Mashable: Latest 24 News Updates - including “Mophie and Intuit Launch Credit Card Processing Solution for iPhone” |  |
- Mophie and Intuit Launch Credit Card Processing Solution for iPhone
- Web Faceoff: New Digg vs. Old Digg
- PayPal and Slide Co-founder Becomes a Google VP of Engineering
- 6 New Mac Apps for Designers and Developers
- Digitally Honor the Memory of a Loved One with 1000Memories
- iPhone App Uses Background Location for Automatic Checkins on Foursquare
- Announcing Mashlanta 2.0: Mashable Returns to Atlanta
- Stop Being Rude and Put Away Your Phone, the Digi-World Can Wait
- Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy [INFOGRAPHIC]
- Change the Way You Store and Stream Media Files with Put.io
- Apple Holding Special Event on September 1
- A Brief History of Digg
- Facebook Chat to Drop IE6 Support
- New Digg Is Live: What It Means For Digg and For You
- Google: “Nothing Has Changed” with Google Voice iPhone App
- Ustream Ups the Emphasis on Content in Redesign [PICS]
- Google Voice Telephone Booths Coming to an Airport or College Near You
- Facebook Trademark Lawsuit Aims to Limit Use of “Book” by Others
- Google Brings Voice Calling to Gmail
- Stephen Colbert Takes on Google CEO’s “Change Your Name” Comments [VIDEO]
- Viral Blog Pays Tribute to YouTube’s Least Viral Videos
- 5 Lightweight CMS Alternatives for Small Businesses
- Amazon: Kindle 3 Is the Fastest-Selling Kindle Ever
- Morning Brief: Gmail Voice Calling, Google Finance Mobile, Windows 7 Live Gaming
- WikiLeaks Plans to Release CIA Paper Later Today
| Mophie and Intuit Launch Credit Card Processing Solution for iPhone Posted: 26 Aug 2010 01:07 AM PDT      Small business owners who are looking for a cheap, simple solution for credit card processing, take notice: Mophie and Intuit have launched an all-in-one package that lets you accept payments and process credit cards on your iPhone 3G or 3GS. Named the Complete Credit Card Solution, it consists of mophie’s iPhone case with a credit card reader at the bottom, and Intuit’s GoPayment app that takes care of the software side. It also integrates with Intuit’s QuickBooks software, which lets you track invoices and payments. It works as follows: you, a small business owner, apply for a Intuit Merchant Account that will let you process credit cards in a matter of minutes. The customers swipe the card through the reader attached to your iPhone, and sign their name on the iPhone touch screen. Finally, you send the customer an e-mail or text receipt. Intuit claims that its software processes the credit card “within seconds,” after which the funds are deposited into the businesses’ bank account. The price of the Complete Credit Card Solution is $179.95 at Apple Retail Stores and soon, claim Intuit and Mophie, on Apple.com. GoPayment, which includes the Intuit merchant account, costs $12.95 a month, with a 1.7 to 3.7 percent discount rate and $0.30 to $0.34 per transaction fee. One account can enable up to 50 users. Finally, there are no long-term contracts, cancellation, gateway or set-up fees. With this product, Mophie and Intuit took some of the flare out of Jack Dorsey’s credit card processing solution Square, especially because Intuit already has an established user base. However, Square still offers a number of advantages over Mophie and Intuit’s solution: a free card reader, no monthly fee, lower transaction fees, and it’s compatible with both iOS and Android devices. More About: credit card processing, intuit, iphone, mophie For more Mobile coverage:
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| Web Faceoff: New Digg vs. Old Digg Posted: 25 Aug 2010 11:00 PM PDT   The new version of Digg is here. After months of testing and a change in CEO, Digg version 4 has been unleashed on the masses. Digg’s new interface boasts not only quicker load times, but a personalized approach to social news. While the old version of Digg was known for its front page stories and the infamous “Digg Effect,” the new version focuses on “My News,” which displays stories dugg and submitted by those you follow. Being the submitter of a top story has also been de-emphasized. How will Diggers react to the changes? Will the revamped Digg attract new users and help turn traffic around? Will the community embrace it? These are the questions we hope you’ll help us answer. In a special edition of our Web Faceoff series, we want you to answer the question: Which version do you prefer: the New Digg or the Old Digg? The polls will be open until next Wednesday, September 1 at 12:00 PM PT. We want to hear your thoughts on the Digg V4 and whether it’s an improvement over its predecessor. Be sure to leave your opinion in the comments. Reviews: Digg More About: digg, New Digg, Old Digg, web faceoff For more Battles coverage:
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| PayPal and Slide Co-founder Becomes a Google VP of Engineering Posted: 25 Aug 2010 09:54 PM PDT   Max Levchin, the founder of recently-acquired Slide and co-founder of PayPal, has been named Google’s newest vice president of engineering. Levchin joined the company as part of Google’s $182 million acquisition of Slide, the company he founded and ran as CEO for nearly six years. He will now report to Urs Holzle, Google’s senior vice president of operations, according to Inside Facebook. We’ve reached out to Google for more details about his new role. The decision to make Levchin a VP of engineering makes perfect sense, especially for a company trying to break into social networking and fend off Facebook, whose rapid growth is perceived as a threat. Levchin was the CTO of PayPal and responsible for its anti-fraud technology. He also co-created one of the earliest forms of CAPTCHA, the Gausebeck-Levchin test. At Slide, Levchin helped build some of the Facebook’s most popular applications, including FunWall, SuperPoke and Top Friends. Google will be relying on Levchin’s technological and social expertise in its quest to become more social. How he’ll help lead that effort is unclear, but it’s almost certain to involve Google Me, the search giant’s rumored competitor to Facebook. Reviews: Facebook, Google, Top Friends More About: Google, max levchin, paypal, slide For more Business coverage:
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| 6 New Mac Apps for Designers and Developers Posted: 25 Aug 2010 08:21 PM PDT
Mac OS X is a popular choice because it combines the power of BSD and other UNIX and UNIX-like systems with an elegant user interface. Mac OS X comes with Apache, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Subversion already installed, which makes it easy to turn a factory-fresh Mac into a local test server. As the end of summer approaches, we wanted to highlight six more Mac apps that have been released in the last few month for developers and designers. 1. Flux 3 – ₤69.99 for new users, ₤34.99 for upgrades Indie shop The Escapers just released version 3.0 of its fantastic website design program, Flux. I like to think of Flux 3 as Dreamweaver reimagined. It offers a visual and code-based approach to page design, along with support for plugins and code snippets, support for HTML5 and HTML5 video, ePub, WebKit transforms and other effects, and the Google Font API. All of this power comes in an app that is easy to visually navigate or to edit as raw code. There is a learning curve, but once you’ve spent some time with the app, it’s easy to use to create and manage projects. 2. Gitbox – Free One of the great things about the version control system Git is that it is super simple and super lightweight. Git was designed for the terminal, and oftentimes, the terminal is the fastest way to commit or merge changes. Sometimes, however, it can be faster or more comfortable to add a visual element to the process. This can be especially useful if you are changing folder or file names or frequently switching between different places on your desktop. Gitbox is a lightweight, single-window client for Git that makes it easy to see branches, commit, pull, merge and push all with a single click. It also supports diff viewing in either FileMerge.app or Kaleidoscope. 3. Kaleidoscope – €29 Kaleidoscope is from Made By Sofa and it’s a file comparison application that goes above and beyond a simple diff viewer. Not only can you compare text files or code blocks, you can also compare images. If you’re working on a web coding or design project and you need to quickly view the changes between two versions of the same file, Kaleidoscope might just be your go-to tool. It supports multiple layouts, syntax highlighting and searching, and multiple image formats. It can integrate with version control systems like Subversion, Git, Mercurial and others via the command-line or drag-and-drop, and the app is super fast. 4. Xmplify – Free while in beta If you work with a lot of XML, you might want to give Xmplify a closer look. It’s a new app that is still in beta that makes editing XML and XSLT (XSL transformations) files really easy. On the XSLT side, the program includes a Web Preview feature that shows a live look at the XHTML document created by the XSLTs. You can also search using both XPath and by using regular expressions. 5. Loremify – Free Loremify is a Dashboard Widget that can quickly and painlessly generate Lorem Impsum style text in the length and style that you specify. This can be really useful when needing text blocks for filler content while creating a design. You can specify how many words and how many characters for a paragraph, header or list. You can also choose to automatically insert HTML tags into the generator, which makes the tool that much easier for using when designing in a browser or in a text editor. 6. Slammer – $20 More and more web designers are using grids, either of their own creation or something like the 960 Grid System, to create really flexible and great-looking layouts. Slammer is a tool for applying and modifying grids to your designs or to existing content anywhere on your Mac. The app is an overlay that you can use on documents, web pages, images, previews, and the list goes on. You can then customize the grid, get a feel for dimensions and pixel placements, and alter the layout of the grid to see how your content aligns. You can then export your own templates as a JSON file that you can integrate with your designs or use pre-made templates for certain grid systems to use with future projects. Basically Slammer is an interactive virtual blueprint maker that you can use for your web designs. You can try the app for 30 hours with no restrictions. Bonus: CourierCourier from Realmac Software won’t be available for another week or so, but as you can see from the awesome teaser video (above), it’s a utility that will likely appeal to many developers and designers. Realmac is the same team behind RapidWeaver, LittleSnapper and Socialite, and they know how to deliver a Mac app that’s feature-packed and easy on the eyes. I’ve been beta-testing Courier and really love the app. Keep your eyes peeled for this one! Your Thoughts?What are some of your favorite Mac apps for design and development? Let us know! Series supported by Rackspace  Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why. More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, David Benkovic Reviews: Apps, CSSEdit 2, Coda, LittleSnapper, PHP, Pixelmator, Python, RapidWeaver, Socialite, TextMate, iStockphoto More About: courier, Flux, gitbox, kaleidoscope, loremify, mac, mac apps, slammer, software, web design, Web Development, web development series, xmplify For more Dev & Design coverage:
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| Digitally Honor the Memory of a Loved One with 1000Memories Posted: 25 Aug 2010 06:29 PM PDT   When a loved one passes away, friends and family often memorialize him or her, usually in the form of a funeral or service. Online though, it’s an undefined frontier. Friends often post on the Facebook walls of the deceased, while Twitter just recently addressed this issue. Facebook and Twitter aren’t sufficient to truly honor the memory of a friend or family member, though. Enter 1000Memories, a new YCombinator-funded startup that aims to solve this problem by creating a central location where friends and family can share their pictures, stories and memories. Memorial pages start out with a full-sized photo of the departed; it’s an emotional and powerful introduction to a 1000Memories page. Each page is divided into five parts: Friends & Family, Photos, Stories, Projects and Guestbook. Most of these pieces are self-explanatory, but they all have a focus on sharing memories about loved ones, whether that’s a story about the person or an old photo album. One of the more interesting aspects of 1000Memories is the “Projects” section. Essentially it’s a page for raising money for a favored foundation or charity. It integrates with WePay for easy donations. Memorial pages are relatively simple to set up as well. You can sign up or connect via Facebook to get started. 1000Memories then takes you step by step through the process of creating and managing a page. While 1000Memories could use more features (you can add audio and video via the Guestbook, but we’d love a video section), the site is off to a good start addressing a very real problem. It utilizes the sharing and collaborative aspects of the web and puts them to use for honoring the departed. Would you use an app like 1000Memories to honor a departed friend or family member? Let us know in the comments.  Reviews: Facebook, Twitter More About: 1000Memories, startup, ycombinator
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| iPhone App Uses Background Location for Automatic Checkins on Foursquare Posted: 25 Aug 2010 04:40 PM PDT   Foursquare players too busy painting the town red to go to the trouble of whipping out their iPhone and checking in can sit back and let Checkmate do the work for them. At $1.99, Checkmate offers a convenient alternative for those looking for a passive aggressive way to play the geosocial game. The brand new app harnesses background-running location on the iPhone to check in Foursquare players automatically at specified venues. After you download and fire up the app, you can select different venues to add to your “Auto Checkin Venues” list. You can toggle automatic checkins on or off for the whole list, as well as specify whether to automatically post a shout or share the checkin on Facebook and Twitter. Once you’re within 50 meters of a designated venue, Checkmate will take over and check you in on Foursquare. The application works on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 and eventually will add support for other checkin services. Future Checkin [iTunes link] is similar in nature; it too supports automatic checkins for specified venues via background location on the iPhone. Future Checkin differs by letting you adjust the GPS settings for more accurate or more battery-friendly automatic checkins. Both applications warn that by running location in the background, you risk draining your phone’s battery. Do automatic background checkins appeal to you? Leave us a comment and tell us why or why not.  Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, iPhone More About: checkins, checkmate, foursquare, future checkin, Mobile 2.0 For more Mobile coverage:
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| Announcing Mashlanta 2.0: Mashable Returns to Atlanta Posted: 25 Aug 2010 03:35 PM PDT   Ask and you shall receive. Mashable is excited to announce Mashlanta 2.0 in partnership with Regator. After an amazing event last year, we’ve gone bigger (200 to 300 more tickets), longer (an extra hour) and we’ve added a venue with ample parking. This year, myself, Adam Ostrow, Vadim Lavrusik, Brett Petersel and our very own Atlanta-based Christina Warren, along with the Regator team, would like to welcome everyone to come and celebrate with us. We’re excited for an opportunity to connect with the Atlanta community. Tickets are now on sale, sponsorship opportunities are available, and, judging from last year, we’ll sell out quickly. Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010 Thanks to our Co-host "With hand-selected blogs on more than 500 topics, Regator is the top source for high-quality blog content and trends. Visit Regator on the web or via Regator Premium for iPhone to easily find, read, and share posts on the things that interest you.” Thanks to our VIP Lounge Sponsor “Definition 6 is a unified marketing agency that helps clients create experiences that unite brands and people. Definition 6 helps clients, including The Coca-Cola Company, VeriFone, HBO, Cox, La Quinta Inn & Suites, Nickelodeon and Cinnabon, to bridge the gap between marketing and technology. For more information, visit http://www.definition6.com.” Thanks to our Startup SponsorChirbit: “Chirbit is a tool that enables users to record, upload and share audio easily. It is simple, useful, and fun.” 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: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter More About: atlanta, mashable event, mashlanta, regator For more Social Media coverage:
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| Stop Being Rude and Put Away Your Phone, the Digi-World Can Wait Posted: 25 Aug 2010 03:19 PM PDT   Remember the good ol’ days, circa mid-naughts, when most people’s phones just alerted them of incoming calls and the occasional text message? After a two-second peek, you knew that you were not in desperate demand, and you were free to slip your cell back into your pocket or purse (or cellphone holster, if you were a huge geek). You’d then go back to standing in line, taking in a raucous concert or attending your grandma Bunny’s funeral. Now we’re more stupidly available, and a phone check involves, at minimum, viewing your e-mails, scanning Twitter mentions, perusing blog comments and stalking that dude’s Facebook wall. Even if there’s nothing remarkable in any digi-venue, we keep tapping away — reading the latest headlines, checking the weather (often, bafflingly, while outside or near a window) or ordering the most darling collectible Hummel set from eBay. You know, the usual. Last year, a study even hinted that fresh bits of info may hook into the brain’s reward system, shedding light on how whipping out your phone is analogous to that whiskey-and-taco bender you went on last weekend. (It just hurts so gooooood.) The problem, of course, is that constantly perusing your phone is freaking rude — a clear signal that your reception is more important than anything going on in the here and now. Get this: 10% of people 24 and younger think it’s OK to text during sex, according to consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo. That brings a whole meaning to the term multitasking. But unless you’re among that ADD-addled 10%, there’s hope for you yet. May we suggest holsterin’ the old communication cannon during the following situations… And so begins my Netiquette column — which I write with my Stuff Hipsters Hate co-blogger, Andrea Bartz — this week over at CNN. Check out the column at CNN.com >>Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto More About: cellphone, cnn, netiquette, Stuff Hipsters Hate For more Social Media coverage:
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| Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 25 Aug 2010 02:38 PM PDT Alexander Hotz is a freelance multimedia journalist and public radio junkie based in New York City. Currently he teaches digital media at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Follow Alex on Twitter at @hotzington. The release of Facebook Places raised serious privacy concerns for users of the social network. Places allows users to alert their friends to where they are by checking-in to a nearby location, often via mobile phone. Users can also view the location of nearby friends and the information they've posted about locations. Critics of the feature point out that under Places' default setting, a user can tag a friend's location even if that friend is not physically in that location. What's more, all checkins will appear in the News Feed and activity stream for that place, unless otherwise specified. If this sounds like over-sharing to you and you'd like to opt out, you can change your privacy settings. This isn't the first time Facebook has received criticism for its privacy practices. In fact, Facebook's problems stretch back to before its founding when then Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the school's network to steal pictures of students for a site that ranked their attractiveness. Below is an infographic tracing the history of privacy snafus that have dogged the platform since its creation. The graphic below was created for Mashable by Lisa Waananen.  
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| Change the Way You Store and Stream Media Files with Put.io Posted: 25 Aug 2010 02:14 PM PDT   This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Quick Pitch: Put.io is a storage service that fetches media files remotely and lets you stream them immediately. Genius Idea: Put.io is cloud-based solution for fetching, housing and streaming files from the Internet. Think of it as an alternative repository for torrents and entertainment media such as music and video. Instead of downloading files to your desktop, you can “download” them to Put.io where you can access and stream them from any device with a browser — think laptops, iPads, mobile phones and gaming consoles. Put.io’s secret sauce is its ability to automatically fetch files on the web. Put.io can pull media from bittorent, FTP sites, direct download links and even automatically download content from your favorite RSS feeds. Another boon is that Put.io lets you convert most video files to the mobile-friendly MP4 format for mobile consumption. Put.io is also appealing because the system supports shared folders. Users can share their media library with friends and reap the benefits of access to their friends’ shared libraries as well. There’s also a Put.io application for Boxee, which means Boxee users can stream media directly from Put.io’s servers. For future Boxee Box owners and Apple TV hackers, this means instant access to web-based entertainment media on the television. Put.io’s one catch is that it comes with a monthly price tag. You can test out the service for a three-day free trial period, but on-going subscription plans start at $4.99 per month depending on the storage and bandwidth you want. Put.io is like a modern-day Napster for today’s generation of online media consumers. With a structure that supports one-to-may exchanges of media files, we can only assume that it too will garner some heat from entertainment industry players fearful of its disruptive model. Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
Reviews: Boxee, Internet More About: bizspark, cloud storage, entertainment, put.io, spark-of-genius, torrents For more Tech coverage:
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| Apple Holding Special Event on September 1 Posted: 25 Aug 2010 01:24 PM PDT   On Wednesday, September 1, Apple will be holding an invitation-only event in San Francisco. The event, which should center around the company’s music-related offerings like iTunes and the iPod touch, will also be broadcast live via satellite in London. Apple has held special music and iTunes-focused events each September for the last half-decade. Last year, Apple announced its new iPod nano complete with video camera capabilities, in addition to a new iPod shuffle and a more powerful iPod touch. This year, in addition to a new iPod touch (which we fully expect to come with FaceTime support), there are strong indications that Apple will be launching — or really, re-launching — the Apple TV under the new iTV name. Four years ago, Apple first introduced the Apple TV (then under the name “iTV”) at its iTunes event. Rumors also continue to surface that Apple will launch a 99-cent TV show rental program. Mashable will be at the event to bring you the latest news and developments as they happen. What announcements are you most looking forward to? Reviews: Mashable More About: apple, apple event, Apple TV, itv For more Apple coverage:
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| Posted: 25 Aug 2010 01:09 PM PDT Just a few months shy of its sixth birthday, social news site Digg has launched its highly anticipated overhaul/redesign. What started as an experiment in the fall of 2004 is now a major online presence with an estimated 40 million monthly users. Kevin Rose’s concept of a user-controlled community that votes to “digg up” what links that they collectively deem important, or “bury” down those of little interest, has been successful in part because of the company’s ability to adapt and add new features. Here, we take a look back at the time line of the site’s development and rise over the years. 2004  Dec 5: Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetsky and Jay Adelson start Digg with a $6,000 investment from then 27-year-old Rose. The team dubbed the site “Digg” because dig.com was already owned by Disney. The site would be a community-based news aggregator, and launched on December 5, 2004. Above is a screen shot from December 9, just a few days after the initial launch. Dec 13: Rose features his new site on The Screen Savers, his tech/pop culture TV show, exposing it to a larger audience. 2005Jan 2: A comment section is introduced, giving the community a place to talk about the stories they dug up or buried down. March 19: Digg profile pages now include comment histories and sort by category for easier searching. May 1: Kevin Rose and former Screen Savers co-host Alex Albrecht start a video podcast centered around what’s popular on the site and dub it Diggnation. May 9: Digg spy is released.  May 27: Digg launches Digg 2.0, the site’s first major update, which features a friends list, the ability to “digg” a story without having to be redirected to a success page, and a new interface design. Oct 28: Less than a year after launching, Digg finds funding to the tune of $2.8 million from investors. Dec 5: Digg Spy 2.0 is released, and users can now see all the site’s activity from other users in real time. 2006Feb 2: Digg got a credibility boost as users are now able to report stories as “inaccurate” and profanity filters were installed.  June 26: Digg 3.0 is released with specific categories that expand beyond its tech base. The site now includes Technology, Science, World and Business, Videos, Entertainment, Gaming, and a View All section for all the site’s content. Sept 12: The site launches the #1 Story feature, which is later called “Favorites.” Dec 18: Digg launches even more new features including podcasts, videos, a top 10 sidebar and a friends page. 2007April 19: Digg opens their API to the public, meaning that developers can write tools and apps based on Digg’s data dating back to 2004. May 1: The site goes nuts after hackers found a way to crack the (now defunct) HD-DVD encryption key, and posts it to the site, including instructions on how to copy and crack HD-DVDs. Digg tries to take it down to avoid legal troubles, but is basically overruled by the power of the community, who re-post the key in multiple creative ways. Kevin Rose eventually steps up and sides with the community, posting this to his blog: "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."  August 27: Digg alters its main interface again, this time with changes in the profile area. 2008Sept 24: Digg nets $28.7 million from investors Highland Capital Partners. 2009April 2: The Digg Bar is released. Its a toolbar on top of a site allowing users to create shorter URLs and access digg comments and analytics without leaving the page. The Digg Bar is not well received, which leads the company to making several changes later that month. May 6: Digg integrates Facebook Connect. This allows users of Digg and Facebook to connect their accounts, and allows Facebook users to participate, even without a Digg profile.  Aug 6: Digg ads is launched. Marketers are able to submit ads that look like news stories, and the community is able to vote them up or down in the same way they would to a real story, essentially controlling how much advertisers have to pay for ad space on the site. 2010March 23: Digg launches their iPhone app, ensuring users can dig and bury stories where ever they maybe. April 1: The site launches their Android app. April 5: Kevin Rose becomes CEO and announces that the controversial DiggBar would be eliminated with the implementation of Digg 4.0. July 2: Digg 4.0 alpha testing begins.  Aug 2: New user registration is taken down to prepare for the impending launch of Digg 4.0. Aug 25: Digg 4.0 launches. To nicely sum up Digg’s history, the company created the video below to celebrate their five year anniversary last December. Are you a Digg user? What do you think were the most important changes to the site over the last few years? Let us know in the comments. Additional Sources:
More Social Media Resources from Mashable:
Reviews: Digg, Facebook, favorites More About: community, digg, digg 4.0, history, redesign, social new For more Social Media coverage:
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| Facebook Chat to Drop IE6 Support Posted: 25 Aug 2010 12:55 PM PDT   If you are still using Internet Explorer 6.0, Facebook has a new incentive for you to move onward and upward: Facebook Chat. On its blog today, Facebook announced that its chat feature will no longer support IE 6. Like an increasing number of web applications, the social network cited the 9-year-old browser’s inability to support new features as the reason for dumping it. The announcements suggests that Facebook Chat will be getting a significant upgrade in the coming weeks. The exclusion of IE 6 likely means some significant HTML5 features, although we will have to wait and see. Facebook isn’t the first major company to pull IE 6 support from one of its products; earlier this year, Google dropped support for IE 6 for Google Apps users and for many new YouTube features. Last August, more than 72 companies joined the IE6 No More initiative. Even Microsoft has started pleading with users and companies to make the switch to a more modern browser, if only for security reasons. Why IE 6 Continues to ExistEvery time we cover the IE 6 issue, readers ask what seems like a very sensible and obvious question: Why is anyone still using IE 6? The answer is complicated but it comes down to this: Many large and small businesses, government agencies, and other organizations have come to rely on IE 6 for their internal software. In other words, it’s not so much about accessing the outside web, it’s about making sure that the internal intranet web apps continue to work. When Microsoft released IE 6 in August 2001, it was considered internally to be the last major version of the browser. Unexpected advances by companies like Opera and Mozilla forced the company to restart its web browsing engines, but the product was created — and promoted to ISVs and clients — as the stable browsing platform. Because of the various quirks within IE 6 and because the aging rendering engine doesn’t support new techniques, sites specifically built to support IE 6 often do not work well with other browsers. Even later versions of Internet Explorer often have issues handling IE 6-specific sites and apps. It’s one thing for a consumer-facing website to make changes to support new browsers. For internal applications that are critical to how a company or office or organization operates, convincing the IT department and the people controlling the purse strings to update — a process that will likely include needing to rewrite large portions of the application and create a domino-effect of code-related changes — is not so simple. The Day of Reckoning is ComingWhile Microsoft has committed itself to supporting IE 6 in some capacity for many more years, we’ve finally reached a tipping point with consumer websites; IE 6 truly is on its way out. As more and more businesses prepare to upgrade to new machines and to Windows 7, even corporate backends will have to start the conversion process. Not all companies will upgrade, of course; I know from speaking with several employees at various U.S. government agencies that IE 6 is the only browser that can be used on some of its networks (albeit with JavaScript turned off, which must make browsing the web truly terrible). Still, with moves like Facebook Chat dropping IE 6 support, those remaining non-business users will be given even further incentive to suck it up and just upgrade. Do you know anyone who still uses IE 6 at home? Reviews: Facebook, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Windows, blog More About: facebook, facebook chat, ie 6, IE6 must die, web browsers For more Tech coverage:
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| New Digg Is Live: What It Means For Digg and For You Posted: 25 Aug 2010 11:25 AM PDT
— After a month of testing the new alpha version to invite-only users, Digg’s redesigned site is live for everyone. The new interface and functionality of the social news network focuses on the personalized news stream, “My News,” which shows stories dugg by users you choose to follow (similar to Twitter), rather than the most popular news. The company has had a turbulent year. In April, Founder Kevin Rose became CEO after Jay Adelson stepped down, reportedly in part because Digg’s venture capitalists were frustrated that they had yet to see a return on the $40 million invested in the company despite staff cuts in 2009 to improve profitability. The site has also been struggling with a decline in traffic, according to Compete.com, only further increasing the pressure to reinvent itself. Is this redesign really the re-imagining of a social platform or just a band-aid that will only stop the bleeding temporarily? A New Digg ExperienceThis site also has an improved content submission process. The “Digg It” submission bar appears prominently at the top center of the page. Users no longer have to navigate to a separate page to submit content, and users can also easily share submissions via Twitter, Facebook or e-mail. Digg also has a range of new, unique features, such as saving stories to read for later.  The SUL and Working with PublishersTaking more cues from Twitter, the new Digg makes it easier to discover users to follow with its own version of the Suggested User List, which includes media publishers and celebrity figures like Ashton Kutcher, who, by the way, doesn’t have nearly as many followers (4,000+) as he does on Twitter. The SUL and Digg’s initiative to recruit big brands to follow seems to be paying off. Some of the accounts listed, including Mashable’s, have grown from a few hundred followers to thousands in just a month. In an e-mail sent to publishers this week, Digg’s new Product Manager Mike Cieri highlighted Digg’s help page for new publishers and its plans to “help publishers drive traffic and revenue, including improved analytics and reporting, additional incoming feed capabilities, and improving the discovery process to ensure all publishers are being found and followed on Digg.” Working with brands and publishers has helped generate user interest and revenue for sites like Foursquare and Twitter, and Digg will likely try to do the same.  Too Much or Too Little Too Late?Despite the many improvements to the interface and overall experience on the site, only time will tell as to whether the redesign is too much or too little too late. First, the redesign may be too much of a shift for Digg’s core users, who have traditionally have driven much of the activity on the site, even after the “Top Digger” list was removed. Because the emphasis is now on a self-curated stream, its top diggers may be alienated. However, if the new functionality works to attract a more mainstream userbase, then Digg still wins. Alternatively, the changes may not be enough. Digg is clearly taking lessons from the likes of Twitter and Facebook in regards to how content is being shared on those platforms. But is this new redesign enough? After all, content submission is still largely automated through a link submission process or an RSS feed, and the comments, opinions and conversation is mostly secondary part of the experience. This is still far from Facebook and Twitter, where the opinion and commentary of the user sharing the content is nearly as important as the content itself, featured prominently on in the Twitter stream or Facebook News Feed with the link or content blurb below. ConclusionWhat Digg may benefit from is the new seamlessness of the submission and consumption processes. Users that are looking for a curated stream alongside the popular content can do it on Digg. The majority of Digg’s userbase will likely find the new design refreshing and it very well may gain some traction among users that feel overwhelmed with the real-time news stream or the pontifications in their news feed. Better yet, Digg may attract a whole new audience looking for a place to discover news through curated sources. What are your thoughts? Do you like the new Digg? Will the new version attract more users to the struggling social news site or is it taking its last breaths? Reviews: Digg, Facebook, Foursquare, Mashable, Twitter More About: digg, digg.com, facebook, jay adelson, kevin rose, social bookmarking, social media, social news, social sharing, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Google: “Nothing Has Changed” with Google Voice iPhone App Posted: 25 Aug 2010 11:12 AM PDT   Could we be seeing an official Google Voice iPhone app in the near future? The question was raised during today’s Google Voice/Gmail press conference. Last year, controversy erupted when Apple rejected the Google Voice iPhone app. Google quickly fought back, eventually leading to an FCC investigation involving Google, Apple and AT&T. But it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing a Google Voice for iPhone anytime soon. Craig Walker, the group product manager for Google Voice, said that “nothing has changed” since Google, Apple and AT&T submitted their letters to the FCC last year. While the answer isn’t what we were hoping for, at least Google Voice has an HTML5-based web app. Still, it seems like the tech giant has abandoned its quest to get Google Voice in the App Store. With tensions between the two companies at an all-time high, we’re not surprised. Reviews: App Store, Google, Google Voice More About: apple, att, fn, Google, Google Voice, iphone, iphone app For more Mobile coverage:
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| Ustream Ups the Emphasis on Content in Redesign [PICS] Posted: 25 Aug 2010 10:27 AM PDT   Live video platform Ustream has just pushed out a site-wide redesign, featuring a new color scheme and cleaner look that the company hopes will make discovering and broadcasting content easier for users. Although the entire site received a facelift, Ustream took special care in redesigning the homepage and the user dashboard. Home Page The new homepage makes it easier to distinguish between live broadcasts and archived shows. The category-based navigation has been replaced by a category drop-down style overlay and and emphasis on the search bar.   Dashboard The user dashboard now has a much better interface for managing your account and your shows. It has also been customized to display the top four shows you care about, with links to managing your accounts or shows.  Other highlights:
What do you think of the new Ustream? Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, ustream More About: ONLINE VIDEO, ustream, web design For more Web Video coverage:
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| Google Voice Telephone Booths Coming to an Airport or College Near You Posted: 25 Aug 2010 10:25 AM PDT In order to promote its new, cutting-edge calling technology, Google is going retro with dozens of phone booths set to sweep the nation’s airports and colleges. At a press event at Google’s offices in San Francisco, the company launched Google Voice integration with Gmail, giving users the ability to make and receive phone calls from their inboxes. Phone calls to the U.S. and Canada are free, making Google Chat a legitimate competitor to Skype. As part of its campaign to raise awareness for Google Voice, the company is getting creative. Sometime soon (likely before the end of the year), you’ll start seeing red Google Voice phone booths in public venues, primarily at airports and college campuses. The phone booths aren’t just for show though; they actually make phone calls. While the phone booths have very classic-looking phones in them, they are powered by Internet connections, not by land lines. The company has not not yet disclosed where exactly these calling stations will be located. We had a chance to test the phone booth out, and while it can be a bit confusing to operate (Google didn’t have time to update the instructions that appear in the phone booth) and there seems to be a bit of a lag for the dial tone, it does make a decent phone call. Calls from the booth, even international ones, are free of charge. We’re not sure if Google wants to associate its VoIP service with the rotary telephone, but it is cute, noticeable and, most importantly, functional. Expect to see these red beasts real soon.    Reviews: Google, Google Voice, Internet, Skype More About: gmail, Google, Google Voice, Google Voice Phone Booth, trending For more Tech coverage:
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| Facebook Trademark Lawsuit Aims to Limit Use of “Book” by Others Posted: 25 Aug 2010 10:04 AM PDT   Facebook has filed suit against Teachbook.com, an online community for teachers. The lawsuit accuses Teachbook of “misappropriating the distinctive BOOK portion of Facebook’s trademark.” The lawsuit argues that Teachbook’s use of “book” dilutes the Facebook brand name, impairs Facebook’s ability to remain unique and creates the facade of a false relationship between the two social networking entities. While Facebook does not own the rights to the word “book” in all its forms, the company believes its name trademark applies to the word “book” when used in connection with a website of similar purpose. Facebook also takes issue with the fact that Teachbook has attempted to trademark its name and makes claims about being “Facebook for teachers” on the Teachbook website. It’s a David versus Goliath trademark dispute, but one that may not end favorably for the little guy in this scenario. While most would never confuse Teachbook as as a subsidiary or affiliate of Facebook, the suit alleges that Teachbook is attempting to profit by the Facebook name. The suit is also likely designed to help Facebook set a legal precedent for future cases. The lawsuit decrees that, “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix BOOK could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ’social networking services’.” The full complaint filing is embedded below for perusal. [via Wired] Reviews: Facebook More About: facebook, lawsuit, legal, teachbook, trademark For more Business coverage:
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| Google Brings Voice Calling to Gmail Posted: 25 Aug 2010 09:46 AM PDT   Google is bringing Gmail and Google Voice together with the launch of phone call integration within Google Chat and Gmail. We’re here at Google’s San Francisco offices for a small press conference where the company is discussing the new integration. We’re getting live demos of just how voice calling in Gmail works. Here are my live notes and photos from the event: Google Voice/Gmail: Live NotesGoogle Press Conference Google Press Conference Google Press Conference Google Press Conference Google Press Conference Google Press Conference Google Press Conference All times are in pacific standard time 9:34 AM: Google Product Manager Todd Jackson is recapping some of Gmail’s features, specifically the history of Google Chat and GOogle Voice and Video Chat. AIM integration, invisible mode, group chat, emoticons and the mobile app have ben some of the new features the Gmail team has added to Google Chat. 9:36: Vincent Paquet, Product Manager for Google Voice, is discussing the history of the product. It looks like this announcement 9:40: Phone Calls in Gmail announced. The option to “Call phone” now appears within Google Chat. When you click the link, a Gchat pop-up appears where you can dial numbers and make phone calls. 9:44: Voice cancellation technology minimizes echo. 9:45: Google’s demonstrating voice calls to international destinations. It follows Google Voice’s rates. 9:46: You can receive phone calls in your Gmail with your Google Voice number. You can switch between your cell phone and Gmail, which is useful if you have bad cell coverage or a bad Internet connections. 9:50: Phone calls in U.S. and Canada are free, and calls to most countries cost $0.02 9:52: Google has a cute little video for Googll Voice in Gmail. And here it is: 9:50 Q&A. Google Voice isn’t coming to Google Talk, at least for now, because the focus was on the web integration. SMS is available in Gmail as a Labs feature, but isn’t part of this integration. It’s not rolling out in Google Apps today, but it will in the near future. Reviews: Gmail, Google, Google Voice, Internet, aim, google talk More About: gmail, Google, Google Voice For more Social Media coverage:
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| Stephen Colbert Takes on Google CEO’s “Change Your Name” Comments [VIDEO] Posted: 25 Aug 2010 08:58 AM PDT Are you a “young person,” fresh outta college and looking for a job? Great! Now all you have to do to score your dream gig is perform a full digital cleanse, and assume a new identity while you’re at it. Well, not really, but that’s the premise of a recent “The Word” segment on The Colbert Report. The below video comes in the wake of recent comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt to The Wall Street Journal with regard to the future of our youth. Schmidt predicted that all young adults will have to change their names one day in order to escape their folly-filled past. Naturally, said comments caused quite a stir among bloggers and media folk. Colbert’s segment — the “word” for which was “Control-Self-Delete” — takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to our obsession with our online identity and its effect on our futures. What do you think of Schmidt’s comments and Colbert’s parody? Is it fair to expect the public to keep such close tabs on their online identity when social networks and companies are making it increasingly impossible to remain anonymous? Let us know in the comments. In the meantime, I’m gonna jet on over to Facebook. I have a few photos to untag…
Reviews: Facebook More About: Google, humor, television, video For more Entertainment coverage:
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| Viral Blog Pays Tribute to YouTube’s Least Viral Videos Posted: 25 Aug 2010 08:06 AM PDT   Forget viral vids, here’s the new hot: Videos that no one has ever watched. That’s the premise of this genius single-serving Tumblr blog, 0 Views: The Best of the Bottom of the Barrel. Blurry clips of smiling children, commercials for “Reiki masters,” Bieber-obsessed girls gazing into mirrors — this here is a treasure trove of entertainment, people. And under each video, the sad epitaph: “Had 0 views on [insert date here].” That’s right, the entire blog is basically a stream of terrible, terrible neglected videos — that is, until they were featured on said blog. Which really creates a kind of conundrum, amirite, because inclusion on the blog in question basically guarantees the end of pathetic anonymity. My head is spinning… Let’s just take a break and watch my favorite “0 Views” video, “The Many Moods of Cleo,” the touching tale of a young boy and his kitty. The soundtrack just breaks my heart… (NB: This video now has 415 views…) [via The Daily What] More About: humor, pop culture, tumblr, viral video, youtube For more Web Video coverage:
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| 5 Lightweight CMS Alternatives for Small Businesses Posted: 25 Aug 2010 07:41 AM PDT   This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Even in 2010, managing and maintaining a website can be a daunting and complicated process. Blogging platforms like Tumblr and Posterous are great, but they aren’t always the right solutions for small businesses that might need a product page, contact forms and other landing pages associated with a business. Similarly, popular content management system (CMS) solutions like WordPress, Drupal and ExpressionEngine can sometimes be overkill for businesses that just want the ability to build out a few pages and have an easy way to modify and update those pages. Fortunately, there is a solution. More and more developers are catering to the “lightweight CMS” market. These alternatives might not have as many options and features as a traditional CMS, but they are built with an emphasis on making webpages easy to create and update. Here are five of our favorite lightweight CMS alternatives for small business users. 1. MojoMotor – $49.95 per site, self-hosted MojoMotor is the latest product from Ellis Labs, the company behind CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine. MojoMotor bills itself as “the publishing engine that does less,” which makes it perfect for smaller projects. Featuring options like drag-n-drop pages and friendly front-end editing via a WYSIWYG HTML interface, MojoMotor is designed to be easy and fast. WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get,” and implies a user interface that allows the user to edit a webpage in a view that is very close to its final form when published. This eliminates the need for users to memorize coding commands. We really like the front-end friendly design that is accessible for end users (who will be inputting most of the content), but also flexible enough to support rapid customization via HTML and CSS. If your needs outgrow MojoMotor, you can easily import your content into ExpressionEngine, a much heftier publishing platform. 2. CushyCMS – Free, Pro plan is $28 per month, hosted CushyCMS is a hosted CMS, meaning that the content and settings are stored on the CushyCMS servers. Users just tell Cushy CMS their site URL and FTP information, and all the editing and customization takes place on the Cushy servers. The free account is good for unlimited sites and pages, but the Pro account includes WYSIWYG editing and the ability to brand the CMS any way you want. 3. GetSimple CMS – Free, self-hosted GetSimple CMS is a PHP-based CMS that doesn’t need a MySQL database to function. It was designed with the small site market in mind and has an intuitive user interface that makes editing content blocks and adding pages very simple. GetSimple also supports features like sitemap generation and keyword and tagging suggestions. 4. Simple CMS – Free for one site, $15 per month for each additional site, hosted Simple CMS is a really great option for web designers who want to create a site that is easy for their small business clients to update and edit. The designer can designate what portions of the site are editable, making it easy for the owner to make changes or additions. Like CushyCMS, the backend is hosted on the Simple CMS servers and no downloading or web installation is necessary. 5. Perch – £35 (~$55 USD) per site, self-hosted Perch almost feels like a full CMS but it has a much more streamlined user interface, especially for content editors. It’s a great choice for designers who want a site that is easy for end users to modify but that doesn’t overwhelm users with options. Perch includes some really great features like image resizing and microformats. These are five of our favorite lightweight CMS alternatives for small business users. Do you have a favorite that we didn’t mention? What do you use to power your small business website? Let us know in the comments below. More Business Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pavlen Reviews: Drupal, PHP, Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress, iStockphoto More About: CMS, content management, content management system, cushycms, GetSimple CMS, hosting, lightweight CMS, MojoMotor, Perch, Simple CMS, web hosting For more Business coverage:
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| Amazon: Kindle 3 Is the Fastest-Selling Kindle Ever Posted: 25 Aug 2010 07:16 AM PDT   The new, sleeker Kindle may be a relatively minor upgrade compared to its predecessor, but it’s making an impact where it counts the most: sales. According to Amazon, the new Kindle has been selling faster than any of its previous iterations in its first four weeks of availability. Furthermore, the Kindle has been the bestselling (as well as the most gifted and most wished for) product in the same timeframe on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined. The new Kindle has the same 6-inch reading area as its predecessor, but it’s smaller and lighter. Screen contrast has been improved by 50%, and page turns are 20% faster. The battery life now lasts up to one month, and storage on the device has been increased to 4GB. There’s also some good news for buyers hidden in the announcement: The new Kindles started shipping today, two days earlier than previously announced. Reviews: Amazon.com For more Business coverage:
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| Morning Brief: Gmail Voice Calling, Google Finance Mobile, Windows 7 Live Gaming Posted: 25 Aug 2010 06:17 AM PDT This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.   Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. We're keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today. Google Testing Gmail-based Calling Service Gmail users may soon be able to make phone calls from their inboxes, CNet has learned. Google is reportedly testing a new web-based VoIP client, which will allow users to place and receive calls via the Google Chat contacts widget on the lower left side of the Gmail page. Google Finance Optimized for Mobile Google has launched a new mobile-optimized edition of Google Finance for Android and iPhone device owners. The new design brings nearly all of the same functionality as the desktop browser version, allowing users to quickly tab through news and market information, as well as data about their portfolios. Real-Time Phone-to-Console Gaming Coming to Windows 7 Greg Milligan, a mobility solutions manager at Microsoft Canada, revealed at Microsoft’s X’10 event in Toronto this week that real-time phone-to-console gaming over Wi-Fi is coming to the company’s Windows Phone 7 soon. In addition, the company plans to release mini-games on the phone that will unlock functionality in console games, which will be priced in the $1.99 to $2.99 range [via rgb filter]. Further News
Series supported by HTC EVO 4G This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology. Reviews: Android, Facebook, Gmail, Google, Twitter, Windows, Windows Phone 7, iPhone, iTunes More About: android, first to know series, gmail, Google, google chat, google finance, iphone, microsoft, Mobile 2.0, windows 7 phone, xbox For more Mobile coverage:
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| WikiLeaks Plans to Release CIA Paper Later Today Posted: 25 Aug 2010 05:57 AM PDT   WikiLeaks has announced via Twitter that it will be releasing a leaked CIA paper sometime later today. The website rose to prominence after releasing more than 70,000 U.S. Afghanistan war reports. Since then it has become the center of controversy. The Pentagon itself has issued a demand for the return of the documents in WikiLeaks’s possession, promising to “compel them to do the right thing” if it doesn’t return the war reports. In a tweet late last night, WikiLeaks promised more leaked documents, this time in the form of a CIA document. “WikiLeaks to release CIA paper tomorrow,” the organization said in a tweet late last night. It made no indication what type of document it was releasing, nor its sensitivity or secrecy. The leak comes days after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was accused of rape and molestation. Swedish authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, but quickly withdrew it, although they are still contemplating molestation charges. Assange has asserted that the accusations were part of a “smear campaign” against him, one orchestrated in part by the U.S. government.  More About: CIA, julian assange, twitter, U.S., U.S. government, wikileaks For more Tech coverage:
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Mac OS X is a popular platform for developers and designers of all stripes. Apple has always had strength in the graphic design market, but even before Apple’s shift to Intel processors in 2006, developers started migrating to Mac OS X.
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