includes your bio page, your profile pic, and your tone of voice. "Consistency is important," said Dan Schawbel, managing partner of Millennial Branding, "If you're "Matt" on one site, you better be "Matt" on every other site." That similarity can help viewers keep track of you across different platforms. Start by scooping up vanity URLs on sites like Facebook (facebook.com/ClarkKent) and Twitter (twitter.com/ClarkKent), and buying your domain name (www.ClarkKent.com). Similar fonts and font sizes can also help create a congruous online identity. But what about your updates — how do you keep those consistent? "Using the same tone of voice will help keep the cohesion," said Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6. "It doesn't have to be verbatim but there needs to be a certain level of consistency," Naslund said. "You're assuming that [one particular social site] might be the only place they get that [information]." Keep in mind that consistency doesn’t mean repetition. Customize your profiles and updates to align with the values and uses of each social platform, but maintain a common theme throughout. 2. Find Your Brand Put some forethought into what your want your digital reputation to be and build towards that. Joshua Benton, Director of Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, highlights the importance of viewership. "You don't want to have carbon copies because you're talking to different audiences. Your paragraph bio on LinkedIn isn't going to make sense on your Twitter page and neither of those is going to make sense on your Facebook page." Benton recommends making a basic bio that can be tailored for each network. "Think about how the image you want to present sits in with the audience." Different networks are better for different things — it helps to cater your posts based on the audience. "Part of that is baked into the form," Benton said. "It's sort of hard to have a wild and crazy LinkedIn profile, whereas you can on something like MySpace." Whether you want to be known by your real name (recommended) or a cute buzzword, it's important to come up with something memorable and representative of you. This advice applies to people and brands. "When you type Digsby, we are the first result," said Steve Shapiro, CEO of Digsby. "It is important to pick a unique product name but also one that people can spell when they hear it, or they'll never find you on Google." Once you've decided your online name and brand, try to stick with it. It's hard to build a reputation if you keep changing. "The problem with changing your specialty every six months is that people can see what you did six month's prior," explained Barry Hurd, CEO and founder of 123SocialMedia. That kind of indecision can make it difficult for your audience to get a grasp on your identity. 3. Own Your Name One of the best ways to track your progress is a simple Google search. "I'm conscious that I'm writing about the things I'd liked to be found for," Naslund said. "If I'm going to post a tweet about a drunken bender with my sister from last night, it might pop up on Google." Make sure you’re updating your social networks on news and events that you want to be known for. Part of managing your online identity is understanding your professional profiles (like LinkedIn) can very well get mixed up with personal profiles (like Facebook). "You can't keep the peas from touching the mashed potatoes,” Naslund added. “The Internet doesn't distinguish between profiles. That's a human distinction, not a technical one. It all gets lumped into the same basket." An easy, free way to manage your name's SEO is by getting onto popular social media sites. "Twitter accounts often pop up on the first page even if you’ve only posted three tweets," Benton explained. "Chances are you'd rather have that and a link to your bio page than something you don't have control over. Get on networks with good page rankings." Another tip for optimizing SEO is by proactively setting up inbound links between your profiles. Include links to your social profiles, such as Foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora, on your blog. On your Twitter profile, include a link to your blog. And on Foursquare, make sure you include your Twitter profile link. If you already use multiple networks, this practice is an easy way to increase the amount of inbound links for each site. It’s a circle of links that will help optimize your Google search rankings. The ultimate goal is to optimize your SEO so that someone should be able to search for your name and get a good idea within the first 10 results of who you are or who you'd like to be. 4. Get a Little Help The good news is that you don't have to monitor all these sites by yourself. There are a bunch of web tools that can help you track or update your entire online presence. Try using a multi-platform dashboards like Ping.fm, Tweetdeck, or Hootsuite to update your social media identity all from a central hub. As a secondary step, if you're interested in seeing which sites are benefiting you the most from a PR point of view, set up Google Alerts on each of your profiles. Alerts will help you keep a pulse on buzz around your name. To see which sites are most referenced, try adding small marks to your profile pics for manual tracking. Hurd suggested adding a small Facebook logo to your Facebook profile pic, for example, so you can see when your Facebook profile (along with a pic) is linked to. 5. Human Afterall Out of all these tips, perhaps the most important lesson is to just be yourself. It may sound simple, but ultimately people are connecting with you because of who you are. "How people perceive you is through those interactions with your audience, not just a neat and tidy persona," Naslund said. "People want to see the person behind the persona." Schawbel recommended being selective with your networks and genuinely connecting: "If your Twitter handle or Facebook page is your name, it has to come from you." That same sense of honesty can also be a great way to find customers. “These platforms are a huge opportunity to interact with users one-on-one,” Shapiro said. Connecting in an honest way can bring in new supporters for your product or brand. Final Words of AdviceWe asked our experts for a golden rule to managing your online identity. While there may not be one ruling maxim, here are some choice words of wisdom for cleaning up your social identity.
What is your top tip for keeping your social identity clean and consistent? Series supported by Gillette This series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com. More Social Media Resources From Mashable:
[img credit: webtreats, granth] Reviews: Digsby, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, HootSuite, LinkedIn, Mashable, MySpace, Ping.Fm, Radian6, Tumblr, TweetDeck, Twitter, WordPress, iStockphoto More About: amber naslund, barry hurd, better profile series, blog, brand, Dan Schawbel, facebook, identity, joshua benton, presence, profile, steve shapiro, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Chatroulette Piano Guy Merton Returns: Now with More Omegle [VIDEO] Posted: 06 Jul 2010 07:35 AM PDT There’s been a lot of discussion of late about whether Chatroulette is on its way out — our own Ben Parr wondered whether the random video chat service would retain its popularity if it were censored (apparently traffic has been on the decline lately). Well, perhaps there’s hope for the service yet — it appears that Merton, the Chatroulette Piano Guy, is back. That’s right, the hooded mystery — who we interviewed way back when — has posted a new vid to his YouTube channel, which we totally missed all weekend due to the fact that we were outside (for shame!). Still, despite the fact that homeboy released his vid on the Friday before a holiday weekend, it has already racked up more than 350,000 views — not bad for someone whose last YouTube offering came out three months ago. Curiously, though, Merton made use of Omegle this time around as well. For those of you who don’t know, Omegle is Chatroulette’s older — less popular — sibling. It used to be a text-only chat service, but recently added video into the mix, no doubt in an effort to compete with its flashy (haha, get it?) younger bro. What does this mean for “The Chatroulette Piano Guy”? Is he forsaking his roots, or merely branching out? Check out Merton’s vid — he’s getting pretty creative, I totally dig the tune about IHOP — and let us know what you think: Is Chatroulette’s future looking up? Will you switch to Omegle? Does Merton have any hair under that hood? Let it all out. [via AllThingsD] Reviews: Omegle, YouTube More About: chatroulette, humor, merton, music, pop culture, viral video, youtube For more Web Video coverage:
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| 5 Handy iPhone Apps for Home Improvement Posted: 06 Jul 2010 07:05 AM PDT   While there’s no iPhone app that can help you avoid hitting your thumb with a hammer, falling off a ladder or stepping in a tray of paint, certain apps can be a useful addition to your tool kit when attempting some DIY projects. Here are five great apps that will assist you in illumination, estimation, decoration, organization and for those green-thumbed folk among you, even propagation. So grab your safety goggles and strap on the tool belt — handyman help awaits. 1. Sherwin-Williams ColorSnap iPhone owners are privy to a large number of fantastic color-related apps, but this is our top choice for the DIYer as it offers some practical features. Say you’re out just living your life and suddenly you spot the exact shade (or shades) you’d love to decorate your kitchen with. Just snap a picture of the hue and this app will help you match it to the nearest Sherwin-Williams paint color. You can also take the selected color and create a custom palette either based on your own choices, or from auto-generated suggestions. If you want a second opinion on your selected palette, you can share it via e-mail or Facebook, and then once you’ve made your final choice, the app offers map-based store locations and directions so you can go and purchase the Vogue Green and Java Brown you have your heart set on. It goes without saying that the color representations (or matches) on the iPhone will depend on the quality of the light, and the paint may not be exactly the same as you’ve been seeing on your phone’s display. But it’s a free, high-tech alternative to endless sample strips, and a great way to record a favored shade on the go and match it to real-life products. Cost: Free 2. KAD Software’s Estimation Apps If you’re the type who can look at a wall, squint convincingly and suck in a breath before stating, with absolute confidence, “we’ll need 267 six by six tiles,” then skip these apps. But for anyone else who’s not a born guesstimator or mathlete, stay right here, as KAD Software’s apps might be of great help. The company offers a bunch of estimation apps for all aspects of home improvement. Whether you need to know how many rolls of wallpaper you need, or how many cans of paint, or how much lumber, acoustic ceiling, sheathing, asphalt, and so on, these $0.99 apps are great. There are free online tools that can help you with estimation needs, but if you’re in middle of Home Depot staring blankly at your room dimensions scribbled on a scrap of paper, you might want a slightly more portable solution that’s going to give you an accurate estimate. Cost: $0.99 per app 3. Real Tools First, we are not suggesting that “Real Tools” can replace your 18-inch Waterloo steel split-lid cantilever tool box with its precious cargo, but it could help you out in a fix. With 18 “tools” in total, (16 of which work with later models of the iPod touch) the most useful are a ruler, the spirit level, flashlight, various digital angle gauges, a virtual tape measure and a plumb bob. The claim from the developers is that if you wanted to buy all the tools included in this app in the real world it would set you back $1,200.00. We’re not sure about that, but what we can say is that the app looks, feels, and sounds good. Also, the tools we did test as per the list above, worked perfectly. Cost: $1.99 4. Task This Keeping a project on track can be half the battle for those of us that are less than motivated to really do it ourselves. So a project management app that can send you timely reminders to get to it, might be just what you need to turn your project from in-progress to ticked off the to-do list. Task This is a really good place to start because its design and categories works really well for a DIY project. There’s more to this app than we’re going to cover here (especially when you take into account the web sync options with www.task-this.com) but as far as home improvement planning goes, we’re interested in the app’s “projects,” shopping” and “reminders” functionality. As you’d imagine, “shopping” lets you create lists of items associated to your projects, or standalone lists as well. Projects can be created with time parameters, status indicators and priority settings, and reminders can be set via push notifications (which will appear in the app’s calendar) to alert you at key points throughout. As a free app, it’s rather good-looking and as comprehensive as many paid options out there. Cost: Free 5. Gardening Toolkit If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, then this app will help you make the most of it by providing detailed info and advice on planting and care for over 800 varieties of herbs, flowers and vegetables. For novice gardeners, this handy app will keep you from planting some kind of flimsy fern suited to more tropical climates if you happen to reside in Chicago, by taking your geographical area’s climate into account and letting you know what will grow best. Once you’ve narrowed down what you want to plant, you can read up on advice, set yourself a to-do list and then create your own garden profile by picking plants from the searchable database. It’s a great at-a-glance look at what’s growing, basic care info, and your own notes. In addition, a colorful interface offers great photography, while the by-the-month advice section (e.g., August: It’s easy to get distracted by the long summer days, but the garden still needs attention…) will provide new gardeners with time-tailored suggestions on what needs doing in the manner of a kindly, green-thumbed aunt. Cost: $3.99 More iPhone resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Spiderstock Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto More About: app store, apple, diy, home improvement, iphone, iphone apps, List, Lists For more Apple coverage:
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| Twitter Ad Network Tweetup Acquires Popurls and Twidroid Posted: 06 Jul 2010 06:27 AM PDT   Twitter ad platform and search engine TweetUp has acquired popular Android Twitter client Twidroid, as well as RSS news aggregator Popurls, the company announced today. Popurls is somewhat of an old-school service, displaying a number of hand-picked technology related RSS feeds from sites like Digg and Reddit, as well as a number of popular blogs. Although it’s less customizable than a full-fledged RSS reader such as Google Reader, its simple yet effective approach turned it into a popular tech-related destination. Combined with the acquisition of Twidroid (which will now be called Twidroyd to avoid lawsuits from Lucas Films, who owns the trademark for the term “droid”), TweetUp hopes to “refine its platform for finding the world’s best tweeters.” “Twidroyd is widely considered the best Twitter client for Android phones and it leads in market share, so its growing base of users will be a valuable source of well-informed feedback on TweetUp search on mobile devices. In addition, the popurls website, which attracts users looking for a convenient guide to the most popular sites, news, videos and blogs on the Internet, will be a natural spot to display TweetUp search results and gain user feedback,” said Bill Gross, CEO of TweetUp. Both Twidroyd and Popurls were founded by Austrian entrepreneur Thomas Marban. “With their resources and experience along with the bundling deals we have developed with a number of the leading device manufacturers, we believe Twidroyd can widen its lead as the top Android client for Twitter users and aggressively grow our distribution while taking advantage of TweetUp’s business model for uncovering the best tweeters on topics of interest to our users,” said Marban. The most interesting part of the announcement is definitely the bit that claims Twidroyd “will come standard on millions of upcoming Android phones from five of the leading handset manufacturers.” If TweetUp indeed managed to land a deal to have Twidroyd preloaded on Android phones, it would be a huge boost for them, but what of Twitter’s official Android app, then? We’ll be on the lookout for more substantial news on the subject. Reviews: Android, Digg, Google Reader, Internet, Twidroid, Twitter More About: popurls, Tweetup, twidroid, twidroyd, twitter For more Business coverage:
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| UK Government Spends Thousands Developing iPhone Apps Posted: 06 Jul 2010 05:00 AM PDT   The UK Government has spent tens of thousands of pounds developing iPhone apps, BBC News reports, including apps that help users quit smoking and teach drivers how to change a tire or calculate fuel mileage. One of the apps, called Jobcentre Plus, lets users search for jobs in England, Scotland and Wales. The app, which is also available for Android phones, has drawn some criticism because it still doesn’t support iOS4. The developers promised that a new version will be released “shortly.” Slapped with a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, the UK government revealed that the cost of development of these apps ranged from £10,000 – £40,000 ($15,000 – $61,000). The numbers may not sound too high, but BBC wasn’t able to find out the cost of development of some apps, as UK Home Office declined to give the information citing “security concerns.” Furthermore, the numbers are significant given the fact that this same government is currently trying to save on web development. It spent £94 million ($143 million) on website development and running costs, as well as £32 million on web staff in 2009 – 2010, which prompted the government to conduct a review of all 820 of its websites. Right now, the future for government-approved iPhone apps isn’t looking rosy, either. The UK government froze spending on all marketing and advertising, and this includes all iPhone apps. Reviews: Android More About: apps, iphone, smartphone, UK government For more Mobile coverage:
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