Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “10 Great Geeky Tattoos [PICS]” |  |
- 10 Great Geeky Tattoos [PICS]
- Motorola Droid Gets Android Froyo
- 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools
- 3 Social Sites for Demonstrating Your Business Acumen
- Google Brings Your Search History to Your Phone
- Facebook Wins Facebook.Me Domain: New Product or Simple Redirect?
- Flickr Rolls Out Photo Overhaul to All Users
- Gmail Now Lets You Save Attachments to the Desktop via Drag-and-Drop
- Shopkick Kicks Off Automatic Checkins at Retail Locations
- Facebook Brings Android an All-New App
- CBS Shows Could Be Coming to Hulu Plus
- Security Exploit Can Give Hackers Control of Your iPhone or iPad [WARNING]
- Kanye West’s Tweets + The New Yorker Comics = Memetastic
- Is There Enough Flame in the BlackBerry Torch?
- HOW TO: Follow Mashable Staff Online
- 10 Free and Fun Twitter Bird Icons for your Website
- Find the Perfect Pair of Jeans with Old Navy’s “Booty Reader”
- Wikipedia Gets Catty in Legal Dispute Over F.B.I. Seal
- Add Facebook-like Interaction to Your Website’s Front Page
- Roller Coasters Get the Multi-touch 3D Treatment [VIDEO]
- 7 Days on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters
- “What It’s Really Like to Work in a Music Store” Guy Speaks [INTERVIEW]
- “FrontierVille” Adds a Full-On Double Rainbow, All the Way
- 15 Twitter Lists for C-Suite Execs to Follow
- Amazon Launches “Your Kindle Commercial Contest”
- A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Blogging
- $99 Color E-Reader and Social Platform to Challenge Amazon, B&N This Fall
- RIM and AT&T Unveil “The Best BlackBerry Device Ever”
- Google Enables Multiple Account Sign-In
- Morning Brief: New Blackberry, Kindle 3 Sold Out, iTunes for Cloud Delayed
| Posted: 04 Aug 2010 04:01 AM PDT      So, you love your tech and the web, but do you love it enough to permanently brand yourself with related imagery? We’ve found 10 people that do. From corporate logos to other geeky graphic references, these folks have turned their fandom into skin art. Have a browse through our gallery below and do let us know in the comments if you have any geeky tattoos, and why.
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| Motorola Droid Gets Android Froyo Posted: 04 Aug 2010 02:50 AM PDT   If you’re a “Fandroid” and an insomniac (or an early riser, for you East Coasters), you’re in luck. Verizon has started rolling out over-the-air updates for the Motorola Droid. Check your notifications bar from time to time, and have fun with Android 2.2, better known as Froyo! On Monday, we told you that Froyo had made it to Sprint Evo devices; we speculated that Droid Froyo updates would be coming later this week. We’re currently seeing upgrades rolling in on our own devices, and after downloads and double-checks, we can confirm that Froyo has indeed come to the Droid at long last. Here are a few features you can expect from your new OS:
Sadly, some of Froyo’s features won’t be seen on your Droid, though. The ability to use your phone as a WiFi hotspot was nixed by Verizon, saying the Droid doesn’t have the hardware to be a hotspot. We’re hoping the Droid 2 will have the needed hardware; multi-device, wireless connectivity was one of the more exciting features of the latest version of the Android OS. If you’ve got the OTA upgrade, download it and let us know what you think of your shiny, new operating system. We’ve been impressed with Froyo as a concept since Day One, calling it “a slap in Apple’s face” when we saw demos at Google I/O. What do you like best about Froyo on the Droid? Is there anything you miss or would change? Tell us all about it in the comments. More About: android, android froyo, droid, Froyo, Motorola, motorola droid, verizon For more Mobile coverage:
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| 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools Posted: 04 Aug 2010 02:01 AM PDT   We’ve brought you a few roundups of some pretty cool Twitter visualization tools in the past, and now we’re back with five more for your Twitter-lovin’ pleasure. The selection we’ve curated here concentrates on graphically presenting your followers, contacts and various snippets of information related to them. If you’re interested in seeing what your Twitter followers look like as a keyword cloud, on parade, or even on a mug, then have a look at the tools below and let us know your thoughts in the comments. 1. TwitterSheep This is a really simple, but super fun way to look at your Twitter followers. TwitterSheep generates a keyword cloud based on the text in your followers’ bios. To generate a cloud of your own (or indeed a cloud for anyone else’s Twitter name) just head on over to the site, enter the name and within minutes you can have your own keyword cloud that you can choose to tweet out to your “flock.” 2. 5k Twitter Browser Neuro Productions’ Flash-based Twitter browser is a spacey way to “see” connections on Twitter, something that is nearly impossible on the site itself. Start with any Twitter user’s name and the app will load up a circle of contacts, their thumbnail pic and latest tweet. Click on a contact in that circle and it will do the same, endlessly creating visual connections that people have made across the social networking site as long as you keep clicking. 3. ISParade Quite possibly the most fun you can have with Twitter, this Japanese app will create an animated parade of your Twitter contacts complete with, in our opinion, the “bounciest” music we’ve ever heard. If you haven’t seen this yet, then we really don’t want to spoil the fun of discovering it by saying too much more. Head on over and try it out now! 4. TweepsKey
This clever app uses good ol’ arithmetic to generate an intelligent graph of your Twitter followers, displaying “tweeps” as differently colored and sized dots across an X, Y and Z axis. Where the tweep is placed depends on the tweets a follower has tweeted and how many followers they have, while the size and color of the tweep relates to data on their followers. It may sound a little complicated, but it’s worth a go to see how your personal Twitterverse appears. 5. Crowded Ink “Friends” Mug Crowded Ink’s online mug-making tool takes all your Twitter follower’s thumbnail images and plasters them to the surface of a $15 Zazzle mug, offering you a fun way to display your very own little part of the Twitterverse. As well as generating a design for your username, you can easily do the same for others, so there’s some serious gift potential here for a Twitter-loving buddy. More Twitter Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, WoodenDinosaur More About: crowded ink, Neuro Productions, TweepsKey, twitter, Twitter accessories, twitter apps, twitter tools, twittersheep, Zazzle For more Social Media coverage:
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| 3 Social Sites for Demonstrating Your Business Acumen Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:08 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. In order to positively impact the bottom line through social media, small business owners should look beyond the sales pitch. Today’s savvy business owner maintains a social media presence among other online activities, in order to further brand affinity through their own online endeavors. Sites like Aardvark, Quora and LinkedIn cater to the business professional seeking out knowledge or educational resources. They are also great for demonstrating expertise in particular areas of interest. By being an active contributor in these communities, you can help make your name — and your company by association — synonymous with a particular field, category or topic. There’s a also a nice side effect of using these sites that extends beyond building up business acumen on the web. As a business owner, joining newer social sites will help to further introduce you to the influential inner circle of social media early adopters. Making digital connections with this crowd in the professional realm will have long-term business advantages. Aardvark Aardvark, a startup recently acquired by Google, lives by the philosophy that an answer to any of your burning questions is likely just a few degrees of separation away. The service lets users submit questions and then algorithmically works to find the best possible people in a user’s extended network to answer that question. The algorithm factors in friend relationships and self-selected topics of expertise to scour friends of friends to get the original inquirer a response with a quick turn-around time. It’s also platform-independent, so users can ask and tackle questions regardless of whether they’re in front of the computer or on the road. Using Aardvark to enhance your own reputation is fairly simple. You’ll want to visit the Profile section of the site to define the topics that you’d like to answer questions about. The more topics you add, the better Aardvark will get at suggesting additional topics that you might be able to answer questions about. Don’t make the mistake of overextending yourself — just pick the topics that you know well and that pertain to your industry or professional niche. If you make an active effort to answer questions in a timely fashion, you’ll soon develop a reputation as the go-to person for a particular subject matter. Plus, for every question you answer, you’re potentially exposing your business to future advocates. Quora Quora is an incredibly trendy startup right now. The site was co-founded by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo’s high profile has attracted the tech elite to join and use the site in droves. This creates for an atmosphere where smart people ask questions and receive educated answers from high profile people. The purpose of the site is fairly straightforward and obvious — it’s a question-and-answer site where anyone can ask a question on any topic, and anyone can answer the questions that interest them. As a Quora user, you can follow people and topics. If there’s a topic you think deserves its place on the site, you can create it. The site does a remarkable job at surfacing questions that pertain to your interests, as well as surfacing the best answers to questions by crowd-sourcing votes from users. The site also supports endorsements, so friends can endorse you as a subject matter expert for topics. Using Quora for establishing your own credibility on certain topics is as simple as diving into the site, following the topics in your area of expertise, following people you know or respect on a professional level, and then answering as many questions — with thoughtful answers — as possible.  LinkedIn is no longer a small emerging startup like the other two services mentioned on this list, so it will be harder to distinguish yourself among a large user-base. But, LinkedIn is a formidable site with a massive user-base all focused on professional betterment, and that makes it an ideal place for business-focused discussion that other users will appreciate and seek out. Use the Answers section to demonstrate knowledge in your areas of expertise by asking and answering questions in the categories that pertain to your business. LinkedIn takes an expert-focused approach to highlighting super user activity. It’s likely a super human feat to rank in the top five experts, but shooting for a few “Best Answers” per week is a reasonable goal that will go a long way towards helping you establish your business acumen. Small business owners should also consider creating or participating in one of the many active on-site groups. These discussion-driven dynamic entities offer another avenue for conversing with like-minded professional users. More Business Resources from Mashable
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke Reviews: Aardvark, Google, LinkedIn, iStockphoto More About: Aardvark, business, business acumen, Business Lists, linkedin, List, Lists, quora, small business For more Business coverage:
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| Google Brings Your Search History to Your Phone Posted: 03 Aug 2010 10:27 PM PDT   Google is making it easy for users to review their recent searches through the introduction of a new mobile search history feature on the Google Mobile homepage. The new Search History feature is accessible via the “History” link on the bottom of the homepage of Google’s mobile website. Clicking it will take you to a page containing search history not only from your phone, but your desktop searches as well. To use the feature, you need to have the “Save Searches” feature activated. The display of recent searches appears in reverse chronological order and includes a timestamp, as well as the results you viewed during the searches you have conducts. Search History also displays a mobile phone icon to help you distinguish between your mobile searches and your desktop searches. The most important part of the new Search History feature for mobile though is the inclusion of starred results in your history. Google is attempting to better integrate the mobile and desktop search experience. via the starring feature. With it, you essentially have a cloud-based bookmarking system that you can access from your phone, your home computer, and your workstation. Can you see yourself using this feature? Let us know in the comments.  Reviews: Google More About: Google, Google mobile, Google Mobile Search, google search, Search History For more Mobile coverage:
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| Facebook Wins Facebook.Me Domain: New Product or Simple Redirect? Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:56 PM PDT   Facebook has just captured the domain Facebook.me from a United Arab Emirates-based squatter, and the domain is already pointing users to Facebook.com. But we recall another Facebook-based application created by a Facebook staffer that bore the same name; this product would turn your Facebook profile into a Tumblr-esque mini-blog. Is it possible that Facebook’s sudden interest in this domain is a signal that this side project will become a larger, official part of Facebook’s offering? Or will the redirect remain just that for now? AllFacebook reports that the domain was snagged by Amjad Abbas of the United Arab Emirates during a 2008 .me-TLD land grab for $5,115. He also allegedly grabbed oracle.me, trump.me and other domains that were likely illegal and unethical for him to own. A World Intellectual Property Forum panelist wrote in a decision that, although Abbas claimed to have bought the domain and others to impress his friends, this claim was implausible and Abbas actually made this registration in bad faith in order to turn a significant profit by selling the domain to Facebook. However, the domain was turned over to Facebook without any money changing hands. A few months ago, Facebook designer Rob Goodlatte showed us an app he whipped up for an internal hackathon: Facebook-me.com. Originally called Facebook.Me, the app may have simply called the company’s attention to the fact that the domain was being squatted; it could have also inspired Facebook to reclaim the domain and roll out a mini-blog competitor. The app uses Facebook Connect to pull in your profile data and arrange it in a number of formats that feature different kinds of content; it also gives the rather institutional qualities of Facebook’s interface a bit more customization without completely turning over styling controls à la MySpace. Here’s an overview of how the app works: At the very least, the idea of a Facebook.me — whatever the domain ends up being used for — calls into question certain aspects of interface personalization and user control. Do you think Facebook, the site that singlehandedly saved us from autoplay profile tunes and glitter graphics, would ever relent and allow users to select less sterile styles for their profiles and data? Or is it as true figuratively as it is literally: “There is no ‘me’ in ‘Facebook.’” We’ve contacted Goodlatte and Facebook’s PR department for comment; we’ll let you know if we hear back from them. Reviews: Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr More About: facebook, facebook me, social media For more Social Media coverage:
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| Flickr Rolls Out Photo Overhaul to All Users Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:03 PM PDT   After three weeks of testing, Flickr is rolling out its massively redesigned photo pages to all of its users. The redesign overhaul focuses three key aspects of the photo page: the navigation, the context behind photos and the size of photos themselves. Flickr has increased the default view size of photos “by 28%” — that’s 640 pixels wide. You can also darken the background around photos so you can enjoy the images and nothing else. Navigation has been revamped as well. There are new navigation buttons above each photo to help you browse from one photo to the next. You can also switch between contexts via the new film strip in the sidebar. Finally, photos now carry the “who, what, when, where, and how” of each photo. The company uses this information to help create photostreams and to facilitate photosharing and storytelling via the website’s massive database of images.  According to Flickr, the goal of the redesign was to improve the display of photos and increase the interaction users have with any photo they discover. 800,000 users participated in the original testing of the redesigned photo pages. Now Flickr’s entire user base gets to play with these bigger and better photo pages. Reviews: Flickr More About: flickr, News, photo, photography, redesign, Yahoo For more Social Media coverage:
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| Gmail Now Lets You Save Attachments to the Desktop via Drag-and-Drop Posted: 03 Aug 2010 07:29 PM PDT   Saving dozens of e-mail file attachments to your computer just became a hell of a lot easier. Google has added a new feature to Gmail: the ability to save file attachments by simply dragging-and-dropping them onto the desktop. If you hover over the file icon or the “Download” link for any attachment, you’ll notice the new text prompting you to drag the file to your desktop to save. We just tried out the new feature, and we have to tell you: it’s really as simple as it sounds. There is one caveat to saving file attachments via drag-and-drop, though: the feature is only available in Google Chrome.  Google has been adding more drag-and-drop functionality to Gmail in recent months. Back in April, Google launched the ability to add attachments to e-mails via drag-and-drop. In May, Google gave Gmail users the ability to add images to emails via drag-an-drop. Reviews: Gmail, Google, Google Chrome More About: drag-and-drop, e-mail, gmail, Google For more Social Media coverage:
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| Shopkick Kicks Off Automatic Checkins at Retail Locations Posted: 03 Aug 2010 06:54 PM PDT   Shopkick is a dream come true for location app junkies: A mobile app that will know your whereabouts and will automatically check you in once you’ve arrived at a given location. It’s also a great boon for brands. This kind of auto-checkin eliminates cheating and allows companies and brands to target and reward the true faithful with points and real-world rewards. The service uses Foursquare’s API, and today it announced a partnership with Best Buy and upcoming deals with Macy’s and other retailers. Shopkick’s Signal technology doesn’t require users to check in, and it verifies that the user is actually, physically present in a retail location before unlocking any promotional perks. Users can get access to gift cards, movies, music downloads, gadgets and more with their actions. One of the rewards for actions, which include walk-ins and item-scans, is a virtual currency called “kickbucks.” These units can be redeemed for Facebook Credits, real-world cash credit at partner stores and more. In addition to kickbucks, users can collect sets of bonuses at different locations. Users can redeem any in-app goodies by giving their mobile number to a store clerk. In essence, the app attempts to create an interactive, social experience within a shopping trip. Here’s a demo of how the app works: The app isn’t available yet but will be coming soon to the iPhone. Generally speaking, we try to avoid covering private beta apps or things our readers can’t immediately use, but we wanted to tell you about Shopkick for two important reasons. The first is that we find auto-checkin technology both fascinating and potentially compromising (particularly for the more forgetful among us who might not remember to turn the app off when we wish to be off the grid). If you’d like to test drive a similar technology from the creators of Shopkick’s retail-focused app, check out CauseWorld, which is available now in the App Store and Android Market. The second is that this startup has attracted an obscene amount of investor attention over the past few months. The company’s $5 million series A (split between two increments of $2.5 in July 2009 and January 2010) was swiftly followed up $15 million series B last month. Both rounds were led by Kleiner Perkins, and the latter was augmented by funding from Greylock (Series A individual investor Reid Hoffman joined Greylock in 2009). If investors feel an unlaunched mobile app is worth $20 million out of the gate, we feel that app deserves some scrutiny. Go to Shopkick’s website to sign up for e-mail notifications when the app is released. The iPhone app should be out by the end of August, and an Android application will come out later this fall. Reviews: Android, Android Market, App Store More About: api, foursquare, lbs, location, MARKETING, shopkick For more Tech coverage:
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| Facebook Brings Android an All-New App Posted: 03 Aug 2010 05:41 PM PDT   Praise the lord and pass the Android! Facebook’s once features-bereft mobile application for the #2 mobile operating system has just been updated, and it’s worlds better than the original. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg downloaded the Facebook for Android app for his personal use last week, we speculated that a few changes might be in the works for what we dubbed the “redheaded stepchild” of Facebook’s mobile offerings. We couldn’t have imagined such a quick turnaround, however; clearly, this update has been quite some time in development. If the update isn’t showing up in your notifications bar, just search for “Facebook” in the Android Gallery and reinstall the official app. The home screen now shows messages, notifications and friend requests separately. On the bottom of the home screen, you can see a swipe-to-scroll slideshow of your friends’ recent picture uploads. Notifications, which comprised the greatest pain point for users we polled last week, now appear in a slide-up bar along the bottom of the screen, similar to the Android OS’s slide-down bar for notifications at the top of the screen. While the Notifications bar doesn’t seem to be working quite smoothly with the rest of the app yet (it keeps launching Facebook’s mobile touch site), we hope an upcoming software update will address this issue soon. And we’re grateful and slightly ecstatic to report that you no longer have to navigate out of the app to Facebook’s mobile site to do any normal Facebook actions, such as approve a friend request, view a video, RSVP to an event or respond to a message. You’ll use your device’s browser when you click through to shared links, but getting to those links is much easier now. You click through to a screen showing your friend’s post with the link in question, then you tap on the link itself to be redirected. It’s a much better interface than the app’s previous iteration. Also, “likes,” Facebook search and mobile photo uploads are now as easy as a single touchscreen-tap in most cases, and the overall navigation and interface have gained a few new touches that are subtle but elegant and welcome.
We still aren’t able to use Facebook Chat from our Android phone (iPhone users have had this feature for some time). These upgrades are the first significant attention Facebook has paid to its Android app since its launch last fall. All things considered, we’re very happy with the improvements. Facebook for Android has become a pleasure to use rather than the out-and-out hassle it was before. We’re sure there are still improvements to be made — Facebook Chat is one feature that comes to mind immediately. And we’d like the home screen to rotate to a landscape orientation when the phone is rotated, too. Download the app for yourself, and let us know in the comments what you love, what you hate, and what you think could use improvement. Reviews: Android, Facebook More About: android, facebook, Google, Mobile 2.0, trending For more Mobile coverage:
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| CBS Shows Could Be Coming to Hulu Plus Posted: 03 Aug 2010 04:53 PM PDT   CBS is the only major broadcast network that doesn’t stream any of its shows on Hulu, but that could change in a jiffy; CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves revealed this week that the network is talking to Hulu about offering content for the site’s subscription-based service, Hulu Plus. A Reuters article quotes Moonves as saying, “Are we having discussions with the Hulu subscription service? Yes we are.” CBS was hesitant to sign on with Hulu in the past because it wants to maintain control over how its content appears on the Internet. The subscription model offered by the new Hulu Plus service is more attractive to the network, Moonves says, because the network can participate “without hurting the mother ship.” Because CBS is committed to the strategy of pulling in revenue from as many sources as possible, the deal probably would not spell the end of CBS’s competing TV.com website, any more than it does the proprietary web video sites that each network runs at its own domain. However, we don’t know what kinds of exclusivity demands Hulu will make, so figuring out an arrangement that preserves both sites might be part of the negotiations. CBS is home to a wide range of programming, including CSI, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, plus classic series like the original Star Trek. It has been less aggressive in promoting those shows online than ABC or NBC, however. It only streams one or two episodes at a time for some shows. Reviews: Hulu, Internet More About: cbs, hulu, hulu plus, streaming video, television, tv, tv.com, video For more Web Video coverage:
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| Security Exploit Can Give Hackers Control of Your iPhone or iPad [WARNING] Posted: 03 Aug 2010 03:58 PM PDT   By just loading a PDF file on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you could be handing over complete access to your device in what could quickly become a major security breach. The same technique used in the first web-based Jailbreak for iPhone can be utilized by hackers to seize control of your phone via a program that can be delivered via PDF to any iOS device running 3.1.2 or higher, according Gizmodo and CNET. Here’s how it works: whenever a user loads a PDF document, it has to load the fonts associated with it. A font can be inserted into the PDF containing a program that will cause a stack overflow. The result is that the program can pass the iPhone’s security defenses and then break out of its protective sandbox to deal critical damage to your phone. This exploit is how JailbreakMe is able to jailbreak the iPhone just by visiting the website and sliding the “Slide to Jailbreak” button. While JailbreakMe may be benign, hackers could reverse-engineer JailbreakMe’s exploit for their own nefarious purposes. Because this exploit can be launched just by clicking a link, it could quickly become very dangerous if Apple doesn’t release a new version of iOS with the fix soon. For now, check the links you open and don’t open PDFs unless they’re from sources you completely trust. More About: iOS, iOS 4, iphone, iphone 4, pdf, security, security breach, warning For more Apple coverage:
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| Kanye West’s Tweets + The New Yorker Comics = Memetastic Posted: 03 Aug 2010 03:26 PM PDT via Josh Cagan  via Josh Cagan via Josh Cagan via Josh Cagan via JimmyJAquino via theonetruebix via Josh Cagan via paulandstorm When Kanye West started tweeting last week, there was an audible “who cares?”-tinged drone rumbling through the blogosphere. And then people started realizing that his 140-character sentiments were, well, kinda funny. Now, however, Mr. Imma Let You Finish has finally been inducted into the ranks of the social media elite. How? Well, someone has gone and made a meme around him. #kanyenewyorkertweets is the name o’ the meme, and it’s pretty self-explanatory: New Yorker cartoons captioned with West’s tweets. This particular piece of virality was started by comedy duo Paul and Storm (who also came up with the Star Wars-meets-Wikileaks hashtag, #wookieleaks/#wookieeleaks), with mash-ups created by writer Josh Cagan. Still, more Twitter users have gotten in on the matching game as well. Urlesque interviewed Paul Sabourin — one half of Paul and Storm — today, and asked him what his inspiration for the meme was: “The pretentious explanation: Kanye’s tweets are more or less raw id (unfiltered, portraying base emotions and simple thoughts) and New Yorker cartoons are almost entirely superego (carefully considered, ‘quiet’ presentation),” Sabourin said. “The simple explanation: it just struck me as funny at 3 a.m. Luckily, unlike most 3 a.m. inspirations, this one actually seems to hold up.” And hold up it does. Hell, even The New Yorker has lauded the duo for their efforts. Check out a gallery of a few of our favorite above, and let us know if you’ve ventured a pairing. – by Brenna Ehrlich More About: humor, kanye west, Meme, new yorker, pop culture, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Is There Enough Flame in the BlackBerry Torch? Posted: 03 Aug 2010 03:09 PM PDT   Earlier today, RIM introduced the BlackBerry Torch, the company’s first smartphone to ship with BlackBerry OS 6 and perhaps more importantly RIM’s attempt to remind the world that it’s still a big player in the smartphone market. We think it’s interesting that RIM chose to name its newest BlackBerry the “Torch” because what the BlackBerry brand has really been lacking over the last few years is heat. That is, while the iPhone and Android devices have generated tons of buzz and taken turns at being the hottest tech item of the moment, the BlackBerry has remained relatively cold. It’s clear that RIM recognizes that the BlackBerry brand doesn’t have the cachet and appeal that it once did and its betting that its new OS and slate of new devices will help turn things around. There’s a lot to like about BlackBerry OS 6.0 and the BlackBerry Torch in general. The new form factor stays consistent with what BlackBerry users already know, but offers a full touch screen with a slide out keyboard. We think that taking design cues from the Palm Pre is a good thing because the rest of the smartphone world has embraced touch with a vengeance and the SureType keyboards on the BlackBerry Storm simply didn’t cut it. However, aside from physical features, we can’t help but be a little disappointed with the actual specs of the phone. Yes, it has a 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi support for 802.11n and more memory than previous devices, but the processor is still slow in comparison to the competition and the screen size and resolution seem downright trite by 2010 standards. Still, the BlackBerry has never been about being the flashiest, fastest, latest or greatest device. Ultimately, if the device and OS can remain snappy for users, the specs don’t matter. Enough to Stop the Bleeding Over the last few years, I’ve watched my group of friends slowly but surely transition from being BlackBerry obsessed to card-carrying iPhone or Android users. I went through the same transition myself, finally switching to an iPhone last year after nearly 5 years with the BlackBerry. Why are users jumping ship? Because frankly, the BlackBerry hasn’t kept up. The e-mail and text experience might still be the best in the business, but more and more mobile usage is taking place in the browser, not the inbox. Fortunately, BlackBerry OS 6 includes a new WebKit-based web browser, a much-needed improvement. Charles Golvin, a mobile analyst for Forrester Research, commented on the new device, “the Torch and OS6 put Research In Motion on firm competitive ground against Apple’s iPhone and the Android devices, with a touch screen plus the BlackBerry keyboard.” In other words, this is a step in the right direction to keep current BlackBerry fans sated. However, existing users is only one part of the equation. While we doubt that even RIM actually believes that the latest OS is enough to win over Android or iPhone users, there is another arguably more important audience to tap: Non-smartphone users. There are still millions upon millions of non-smartphone users and these users should be the ones that RIM targets. The biggest draw to a platform for consumers — aside from carrier — is largely becoming all about the number of available applications. Hooking Developers is Key
Over the last year, RIM has improved its developer outreach, making it easier for developers to get started, making more iterations to the platform and making improvements to the BlackBerry App World. Perhaps more than OS 6 itself, the new developer announcements that RIM made at today’s event hold the most potential. The developer platform has been updated with some much needed enhancements; payment, advertising and analytic options are more robust and finding and installing apps is now easier than before. These are important changes. But are they enough? As Golvin opines, “The key question is whether RIM can convince developers to prioritize this new platform above the competition. RIM has a strong appeal for developers because of the size of their installed base. With a new platform that base is reset to zero so developers will apply different criteria to their decision on prioritizing BlackBerry vs iPhone, Android, etc. Having addressed their shortcomings in OS and UI, this is the huge challenge for RIM.”" Golvin touches on the double-edged sword of the new developer platform features: backward compatibility. Although older apps will run on BlackBerry 6, the newest apps built for BlackBerry 6 devices won’t run on older versions of the software. That means that to take advantage of the better advertising APIs and other niceties, developers will need to target newer devices. For new developers coming in, that likely won’t be much of a problem. The harder part is going to be for existing BlackBerry developers. After all, if you have to refactor you applications for essentially a brand new audience, would it make more sense to move to a different platform like iOS or Android? This problem is by no means unique to BlackBerry. Windows Phone 7 is going to face the exact same problems. Because it is a brand new starting point from Windows Mobile 6.5, apps have to be rewritten and the userbase is essentially being reset. The biggest problem that many developers face is choosing what mobile platform to support — this is why it’s crucial that RIM continue to invest in developer relations and make its platform as attractive as possible. We’re Just at the BeginningWe think that anyone that writes off BlackBerry as old news is being a bit naive — the market is much too young and RIM has a loyal userbase and lot of smart people working behind the scenes. Still, we can’t help but feel like all this initial OS release and phone announcement does is catch RIM up to where the competition has been for the last two years. The needle hasn’t been moved further. For BlackBerry to really come back with early adopters, RIM needs to push out innovations and improvements with greater speed and agility than they have in the past. Ultimately, we think that the BlackBerry Torch is a step in the right direction. BlackBerry loyalists, what do you think of the BlackBerry Torch? Let us know! Reviews: Android, Windows Phone 7, iPhone More About: blackberry, blackberry torch, RIM For more Mobile coverage:
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| HOW TO: Follow Mashable Staff Online Posted: 03 Aug 2010 02:38 PM PDT There are dozens of ways to keep up with Mashable content: Twitter, RSS, Facebook, iPhone app [iTunes link], fill in the blank. We try to meet our readers where they are at and create a place where conversation can take place. Now we want to give you glimpse behind-the-scenes of Mashable and its staff. We’re launching a new Tumblr account, Mashable HQ, an addition to our main account. We’re also becoming more active on StumbleUpon, where we will showcase editors’ picks of news we’re covering and trending stories. On TumblrMashable HQ is a place for our readers to see what we’re up to at the office, ask us questions, and submit social media finds and goodies. We want this to be a place our readers and the Tumblr community can interact and connect with one another. It’s a place for transparent access into Mashable headquarters. Read more about the Mashable HQ Tumblr here.   On TwitterWe’ve recently launched several accounts to give you an inside look into Mashable, ask us questions and keep up on what we’re up to.
On StumbleUponStumbleUpon is a great place to discover, save and review interesting stories. You can follow us on StumbleUpon to peruse editors’ picks of stories to read on Mashable, as well as stories that are currently trending.  On FoursquareWe’ve teamed up with Foursquare to provide insider tips and recommendations for our readers. From New York City to Silicon Valley, our reporters and editors offer tips on the headquarters of companies like Twitter and places to eat, like Mizu Sushi.  On LinkedInIf you’re interested in keeping track of changes within our company, our Linkedin Company profile can keep you in the loop. Follow us there and you’ll be updated on promotions taking place, connect with our staff professionally and learn about new hires. You can also join the Fans of Mashable group on LinkedIn for discussions about news and trends in the social media and tech space, connect with tech enthusiasts, and learn about new jobs.  Reviews: LinkedIn, Mashable, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Twitter More About: foursquare, linkedin, mashable, mashable staff, stumbleupon, tumblr, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| 10 Free and Fun Twitter Bird Icons for your Website Posted: 03 Aug 2010 02:16 PM PDT   Everyone loves Twitter’s little blue bird, unless of course they’re ornithophobic, which would pretty much make the Twittersphere hell on earth. But finding the right bird icon for your site can be a challenge, especially if your budget is bird seed. We’ve had lots of fun pulling together a gallery of 10 fab, freebie Twitter bird-themed icons, so click through to view, and be sure to check the terms of use for each set before you download. Although all are available for free, some are only for non-commercial use.
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| Find the Perfect Pair of Jeans with Old Navy’s “Booty Reader” Posted: 03 Aug 2010 01:47 PM PDT   From the sophomoric cauldrons of humor at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, the same agency that brought Burger King’s Shower Babe and the Whopper Sacrifice campaign to the Internet, comes Old Navy’s “Booty Reader” web application, which asks women to upload a shot of their derrières to find the most suitable pair of Old Navy jeans. Visitors to the microsite are prompted to choose three scenarios in which they would wear the jeans they’re looking for (on a date, lounging at home, to the office on a Casual Friday, etc.), and then to use a web cam or photo so that the app can gauge their body shape. Women who are too uncomfortable (or lazy) to use a photo can choose diagrams to inform the app about their proportions. Although hundreds upon hundreds of branded apps and magazine articles have taken consumers through the same jeans-fitting process, Old Navy’s app was named in such a way that it is guaranteed to attract press without generating controversy, unlike American Apparel’s Best Bottom campaign [Warning: Explicit]; according to Adweek, the Booty Reader was designed by a team of female creative directors for female shoppers. Nevertheless, we question whether the app is really “on brand” — both the company’s brick-and-mortar and online stores emphasize its offerings for plus-size and pregnant women, as well as men, infants and children. How many Old Navy shoppers do you know use the word “booty” — or want to engage with a web application with that word in its name? What do you think of the app? Does it attract the kind of attention that is right for the brand? More About: advertising, booty reader, fashion, MARKETING, old navy, profile names, web app For more Entertainment coverage:
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| Wikipedia Gets Catty in Legal Dispute Over F.B.I. Seal Posted: 03 Aug 2010 01:03 PM PDT   The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) demanded that Wikipedia remove the bureau’s seal from its encyclopedia entry, enticing the site’s lawyer to shoot back with a snarky missive meant to school the FBI on both the letter and spirit of the law. The New York Times posted PDF documents of the FBI’s takedown request [PDF] and Wikipedia General Counsel Mike Godwin’s bold and catty reply [PDF]. The FBI said the Wikimedia Foundation is breaking the law by showing the bureau’s seal in the FBI entry on its website, and that the seal is primarily intended as a means of identification for FBI representatives. Godwin countered by accusing the FBI’s Deputy General Counsel David C. Larson of selectively omitting words from the supposedly applicable law. Specifically, he said that the letter of the law applies only to things similar to badges, and the spirit of the law is simply to prevent people from posing as government authorities — something Wikipedia is clearly not doing. He also implied that the FBI is trying to revise the law because of its hawkish concern that people will rip the image from the site and use it for nefarious purposes. He assured Larson that the Wikimedia Foundation is prepared to go to court to defend its use of the seal if that’s what it takes. Godwin’s letter is humorous for its directness, but it’s also funny for being passive-aggressive. For example, he says:
Godwin is already famous as the creator of Godwin’s Law, which states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1,” so this is definitely in-character for him. Do you think Wikipedia is right to deny the FBI’s request? Reviews: Wikipedia More About: badge, FBI, law, lawyer, legal, michael godwin, seal, takedown, wiki, wikimedia foundation, wikipedia For more Social Media coverage:
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| Add Facebook-like Interaction to Your Website’s Front Page Posted: 03 Aug 2010 12:47 PM PDT   The real-time comment and reaction platform Echo has just introduced a new feature for its Pro customers called the Echo River. The new product lets traditional publishers take a Facebook-like approach to publishing on their home pages, upon which new posts and comments appear in real time. This is an extension of the real-time comment widget that Echo released last month, except instead of just aggregating comments from across the web, it also shows conversations and updates as they are happening on the main section of a site. This means that users can see when new content is pushed out without having to hit “refresh.” Comments and social reactions to a post will also appear in-line and in real time. One of the hallmark features of Facebook’s News Feed is that updates, as well as comments and reactions to those updates, appear in real time. This makes it super easy for users to follow what’s going on and also to see what others are saying about a post or blurb. The Echo River is a play at bringing that sort of experience to more traditional publishers without requiring a ton of custom coding. You can see this demo page to get an idea of what the Echo River looks like. It’s great to be able to when new posts are published alongside real-time comments and reactions from around the web. Works with Other Comment SystemsOne feature we really like about Echo River is that it can work on sites that don’t use the Echo commenting platform. Echo-powered comments and reactions will obviously work best with the system, but Echo River also supports Disqus, Intense Debate and standard WordPress comments. Echo put together a demo featuring the Mashable.com homepage with Echo River integratation. You can see the result in the screenshot below. Keep in mind that the latest posts and comments are aggregated with the stream in real time, even though we use Disqus as our commenting platform.  The new product reinforces Echo’s transition from a commenting system to a real-time reaction platform. Being compatible with other systems also opens up the potential customer base for the Echo Pro product. Just like with Echo Recent Comments, Echo River can be customized to display comments on the site, tweets to Twitter, status updates to Facebook, and/or remarks on Digg and other social sites. Saad told me that Echo is actively working on bringing better Facebook integration to the service as well. Do you like to see real-time updates and comments on the home page of your favorite news sites and blogs? [img credit: djfoobarmatt] Reviews: Digg, Disqus, Facebook, Intense Debate, Mashable, Twitter, WordPress More About: comments, echo, echo river, facebook, real-time comments For more Social Media coverage:
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| Roller Coasters Get the Multi-touch 3D Treatment [VIDEO] Posted: 03 Aug 2010 12:08 PM PDT   After conquering the big screen, small screen and handheld screen, 3D technology is now going for the jugular: roller coasters. The new Space Fantasy attraction at Universal Studios Japan is the first big play to bring immersive 3D tracking and multi-touch technology to theme park rides. Powered by technology created by GestureTek, Space Fantasy promises to be the ultimate ride experience. In a nutshell, imagine Microsoft Natal fused with 3D. Before the ride starts, visitors line up next to an 85-foot, motion-driven “Harmony Wall.” The wall has 22 3D cameras and 13 projections systems integrated into the Wall, all powered by 16 rack-mounded quad core computers. This lets the system track the heads of up to 66 guests and 132 hands. The gestures and movements individuals make affect the entire experience. Once on the ride, the GestureTek software and camera technology lets visitors directly interact and control the content on the screens around them. Users can alter the images that are displayed around them just by gesturing their arms or making movements with their hands.  As visitors travel up a 98-foot, in-ride tunnel, riders can “collect” special “Stardust Clouds” from the interactive LED displays on the sides to help re-energize the sun (the ultimate goal of the ride). All of the activity in the tunnel takes place without having to use touch panels or other controls; it just requires hand and arm movements that are tracked by the camera system. Check out this video to get a look at what Space Fantasy is all about: Frankly, we can’t wait for some of this technology to hit American theme parks because it looks just incredible. Perhaps immersive 3D rides could reinvigorate the theme park industry in the same way that 3D films have revived slumping U.S. box office sales. Would 3D gesture and camera technology inspire you to re-explore theme parks? More About: 3D, 3d tech, future tech, gesturetek, rides, roller coasters, theme parks For more Tech coverage:
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| 7 Days on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters Posted: 03 Aug 2010 11:36 AM PDT   Many people use Craigslist to find roommates, cheap furniture, used cars or part-time jobs. But there’s another function: Sex. I decided to dive into Craigslist’s “Casual Encounters” — a section made for no-strings hookups — to see if any of what I assumed about that virtual place was true. Is it populated entirely by perverted sexual deviants, serial killers, prostitutes and scammers as rumors insist? Or can two regular people really make the connection that the section’s name suggests? I should admit that I had no intention to actually hook up with someone, should the opportunity arise, if for no other reason than it would be inappropriate and manipulative to an unwitting partner to do so and write about it. But it’s not a stretch to say that even if you abstain from the goal, spending a week on Casual Encounters can teach you a lot about human beings and how the web has changed how we pursue one of our most essential and important desires. It goes without saying that the content of this article is not intended for children or those made uncomfortable by such topics. But if you’re interested, read on for the story of my seven days on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters — my failures, near misses, discoveries, insights and successes. Following that, I interviewed two women to learn how they used the site successfully for their own fulfillment. The ExperimentI began with a listing announcing myself to the women of my city. Each day I tried a different approach to see what would be most effective, though I never lied or posted fake photographs. One day my message was intended to be sweet and normal; I suggested starting with drinks and fun conversation to see if we had chemistry, then going back to my place to cuddle on the couch with a movie and see where that led. Another day, I described it as a rebound. In yet another, I explicitly detailed sexual activities and used very aggressive language. Ultimately, only the “sweet and normal” was successful, even though very few posts by women had that same tone (more on that later). I received about a half-dozen responses each day. Most were scams, some were men, some were prostitutes, and just one was legit. Barking Up the Wrong TreeAll the responses I got from real people on my first day weren’t from women — they were from men. I made it very clear in my post that I was only interested in women, but a large number of men chose to ignore that. They all offered oral sex. I responded to them politely, saying, “Just interested in women, but thanks for the offer! Have a good one.” Most didn’t write back after that. One responded: “Really man, can be cool and relaxing.” I began to suspect that no women actually used the site. The stereotype is that women are interested in relationships, and that only men would be interested in totally casual sex, right? We know that’s not true, though. In fact, I was inspired to write this article when a friend told me many of her female friends had owned up to using it. But where were they? I was only getting messages from gay or bisexual men! An Army of Scammers Over the next couple of days, I actually received a lot of posts from women. Or at least, they said they were women. To be honest, I doubted the veracity of the claims. It didn’t take long to realize that almost all the replies I received were scams. The situation is so severe on Craigslist Casual Encounters that posts by real women who are actually seeking hook-ups are often flagged for removal at the slightest cause for suspicion. The most common scams are “safe dating” websites. An alleged woman will write a man saying she’s interested, but that because of the Craigslist-based serial killers and rapists in the news, she needs some extra assurance that it’s safe. If you follow the link she provides, the website asks you for your credit card number — y’know, so it can do a background check to make sure you’re not a criminal. Right. My favorite scam: One individual tried to get me to buy him or her virtual currency in online games like MapleStory before agreeing to hand over contact information. Yeah, right — moving on! Taking InitiativeWhat little luck I’d had so far. The week was half over and I hadn’t had a single bite. I decided I would have to take the initiative, so in addition to posting my own ads, I started responding to every ad from any woman who seemed at all interesting. I cast a wide net in my searches, looking up posts by straight or bisexual women between the ages of 18 and 35 who lived anywhere in Chicagoland — a large metropolitan area that’s home to close to five million females. Most of the women wanted something very specific they couldn’t find in their normal lives: Someone to help play out a particular fantasy, someone vastly older than them or someone of another race. Very few of the women who were advertising seemed to be looking for anything I would consider a “normal encounter.” Nevertheless, I tailored each response to whatever they were looking for. I typically wrote two or three paragraph replies and matched the tone of their own messages, then attached a couple of tasteful photos of myself. I didn’t get a single reply from an actual prospect this way. It turned out that most of the ads were fakes from scammers, and quite a few fell into another category all together. Love |
| “What It’s Really Like to Work in a Music Store” Guy Speaks [INTERVIEW] Posted: 03 Aug 2010 10:37 AM PDT   Update: Eric has enabled embedding on his videos once more; he disabled the function recently. We’ve embedded a video from his YouTube channel below. According to Andy Warhol, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes — a concept that has gelled even more with the advent of the Internet. Well, yesterday a humble music store employee got his three-times-five when a series of vids he made called “What it’s really like to work in a music store” suddenly started popping up on video blogs all over the web. Struck by the simple comedy of the series — which features YouTube user averyellis quietly reacting to patrons “jammin’” on instruments and testing out the wares — and fascinated by its sudden uptick in popularity, we contacted averyellis to find out what the deal is. Check out our Q&A with him below:
Check out one of Eric’s vids below: Reviews: Internet More About: humor, music, pop culture, viral video, youtube For more Web Video coverage:
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| “FrontierVille” Adds a Full-On Double Rainbow, All the Way Posted: 03 Aug 2010 10:20 AM PDT   FrontierVille, the new game from the makers of FarmVille, now has a “Double Rainbow” decoration that you can purchase using in-game currency. The item is based on the viral video hit of the same name, which became an Internet meme just a few weeks ago. The viral video (we’ve embedded it below) has YouTube user Hungrybear9562 a.k.a Paul Vasquez marveling at the majesty of a pair of rainbows over Yosemite National Park, near his home. He taped the rainbow for three-and-a-half minutes while weeping and saying, “Oh my God, it’s full on double rainbow all the way across the sky. Oh God, what does this mean?” When you move your mouse over the Double Rainbow decoration in FrontierVille, you’ll see the message “Double rainbow, full on, all the way! So intense! What does it mean?!” The item costs 25 horseshoes and grants its buyer 150 experience points. It was added yesterday as part of FrontierVille’s Hay Fever Event, which added 15 new decorations in all. Just yesterday we wrote that Facebook jumped into the Internet meme fray by including an Easter Egg that displays the famous Rickroll video when you ask the question, “How is babby formed?” a reference to an earlier meme. We dig it when web apps include these inside jokes. Do you? The Video[via Buzzfeed] Reviews: Double, Facebook, Internet, YouTube More About: double-rainbow, facebook, frontierville, gaming, Meme, online games, social games, video, video games, youtube, Zynga For more Entertainment coverage:
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| 15 Twitter Lists for C-Suite Execs to Follow Posted: 03 Aug 2010 10:04 AM PDT
With the increase in C-level executives joining and taking part in social networks across the Internet, there are bound to be questions. While Twitter is one of the simplest social media tools out there, Lists are one of the more complicated features for new tweeters to comprehend. We recommend using tools like TLists, Listorious and TweetMeme Lists to scope out and follow Lists of interest. To get you started or to beef up your current List inventory, here are 15 Twitter Lists for C-suite executives to follow, separated into categories for CEOs, CMOs, CIOs and CTOs, and CFOs. Share your favorites in the comments below. Twitter Lists for CEOsFor the latest business, management and leadership tweets, here are three Twitter Lists for CEOs to follow:
Twitter Lists for CMOsTo stay up-to-date on the latest marketing and advertising trends and news, here are four Twitter Lists that CMOs should follow:
Twitter Lists for CTOs & CIOsAmidst the sea of tech-related Twitter Lists, there are quite a few gems worth checking. Here are some of our top picks for technology Lists that CTOs and CIOs may find of interest:
For a more comprehensive look at tech-driven Twitter Lists, check out Barb Dybwad’s recommendations for 10 Twitter Lists for IT pros to follow. Twitter Lists for CFOsCFOs need the most current information in order to smoothly operate their company. Here are three lists that can help keep CFOs privy to the latest financial news, analysis and information:
These 15 Twitter Lists for C-suite executives are great starters or additions to any Twitter List collection. Let us know which Lists you are following to stay up on current events, trends, news and analysis in your industry in the comments below. Series supported by Awareness  Awareness builds social marketing software for marketers leveraging multiple social channels to engage with customers, build their brand, and increase revenues. Built upon Awareness' expertise deploying more than 200 communities and social media projects for the world's biggest brands including Sony, JetBlue, Kodak, ASOS.com and AIRMiles, The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is a leading enterprise-grade application for marketers struggling with the social media chaos of managing multiple social channels. With the Awareness Social Marketing Hub, marketers are now able to publish, manage and measure across all their social channels from one central location using advanced built-in permissioning, workflow and audit controls. More Business Resources from Mashable:
Reviews: Internet, Twitter, list, video More About: business, ceo, CFO, CIO, CMO, CTO, small business, social media for business leaders series, startups, twitter, twitter list, Twitter Lists For more Business coverage:
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| Amazon Launches “Your Kindle Commercial Contest” Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:41 AM PDT   The Amazon Kindle has a new look, and the online retailer is launching another edition of its “Your Kindle Commercial Contest” in an effort to find the next fan-made ad for the e-reader. When Amazon hosted this same contest last year, Angela Kohler and Ithyle Griffiths were the victors for their stop-animation spot. "Every day we're more and more impressed with our customers' ideas and creativity," Director of Advertising Rich Williams said in a post about the contest. “Last year's 'Your Amazon Ad Contest' was so successful that we ended up running the winning commercial as a part of our holiday TV campaign and it was seen by over 100 million people across the United States.” Kohler and Griffiths even got to create more ads for Amazon. (See their winning entry below): Now Amazon is offering another crop of filmmakers a shot at fame and fortune — or, rather, $15,000 in Amazon gift cards. The premise is simple: Create a 30-second spot that would impel consumers to purchase the device, inform them about apps and/or elucidate the features of the new Kindle. Submit said video via Amazon’s website between now and September 3, and hold tight until September 20, when the winner will be revealed. If you recall, the Kindle 3 came out last week among a flurry of interest — it’s smaller, faster and cheaper than previous versions. Furthermore, it’s already sold out in the pre-order stage. Despite the Kindle’s apparent ability to sell itself (and/or supply issues), it will be interesting to see what this year’s commercial-making efforts will yield. More About: amazon, Film, Kindle, kindle 3, pop culture, video, web video For more Web Video coverage:
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| A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Blogging Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:24 AM PDT
Today’s blogosphere is larger and more diverse than it was five years ago, and yet only a few blogs — the so-called “A-listers” — have risen to a place of dominance in the new media landscape. The blogosphere of 2010 is also powered in many ways by social media, something that barely existed five years ago, and was likely an afterthought to most hobbyist bloggers of the day. How did we get from there to here? What follows is a look back at the last five years in the blogosphere. Then and NowIn July 2005, by penning his first post on this site, Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore was joining a blogging movement that had already swelled to over 14 million blogs, and was growing at a rate of 80,000 per day. Yet, while most of those bloggers were of the journaling variety, Mashable was entering an evolving blogosphere. While 2005 was not the first year in which any one person made a living at blogging, it does mark a number of important milestones in the transition of the blogosphere as a place of primarily random thoughts and banalities to one that now supports a growing number of burgeoning media empires. Blogging has entered the mainstream consciousness as a legitimate source of media, likely due to the sheer number of blogs on the Internet today (133 million and counting), even though the vast majority of blogs are still likely personal. According to the 2009 State of the Blogosphere report by Technorati, professional bloggers are blogging more than ever, while hobbyists are blogging less. One reason for that, as we’ll explore, might be the rise of social media. Blogging as a Business In February of 2005, blogger Jason Kottke decided to quit his job and move from a hobbyist to a full-time blogger. Though his experiment ultimately failed, Kottke’s bold move was in many ways indicative of a emerging blogging mentality that was to become more common over the next five years: Treating the blog as a startup enterprise. Though large blogs like Boing Boing and DailyKos were already gaining influence compared to their mainstream media counterparts, three events in particular in 2005 helped legitimize blogs as viable business endeavors. First, Arianna Huffington launched The Huffington Post with a $2.5 million seed investment. Since then, the site has become the most popular blog on the Internet and a leading voice in American politics, with millions of contributors, both paid and unpaid. Furthermore, it has taken in about $37 million in venture capital funding. Of course, The Huffington Post’s rise to the top was not instant, but the site’s story is one that has affirmed the blog’s rightful place in the media business pantheon. The second major event of 2005 was AOL’s purchase of Weblogs, Inc., the parent company of popular blogs like Engadget and Autoblog, for a reported $25 million. The successful exit of that major blogging property — one of only a handful of such blog networks in existence at the time — encouraged the development of the network model, in which multiple blogs are launched in tandem and link to one another for SEO reasons. Three years later, many of the Weblogs, Inc. blogs had seen triple- or quadruple-digit visitor growth, and the company had moved from paying a group of freelance writers on a per post and traffic basis, to hiring a growing number of full-time writers. The most important occurrence for blogging in 2005, however, might have been the launch of Federated Media. Backed by The New York Times, Omidyar Network and a handful of angel investors, FM was one of the first major advertising firms to focus on blog properties, and that made it a lot easier for fledgling blog startups to grow into the major media brands that many of them have become. Given the injection of cash from ad agencies like Federated Media, bloggers were able to spend more time producing content and had the capital to hire help. It was that simple combination of cash and time that caused the blogging model to ultimately be so successful, according to Steve Spalding, a Digital Business Strategist and Founder of the blog How To Split An Atom. “As [blogs] kept making more content, they kept appearing in Google and kept getting linked to by bigger and better sites, which lead to more traffic, more relevance, more links and most importantly, more money,” he said. “Eventually you hit the tipping point where traffic, cash and relevancy make you skyrocket above the competition, which is where many of the big blogs find themselves today.” Fast forward five years, and the Spalding equation (time + money + content) has worked its magic across the blogosphere. According to Technorati, 28% of bloggers reported earning some sort of income from blogging in 2009, and of those, the mean annual ad revenue for bloggers is over $42,000 — a healthy income in many parts of the world. Disclosure: Mashable works with Federated Media. The Rise of Social Media Perhaps the biggest shift in blogging culture over the past half decade has been the rise of social media. One of the most visible ways in which social media has affected blogging is that it changed the type of content that dominates the blogosphere. According to Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon.com and author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What it’s Becoming, and Why it Matters, social media provided a new home for a lot of minutiae around the blogosphere — status updates, shared links, passing observations — and freed up blogs for longer form, more valuable writing. “In [the early] days it was common to hear the complaint from old media curmudgeons that blogs were worthless because, you know, who wants to know what you had for lunch?” said Rosenberg. “So today those messages are all on Facebook or Twitter, the curmudgeons get to toss their complaints at shiny new targets — and blogging, miraculously, has become the center of gravity for in-depth, substantial dialogue and inquiry online.” Said Rosenberg, the rise of social media has birthed a blogosphere with more high-quality and thoughtful content. Social media hasn’t killed blogging, or replaced it, he said, but social networks have “deepened it, given it more clarity and heft.” For Spalding, social media has created a more dynamic atmosphere, one brimming with new opportunities for networking and fodder for posts. “[Social media] hasn’t changed my world but it has expanded it in ways that are difficult to talk about unless you’ve spent a lot of time in the trenches with it,” he said. Of course, for blogs, traffic equals money, so the most important change brought about by social media over the past five years may have been that social networks are increasingly a source of high quality traffic. According to a report from earlier this year via web measurement firm Hitwise, Facebook is now sending more traffic to news sites than mainstream aggregators like Google News. Twitter is also starting to move up the referrer ranks for news and media sites, said Hitwise. While only a handful of blogs qualify for inclusion in the “news and media” category at that firm, it’s probably safe to assume that social media sources are becoming more and more important traffic generators for the generally very web savvy blogosphere. In fact, Hitwise reported last year that Facebook had become the top traffic referrer for the popular entertainment blog Perez Hilton. (There isn’t much more hard data to back that, however, beyond what I can deduce from the referrer logs of Mashable itself.) When news of Facebook’s rise as a legitimate source of referral traffic spread across the web, noted blogger and PR veteran Steve Rubel commented on his blog, “If the 2000s was the Google decade, then the 2010s will be the Facebook decade.” That’s even more true for bloggers if we replace “Google” with “search,” and “Facebook” with “social media.” Where getting visitors to your website over the past decade was often focused around search engine optimization, attention has shifted in the last five years to social media and the ever-expanding myriad of options and niche sites therein. SEO is still important, of course, but it is now a much smaller piece of a more complicated puzzle. Blogging Infiltrates News Media“[Blogs] are an essential part of the news landscape, and they have gained more credibility — mostly because there’s less knee-jerk anti-blog reaction today,” said Rosenberg in an e-mail interview. “We now have serious and respected news providers and cultural agenda-setters that started out as independent blogs (like Talking Points Memo and Boing Boing). We also have blogs that are manned by employees of major old-fashioned media organizations.” In December of 2009, Mashable’s Community Manager (and then freelance contributor) Vadim Lavrusik wrote that the future journalist will — out of necessity — borrow many of the tools and techniques cultivated by bloggers over the past decade. “To be a social journalist and one that engages in online communities, journalists will have to practice blogging regularly and serve as curators of other content on the web,” he wrote. “Journalists of tomorrow will be participating in the link economy by gathering, synthesizing and making sense of other content across the web.” The “link economy,” in which authors link to one another to add context and provide readers with different viewpoints, has long been the domain of bloggers. Of course, one oft-hurled criticism is that bloggers don’t add original reporting, they just link to it and comment on it. While that may be part of what many bloggers do, and while that may have been partly (but not completely) true five years ago, it certainly isn’t the whole story today. Most of the major blogs that were founded in the past 5 to 10 years offer a mix of their own reporting, curation of reporting from the around the web, and commentary. The debate about whether bloggers are journalists has even reached the upper echelons of government. In 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would extend traditional media shield protections offered to journalists to bloggers. That, for many, was a clear message that blogging as a medium had become a vital part of the news media landscape. And indeed, in the intervening years, blogging has been instrumental in documenting human rights abuses, has been cited for prestigious awards and has outranked the mainstream press in search listings. Over the past five years, mainstream journalists are finally starting to accept that curation of news is a legitimate journalistic pursuit. When the political blog Talking Points Memo broke the U.S. attorney scandal in 2007, it was their ability to bring together information from other reporters and synthesize and clarify that information for readers that made them such a leading voice on the story. “[Talking Points Memo founder Matt] Marshall and his staff broke quite a few ’scoops’ in their months-long investigation into the firings,” wrote Robert Niles of the Online Journalism Review. “But they shed much light on the emerging scandal by stitching together reporting from local journalists as well. TPM Media reporters gathered information by working phones, swapping e-mails, and searching documents, as well as following reporting from San Diego’s Union-Tribune and North County Times, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and McClatchy’s Washington bureau covering the firings of respected local U.S. Attorneys and their replacement with Bush administration loyalists.” According to Niles, current American media newsrooms are isolated and rarely rely on reporting from competing news outlets. Blogs, on the other hand, practice the increasingly more accepted art of curation, allowing them to “reveal a more complete and accurate truth for their readers.” Perhaps even more elucidating, as Rosenberg noted, almost every major traditional media outlet has added blogging over the past five years to their stable of distribution channels (to be precise, 48.55% of media outlets now have blogs; that number is likely higher among the major, national outlets, though). From the New York Times to CNN, from the Wall Street Journal to The Guardian, blogs are now an important and prominently displayed way to deliver the news. And the number of journalists blogging is expected to increase. The Changing Landscape of Blog Software One other major event would reshape the blog world in 2005: The launch of WordPress.com. The free, hosted blogging service gave anyone access to a full WordPress installation, something that previously required some technical expertise (though a few web hosts were already offering their own hosted solutions). It can’t be understated the dramatic effect that WordPress.com has had on blogging. Along with the self-hosted version of the software, WordPress accounts for some 25 million blogs, of which over 11 million are hosted on WordPress.com and serve over 2 billion pageviews each month. Statistics aside, what WordPress really offered to users was a marriage of ease of use with power. WordPress is a powerful software package — one that many websites use in lieu of a full content management system — and WordPress.com brought that power to the masses in an easy to use package. WordPress.com has been a major component of the growth of the blogosphere over the past five years. Yet, WordPress’ rise isn’t the only major story in the world of blog software over the last half decade. The other is the advent of tumblelogs. Tumblelogs are stream of consciousness weblogs that have distinct ways of displaying different types of content — text, quotes, videos, photos, links, etc. Though only recently have news outlets begun experimenting with them for serious blogging, tumblelogs have become extremely popular due to their ease of use. Tumblr, the most popular tumblelog hosting service, has seen extremely impressive growth since launching in 2007 and now serves over 1 billion pageviews per month, making it about half the size of WordPress.com. In other words, tumblelogs have been firmly embraced by mainstream users as a legitimate form of blogging. The interoperability of tools has also made the technical bits of blogging easier, said Spalding. Five or six years ago, for example, it wasn’t very easy to find a video and insert it into a post, but now you can locate a video in seconds on YouTube and embed it by copying and pasting a few lines of text. Those improving tools, like WordPress.com, Tumblr and YouTube embeds, are what have caused the wild growth in the blogosphere over the second half of the the last decade. “Blogging tools have made it easier for people to focus on content production rather than the often tedious process of content formatting. If anything is responsible for the popularity of blogging the steady improvement of the tools over the years has to be it,” Spalding said. What’s Next?Blogging has come a long way since 2005. From a rather unorganized collection of mostly personal diarists, to a major voice in the news media landscape, blogging is clearly one of the stars of today’s Internet. “These days almost everyone is a ‘blogger’ and the delineation between someone who gets 5 visitors a year and 50,000 visitors an hour is a little blurry,” said Spalding. “I think that’s a good thing because, the faster we walk away from the label ‘blogger,’ the faster we can get down to the real business of producing valuable content for the people who are looking to read it.” The community of those who call themselves “bloggers” has grown to the point where generalizations no longer work. When everyone is a blogger, a blogger can be many different things. “There are so many different [blogging communities],” said Rosenberg. “There’s the political blogosphere with its various partisan subsections, the tech blogosphere (with subdivisions for developers and startup people and VCs and social media folks and more), the world of BlogHer, the crafts people, the culture bloggers, the cool gang in Tumblr-land, the science bloggers and law bloggers and librarians and on and on. As blogging went mainstream, it came to reflect the diversity of the human population, not perfectly of course, but widely enough to warn us all off from making broad statements about its attitude or makeup.” That splintering of the blogosphere is likely to continue into the next decade. The big blogs will continue to grow and become more ingrained in the media landscape, while niche communities of bloggers will further codify. The blogosphere will, as Rosenberg said, continue to reflect humankind’s diversity. Specifically, though, blogs will probably evolve over the next five years in ways we can’t yet fathom. “These days, I just enjoy the ride,” Spalding told us. That’s good advice. Series supported by IDG  In honor of Mashable’s five-year anniversary, this series is supported by IDG. Brand listening is the foundation for an effective social marketing campaign. Understand what your prospects care about before you engage with them, with IDG's brand listening services. IDG Social Scout can help you to understand your prospects' conversations, plan a social marketing program and implement it. IDG has the audience and content expertise to meet your objectives. Start with a solid plan that IDG Social Scout services deliver based on analysis and insight. Learn more about how IDG Social Scout can help you by clicking here. More Social Media Resources From Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Bluberries [img credit: rishibando] Reviews: Facebook, Google, Internet, Mashable, Tumblr, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, iStockphoto More About: blog, blogger, blogging, federated media, social media, social-media-retrospective-series, tumblelog, tumblelogs, tumblr, Wordpress, wordpress.com For more Social Media coverage:
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| $99 Color E-Reader and Social Platform to Challenge Amazon, B&N This Fall Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:23 AM PDT   Following recent price cuts on Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, a new manufacturer is set to stir up even more competition in the e-reader pricing wars with the debut of a $99 color device this fall. The device, which weighs in at .42 lbs and features a 5-inch, 800×480-pixel, color LCD display, 2GB of storage, 64MB of RAM, 2G of Flash Memory and up to four hours of battery life, is just one in a line of devices Copia, a subsidiary of DMC Worldwide, plans to introduce. Other devices include a 7-inch color e-reader for $129.99, two 6-inch black-and-white e-readers that closely resemble the Kindle 2 for $149.99 without Wi-Fi and $159.99 with Wi-Fi, and a $299.99 10.1-inch Wi-Fi-enabled color tablet. “We want to make e-reading more accessible to a mass audience,” said Tony Antolino, senior VP of DMC Worldwide and Copia. “Not everyone can afford all of the higher end devices.” A New Social Reading and Shopping Experience Hardware, however, is just part of the story. What may really pose a challenge to established competitors like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and perhaps even Apple is the new social e-reading platform, also called Copia, which is set to emerge from beta this month. Copia is an e-bookstore and social media network rolled into one, combining the functionality of the Kindle Store (although it plans to debut with 200,000 fewer titles than the Kindle Store’s 650,000), Facebook’s Open Graph and online reading community Goodreads, and fashioning a superior e-reading, discussion and e-book purchasing experience as a result. When you create an account on Copia, you can immediately begin following and inviting people from your existing social networks, like Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads, and connecting with users with similar tastes as you add and categorize books you’ve read or want to read in your virtual library. You can also join discussion groups that align with your favorite subjects and genres, and when you notice a commenter or discussion leader who is particularly intelligent or interesting, follow them to see what books they’ve read and are reading (privacy settings permitting). Imagine, for instance, following your favorite author on Copia to see the books have most influenced his or her writing, or following a business leader to see what books he or she is actively reading to stay ahead of the curve. From a business perspective, this is great; as every marketer knows, recommendations from trusted sources most heavily influence purchasing decisions. Copia makes it easy to get these kinds of recommendations because you don’t even have to ask for them. The shopping experience is also seriously improved by Copia’s social functionality. When you visit a book’s page, you can preview a book’s basic info alongside a “community value” score and rating breakdown. This is much better than the five-star rating systems of Amazon, Apple and the like; after all, wouldn’t you rather know what the people you trust and admire think of a book, rather than a stranger whose backgrounds and tastes are unknown to you? You can also opt to scan the reviews of everyone who has left one, or just those in your network.  This is also much better than simply integrating Facebook’s Open Graph, which would allow you to see the reviews and recommendations of your Facebook friends (and which Amazon rolled out this week), because it gives you more control over who you receive recommendations from. Personally, I’d rather get advice on novels to read from fellow members of the Victorians group at Goodreads, and read business book reviews from people I follow on Twitter, than get recommendations from my somewhat large and eclectic Facebook network. Best of all, Copia is device-agnostic, meaning that the platform will be accessible not only on one of its hardware devices, but also as a downloadable PC client for both Windows and Mac, and as an iPad app at launch. Apps for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7 are slated for later in the year. Can Copia Really Take on Amazon?
If anyone can do it, I believe Copia can. It’s not just another big brand arriving late to the market; rather, it’s creating a new reading, discussion and shopping experience that’s radically different than what’s being offered by current e-book retailers. While I don’t think its line of e-ink readers stand a chance against the cheaper, better Kindle 3, the social platform could be a major success. Readers who like to share and discuss what they are reading will discover an integrated experience that will lead them to purchase books from Copia’s store over one of its competitors — if Copia can offer enough incentives to get them to explore the platform in the first place. What do you think of Copia’s forthcoming line of devices and social reading platform? Can a small manufacturer compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble? Reviews: Android, Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Windows More About: amazon, apple, barnes & noble, borders, copia, dmc worldwide, e-books, e-reader, e-readers, Kindle, kindle 3, Mobile 2.0, nook, sony For more Tech coverage:
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| RIM and AT&T Unveil “The Best BlackBerry Device Ever” Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:07 AM PDT   BlackBerry and AT&T have introduced the BlackBerry Torch, a smartphone that AT&T’s President and CEO of Mobility and Consumer Markets Ralph de la Vega calls “the best BlackBerry device ever.” RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis describes the device as the first “touch qwerty slider” for BlackBerry, meaning it features both a slide out keyboard and a touch screen. It’s also the first smartphone from RIM that uses a webkit browser (which the company got with its acquisition of Torch Mobile). The device also features a 5 megapixel camera with flash, and is the first BlackBerry to ship with version 6 of the company’s operating system. Torch goes on sale August 12th and will cost $199 with a two-year contract. We’re at an event live in New York City where AT&T and RIM are unveiling the device. We’ll be updating this post live with the details. Here are some of the new features that RIM showed off and described as “fresh, but familiar”: Redesigned homescreen
Media features
Applications
VideoReviews: Apps, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter More About: att, blackberry, research in motion, RIM For more Mobile coverage:
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| Google Enables Multiple Account Sign-In Posted: 03 Aug 2010 06:52 AM PDT   Good news for users of multiple Google accounts (i.e. one for work and one for personal): now you can sign in to more than one of them from the same browser window. The feature has been in testing for several weeks, but now appears to be publicly available by going to the Google Accounts page and enabling multiple sign-in (it's turned off by default). Before you can turn it on, Google wants you to be aware of a few caveats, most notably that not all products support multiple sign-in and offline mode for Gmail and Google Calendar won't work.  Still, this is a convenient addition to those of us with multiple Google accounts that previously had to keep multiple browser windows open (or have multiple systems running) to deal with the problem. Once enabled, you can switch between accounts via a pull-down menu that appears next to your e-mail address atop the Google service that you’re using. Google offers some more explanation about the feature (and its limitations) on this help page. [via google os] Reviews: Gmail, Google, Google Calendar More About: gmail, Google, google accounts, Google Calendar, trending For more Tech coverage:
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| Morning Brief: New Blackberry, Kindle 3 Sold Out, iTunes for Cloud Delayed Posted: 03 Aug 2010 06:00 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.   RIM to Unveil New Blackberry Device Today Mashable’s Adam Ostrow is heading to an event hosted by RIM in NYC at 11 a.m. ET today, where the company is expected to reveal the Blackberry 9800 slider, a smartphone rumored to sport a slide-out keyboard, a pure touch screen and a brand new OS. Kindle 3 Sold Out The first round of $139 Wi-Fi-only and $189 3G-enabled Kindle 3 devices have temporarily sold out, according to their respective product pages on Amazon.com. Orders placed today are now expected to ship on or before September 4, the site says. Those who got their pre-orders ahead of the delay should receive their device on August 27. iTunes for the Cloud Delayed According to sources familiar with the matter, Apple has told the executives of the four biggest music labels that any cloud-based music service the company may roll out in the next few months will likely be very “modest in scope.” Apple has not yet negotiated the necessary licensing deals, those same sources disclosed. [via CNet] 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: Digg, Internet More About: amazon, apple, blackberry, first to know series, itunes, kindle 3, RIM For more Social Media coverage:
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BlackBerry has always had strong ties to enterprise and corporate developers — the reason that the device was adopted across so many companies is because of how nicely BES is able to integrate into existing mail and authentication systems. However, when it comes to consumer facing apps, BlackBerry has fallen well short of the competition.
Five years is eons in Internet time, and a lot has changed in the blogosphere since 2005. Sites have been born, sites have died, sites have grown up and others have faded away. Entirely new blogging formats have been created and business empires have been built on the foundations of humble blog beginnings.
The question is whether Copia can compete with the established players in the space, several of whom have already | You are subscribed to email updates from Mashable! To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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