Selasa, 14 September 2010

Mashable: Latest 21 News Updates - including “Nokia Launches Three New Symbian^3 Smartphones”

Mashable: Latest 21 News Updates - including “Nokia Launches Three New Symbian^3 Smartphones”

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Nokia Launches Three New Symbian^3 Smartphones

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 05:00 AM PDT


Nokia today announced three new Symbian^3 smartphones at its Nokia World event: Nokia E7, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6. These three share the OS with the upcoming Nokia N8, which (according to Nokia) is the only N-series device which will be based on Symbian^3.

The E7 is a device aimed at business users, with a full QWERTY keyboard, a 4-inch, 640×460 pixel touchscreen with Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility and an 8-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video. It touts 16GB of storage memory, and 350 MB of internal memory. In accordance with its business pedigree, the E7 can create PowerPoint slides on the go. It comes with a price tag of €495 ($638).

Nokia C6 has a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen (also with ClearBlack technology), while the C7 has a 3.5-inch AMOLED screen and a case consisting of stainless steel and glass. Both devices have an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and the ability to record 720p video.

Nokia C6 has 340 MB of internal user memory, while Nokia C7 has up to 350 MB of internal memory and 8 GB of storage memory. The memory in both devices can be expanded with a 32 GB microSD memory card, and the price is €260 ($334) for the C6, and €335 ($430) for the C7. All three devices should become available before the end of 2010.

More About: Mobile 2.0, Nokia, Nokia C6, Nokia C7, Nokia E7, smartphone, Symbian

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John Mayer Quits Twitter, Leaving 3.7 Million Followers Behind

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 12:40 AM PDT


Most Twitter users would be happy to have a following over 10,000, and a million or more is definitely outside the reach of most people, even public figures. Pop singer John Mayer, however, does not care much for big numbers: he decided to shut down his Twitter account with over 3.7 million followers.

The official word is that Mayer’s Twitter account was only used to promote his recent tour, Battle Studies, and is simply not needed anymore. The account is “now at a close and a return to the studio planned,” said Mayer’s spokeswoman, adding that Mayer will now continue to communicate with his fans through his blog.

Oddly enough, it seems that Mayer had not given up on social media altogether, and that another microblogging tool has occupied his attention: Tumblr.

“I had 3.3 million Twitter followers back in March April when I announced that I'd be predominantly posting on Tumblr, a site that takes all of 25 seconds to sign up for. Five months later I have just passed 50,000 followers, a fraction of my Twitter base… I will leave the opining up to you, but I think I made the right move,” wrote Mayer on his tumblelog.

Still, erasing a Twitter account with 3.7 million followers strikes us as an odd move. Even if Mayer had gotten tired of Twitter, it’s still valuable social media estate; after all, there will probably be another tour after Battle Studies.

What do you think: why did Mayer shut down his Twitter account? Could his Tumblr account ever reach the same popularity? Please share your opinions in the comments.

[image credit: johnmayer.com]

Reviews: Tumblr, Twitter, blog

More About: john mayer, social media, twitter

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Verizon Rolls Out Its Own Android App Store

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 11:50 PM PDT


Android users on the Verizon network may notice something new on their devices this evening: The carrier has rolled out an app store of its own.

Called V CAST Apps, the store for now appears as a tab within the Android Market, but we’re reading multiple reports that the store will soon be a stand-alone product and will compete with the Android Market.

These reports also note that the Verizon app marketplace is curated (as opposed to the more or less “open” Android Market) and that apps are subject to a detailed review process.

If the nomenclature seems familiar, you might recall Verizon’s 2007 launch of V Cast programming, which brought popular video clips from television networks to the mobile phones of Verizon users.

We’re accessing the section on a Motorola Droid running Android 2.2 (Froyo); we’re informed that Droid X and Droid 2 users with Android 2.2 can also see the V CAST Apps.

We’ve been browsing through the as-yet rather limited selection of apps in the Verizon tab of the Android Market. What we’re seeing so far seems to be a best-of-the-best for some of the device’s free and paid applications, plus a round-up of Verizon-specific apps. NFL Mobile, MTV News, Pac-Man, Rdio, Intuit, Foursquare, Kindle for Android and a handful of other apps of similar caliber round out the initial roster.

One of the biggest reasons benefits of a carrier-linked app marketplace would be carrier billing. Currently, the Verizon apps section doesn’t allow for any special purchase options; you’ll still have to use your Google Checkout account. But we’re hearing from other sources that Google might be working with Paypal on a more universal app-payment solution anyhow.

Another possible benefit of an Android Market alternative would be the “peer review” process, similar to the iPhone’s App Store submission and review process for new mobile applications. Still, many Android users are fairly satisfied with the user reviews and star rating system currently in place.

All in all, Verizon’s new tab in the Market (and what could be their challenge to the Market in weeks and months to come) strikes us as a bit redundant at first. And the last thing the Android platform needs is more fragmentation.

Still, the Android Market and Android apps in general is one area where this platform needs to experience continued, rapid growth in order to remain competitive with Apple’s mobile line. V CAST Apps could provide a more polished alternative for Verizon users; they could also provide some inspiration and incentive for the minds behind the Android Market to make a better product.

What do you think of V CAST Apps so far? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Android, Android Market, App Store, Foursquare

More About: android, app market, apps, Mobile 2.0, v cast, v cast apps, verizon

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iPhone App Turns Comparison Shopping into a Social Experience

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 09:09 PM PDT


According to ABI Research, shoppers will spend more than $119 billion via mobile phones by 2015. The myShopanion iPhone app is launching at DEMO to capitalize on these market opportunities and help bridge the gap between online and real-world shopping.

The myShopanion app [iTunes link] is designed to be a consumer’s best friend and serve as a companion app for shopping, as the name implies.

App users can search for products by barcode scan — the app integrates RedLaser’s popular scanning technology — or name, and users can tap their social network friends to help them make better-educated purchase decisions.

myShopanion draws on a number of third-party data providers to return detailed information on each product, including product specifications, merchant prices and consumer reviews.

We know from RedLaser’s success (the app has been downloaded more than two million times), that myShopanion has the potential to resonate with shoppers looking for a good deal. The application’s claim to fame is its ability to connect the dots between comparison shopping and social media.

Right now, app users can use the app to share via Twitter and Facebook the products they’re researching and gather feedback from friends. But even Suchet admits it’s merely a hackneyed approach for soliciting time-sensitive social media feedback. He promises the ability to send push notifications to individual friends for more immediate feedback in a future release.

Still, the application is inherently social in nature and encourages members to share their scanned and searched-for items to incorporate friend participation in the comparison shopping experience. Shared activity is highlighted in the feed area of the app, where users can add comments to the products their friends are checking out. The app also connects to Facebook and Twitter to help users find and add friends from those social networks.

myShopanion is made by Zappli. The company has raised an undisclosed amount from angel investors in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range and may raise additional funds within the next few months.

Image courtesy of Flickr, andyhay

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter

More About: demo, demofall2010, iphone app, myshopanion, zappli

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Americans Consuming More News, Thanks to the Internet [STATS]

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 07:20 PM PDT


After falling off in the late ’90s, news consumption in the U.S. is on the rise again thanks to the availability of news on online and mobile channels, a new study from the Pew Research Center has revealed.

A survey of 3,006 adults found that while consumption of traditional news has decreased modestly (less than a third said they’d read a newspaper the day before, compared nearly half a decade earlier, while consumption of radio news fell from 43% to 31%, and TV remained steady), the number of people who claimed to have gotten news from an online source in the last 24 hours rose from 24% to 31% over the last decade — 44% if you include mobile devices, e-mail, social networks and podcasts. Only 9% said they received news from Internet and mobile alone.

Despite online media’s significant growth, those numbers will seem surprisingly low to those who get the majority of their news online. I have personally only purchased one newspaper in the past decade, and that was to scan a full-page ad Adobe took out in The Washington Post for Mashable. It seems I’m not alone in that respect, as a mere 8% of adults under the age of 30 said they had read a print newspaper the day before they were surveyed.

Online Media Adding to Rather Than Replacing Traditional News Mix

Significantly, online news is not replacing other traditional news forms (three quarters of those surveyed said they got their news yesterday from traditional media, and 36% said they absorbed news on both digital and traditional platforms) so much as providing additional outlets. As Americans adopt new technologies for accessing news, they consume more of it.

Although Americans are still averaging 57 minutes of news time from TVs, radios and newspapers per day, the same as they were a decade earlier, they are also spending an additional 13 minutes reading news online, increasing total news-reading time to 70 minutes each day. That doesn’t even include time spent perusing news on cellphones or other digital devices.

Significantly, the availability of news online and on mobile devices does not mean that more people are ingesting news — 17% of Americans still do not access news on a daily basis, the same as a decade earlier, the report found. Rather, those who already consumed news are simply consuming more of it.

Although one might expect the younger demographic to be fueling the increase in online news consumption, it’s actually those in the 30-64 age range that are pushing the growth. Fourty-four percent of those between 50 and 64 said they got news through one or more digital outlets yesterday, comparable to the 18-29 group at 48%. Unsurprisingly, only 23% of those 65 and older said they had accessed an online news source the day before.

Print News Consumption Continues to Decline

Printed newspapers experienced the sharpest decline in news readership over the past decade. Only one in four of those surveyed said they’d read a printed newspaper the day before, down from 30% two years ago and 38% in 2005. The number of online newspaper readers continues to grow, however, offsetting the overall decline in readership. Seventeen percent said they had read something on a newspaper’s website yesterday, up from 13% in 2008 and 9% in 2006, meaning that collective readership is situated at 37%, just two percentage points less than two years ago, but down 6% from 2006.

However, these numbers do not acknowledge those who accessed newspaper content indirectly through secondary sources, such as blogs, aggregators or search engines.

By and large, newspaper readers tend to be older, although the study found that the readership of some of the major national newspapers, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and especially The New York Times bucked this trend. More than half of the readers of USA Today and the WSJ are less than 50 years old, while 67% of the NYT’s readership is under 50. A whopping 34% of the NYT’s readers are younger than 30, more than a tenth above the national average of under-30-year-olds in the U.S. The report cites the news organization’s aggressive online strategy as the primary reason for its popularity among young adults.

Additional Findings

Pew uncovered several other interesting tidbits in its study, including the fact that significantly more men (50%) than women (39%) get news on digital platforms; but men and women are equally likely to get news via social networking sites, such as Twitter, although most Facebook and Twitter users say they “hardly ever” get news there.

In addition, more consumers (33%) are regularly using search engines to get their news, up from 19% two years ago. And although 31% of adults access the Internet through mobile devices, only 8% claim to get news from there on a regular basis.

What do you think of the findings? How have your news consumption habits changed over the last decade?

Disclosure: USA Today is a Mashable content partner.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ProfessorVasilich

Reviews: Facebook, Internet, Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto

More About: internet, journalism, media, News, newspaper, Pew, readership, stats, study

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Visualize Your Gmail Activity With Graph Your Inbox

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 06:12 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.

Name: Graph Your Inbox

Quick Pitch: Graph Your Inbox is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to graph Gmail activity over time.

Genius Idea: Created by Bill Zeller, a Ph.D at Princeton University, Graph Your Inbox is a Google Chrome extension that can search your Gmail account by phrases, keywords, sender, receiver or label. It then presents the data related to those queries as a bar graph that charts the number of messages month-by-month and day-by-day.

Zeller calls this Google Trends for Gmail, and that’s not a bad way to look at it. Why would you want to evaluate this kind of information?

Well, we have tools that analyze our web searches, our social media activity and our website analytics, why not take a deeper look at what is in our inboxes? Furthermore, looking at periods of extreme activity or inactivity around a certain address, phrase or label can be indicative of an overreaching trend in your inbox. Knowing about your inbox trends can help you more efficiently manage and process your e-mail and your time.

For instance, I did two searches on my primary e-mail address, one for “from:facebook” and one for “from:twitter.” Graph Your Inbox queried my Gmail account and came back with some pretty interesting data. For instance, I had no idea I’d received over 30,000 e-mail messages from Twitter in the last three years.

Looking at the breakdown by month and then by day, I could go back to events that resulted in an increase in followers or direct messages (the types of e-mail communication I get from Twitter.) For me, a peak was in January 2009, when my fiance proposed to me via Twitter. Likewise, I can see a surge in my Facebook starting at the end of August 2009. That coincides with when I joined Mashable.

Clicking on a month of a particular term will take you to a listing of all the messages from that month and an additional daily breakdown so that you can look at how many conversations took place each day of the month.

Graph Your Inbox is a free extension, and it doesn’t access any of your private data or “phone home” to Google. You must be logged into your Gmail account for the plugin to work; after you clear a search query, the results are gone.

It works with Gmail and with Google Apps accounts that have already migrated to the new opt-in infrastructure available to early adopters. For example, my primary e-mail account is a Google Apps account that has migrated to this new type of account, so it worked without issue. Another Google Apps account hasn’t become eligible for the transition process yet; as a result, Graph Your Inbox doesn’t work with it.

The data is pretty interesting, and we love the way it’s displayed. A nice feature is that when you click on a conversation, you are taken directly to that conversation in your inbox. Additional query syntaxes with some wildcards would be cool, as would a way to export some of the data as XML. With a little bit of work, we could see this being a useful tool for businesses that are trying to track e-mail campaigns, product inquiries or support requests.

Give Graph Your Inbox a try, and let us know if you see anything unique or surprising in the comments.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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

Reviews: Facebook, Gmail, Google, Google Chrome, Mashable, Twitter

More About: e-mail, email, gmail, inbox, visualizations

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Wal-Mart Debuts Its Own Branded Wireless Plans

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 04:41 PM PDT


Wal-Mart just announced a dirt-cheap mobile phone plan under its own brand name — a first for the department store, which previously only offered low-cost plans in under the Verizon and Sprint brand names. The $45 per month plan is called Wal-Mart Family Mobile, and it includes unlimited text and voice messaging.

Extra lines will cost $25 each (the Verizon/Wal-Mart plan doesn’t offer any discount for additional lines). Wal-Mart Family Mobile plans won’t require contract agreements even though they’re postpaid rather than prepaid. You’ll have to pay by the gigabyte for data, though.

Don’t be too shocked and amazed at this announcement; the retailer isn’t erecting cell phone towers or building a global communications network. Rather, your Wal-Mart Family Mobile phone will technically be running on T-Mobile’s network, but it will be locked to Wal-Mart’s plan and customer support.

The most surprising aspect of the news is actually that the plan is cheaper than comparable plans on T-Mobile. It looks like the carrier was willing to slice its profit margins on individual accounts in order to get the distribution from Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart will offer five phones with the plan starting at $35; in some cases, they’ll be slightly cheaper than their counterparts on other networks and plans. For example, T-Mobile sells the Motorola Cliq XT for $349 without a contract, but it will just cost $249 from Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has always tried to associate its name with very low prices, and this wireless plan is no exception. It could be a game-changer when it comes to bringing handsets to low-income families; but without data or other smartphone amenities included, it doesn’t offer much to tempt most tech-savvy consumers.

More About: data, Motorola, motorola cliq xt, phones, retail, smartphone, T-Mobile, text messaging, voice, Wal-Mart, wal-mart family mobile, WalMart, walmart family mobile, Wireless

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100+ Upcoming Social Media & Tech Events

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 04:13 PM PDT

social_media_events_guide1

Every week, Mashable puts together a calendar of upcoming social media and web events, parties and conferences. Would you like to have your conference or event listed here? If so, please contact us at least one month before your event to establish a media partnership. For more upcoming listings, check out Mashable’s Events section.

This month, we have two great events coming up:

Social Good Summit – September 20, 2010, New York, NY
Join Mashable for the Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. More information about the event can be found here. Please e-mail events@mashable.com for available sponsorship information.

Mashlanta 2.0 – September 30, 2010, Atlanta, GA
Mashable is excited to announce Mashlanta 2.0 in partnership with Regator. After an amazing event last year, we’ve gone bigger (200 – 300 more tickets), longer (an extra hour) and we’ve added a venue with ample parking. Tickets are now on sale, sponsorship opportunities are available and judging from last year, we’ll sell out quickly.

In the meantime, here are some tips on how to network, share your information and/or promote your event using social media:

Mashable’s Weekly Social Media and Marketing Event Guide is proudly supported by Eventbrite, the Web’s Event Marketplace.

September 13-14, 2010, San Francisco, CA: APPNATION is the first global conference and exposition to focus exclusively on the burgeoning consumer applications marketplace. The event will cover social and mobile apps across all devices and platforms including social media platforms, smartphones, tablets, internet-enabled televisions and other emerging connected devices. Speakers include Adobe, Accel Partners, Getjar, The North Face, Marvel, Sequoia Partners, Smule, Time Inc., The Wall Street Journal and more.

September 13-14, 2010, Charlotte, NC: Social Media 4 Responders is the first hands-on social media conference specifically designed with responders in mind. Law enforcement; fire service, emergency management, public health, disaster and crisis aid, emergency medical services, public utilities and the list goes on! Seven hands-on workshops and four power packed sessions over two-days that will provide you with the knowledge & skill you need to get your organization engaged in the fastest growing means of communication in the world. Follow us on Twitter hashtag #sm4r. Use promo code Mashablesm4r to save 10% on your registration fee.

September 13-15, 2010, Silicon Valley, CA: DEMO is the premier launch event with a 20-year track record of successfully identifying and delivering the world's most innovative new products and services to the market. Companies like: VM Ware, Palm, Skype, Google, EA, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia and Citrix have launched new products at DEMO. DEMO Fall 2010 will showcase the top B2B, B2C and vertical innovations coming to market—innovations on track to evolve or disrupt the markets they serve. Don't miss the chance to experience first hand the latest technology game changers in social and media, health and life sciences, clean and sustainable technology, cloud and enterprise computing and more! Register for DEMO at http://www.demo.com/EDFPartner and save 25% off the current public price for DEMO.

September 14-16, 2010, Dallas, TX: BIA/Kelsey's Directional Media Strategies 2010 takes place in a pivotal moment in Yellow Pages history. BIA/Kelsey's latest global Yellow Pages forecast indicates digital will account for 39% of Yellow Pages revenues by 2014. The future revolves around how publishers can best serve the needs of small business advertisers — with video, reputation management, mobile directories, social platforms, group buying, SEM/SEO and more. Join more than 400 senior execs from the global Yellow Pages community at DMS '10, September 14-16 in Dallas. Register with the promo code DMSMASH and save $200!

September 14-16, 2010, San Francisco, CA: The social business event of the year, JiveWorld10, will bring together industry luminaries, customers, business executives and leading enterprise vendors to share social business thought leadership and provide a platform to network with peers. Jive CEO, Tony Zingale will keynote and unveil company news highlighting how to enable the social enterprise. JiveWorld10 includes 40 content-rich sessions featuring customer speakers from Alcatel-Lucent, Charles Schwab, CSC, EMC, Intel, Mattel, McAfee, MIT, Premier Farnell and SAP. These customers will share their experiences in adopting and implementing a successful social business strategy that has changed the way they engage with customers, employees and the social web. Register by August 27 to secure your discounted hotel room.

September 14, 2010, San Francisco, CA: After four years of rallying local tech communities outside of Silicon Valley to better connect, educate and amplify the local startup and entrepreneurial scene, we are excited to be hosting out first TECH cocktail startup mixer in San Francisco (http://techcocktail.com/tech-cocktail-san-francisco-startup-mixer-2010-08) on Tuesday, September 14th from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. The event will take place at Roe in San Francisco and will showcase some of the hottest new tech startups in the area. Use the Mashable discount link at http://techcocktailsf.eventbrite.com/?discount=mashablesf to save $5. –

September 14, 2010, Lawrence KS: Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with Sarah Evans: Limited tickets will be available for this unique boot camp style event with renowned expert Sarah Evans. You’ll spend a full six hours of session time with Sarah, taking an in-depth look at the role of social media in marketing your business or organization. You wont just learn effective social media marketing techniques, but will look at how social media works in conjunction with traditional marketing, practical ways of engaging customers and prospects, case studies, help with creating a social media based marketing plan, hints and tips, ways to make your brand stand out online, tools and resources and plenty of opportunities for discussion and Q & A. Use the discount code MASHABLE to receive a 20% discount at registration.

September 15-16, 2010. Cologne, Germany: The dmexco is the leading European exposition for digital marketing & advertising. The exposition covers among others the theme areas online marketing, targeting, tracking, digital contents (moving images, audio advertising), social, mobile, performance marketing, affiliate, email marketing, search engine marketing and in-game advertising and offers agencies (media agencies, creative agencies, full-service agencies) a presentation platform. The dmexco is organised by the Koelnmesse, its industry partners are the BVDW (Federal Association of the Digital Industry) and the OVK (Online Marketers Circle).

September 15-16, 2010, Chicago, IL: Are you looking to quantify your social media efforts? Do you want to have constant customer engagement? If the answer is yes, join us at in Chicago at the Hotel Allegro for iStrategy 2010 to learn, network, share ideas, and understand how to build your online marketing strategy to its fullest potential. iStrategy 2010 Chicago brings together the cream of American leaders in social media marketing. iStrategy will give delegates the valuable insight they need to: Harness New Technologies, Drive Revenue Growth, Create Value from Digital Assets, Develop Innovative and Creative Online Strategies and achieve a Market Leading Online Position. Register now and quote MashableCHI to receive a 10% discount

September 15-17, 2010, San Francisco, CA: GSMI presents the Social Media Strategies Summit. We have researched the social media buzz to develop and present to you a top of the line marketing conference that you can't afford to miss. With in depth case studies from the nuts and bolts to microblogging and sustaining online communities, you leave with a refreshed vision to take your marketing plan to the next level for 2010 and beyond. Please use the code “MikeSM” for a discount.

September 15, 2010, New York, NY: Mobile Social Communications: Case Studies & Roundtables — Our Keynote Presenter will be Eric Friedman, Director of Client Services, Foursquare. Case studies by Tasti D-Lite LLC, Buzzd, Yelp, McDonald’s and others will showcase how real brands are achieving tangible business goals integrating mobile social strategies into their overall marketing and communications approach. The case studies will be followed by moderated interactive roundtables. Use the promo code MASH for a discounted rate ($155).

September 15, 2010, Los Angeles, CA: Announcing our 2nd annual Digital Media Pipeline conference which will offer the only industry event that has as its primary focus – the distribution pipeline that helps connect the world's leading digital media content providers with the end user. Digital Media Pipeline offers an opportunity for digital retailers, Hollywood studios and aggregators, technology and service providers to share learnings and experiences in the business of retailing digital entertainment. Join us; register now and use the discount code MASH45 to receive $45 off.

September 15, 2010, Antwerp, Belgium: Out of Site proudly presents its very first Social Media and Google Optimization seminar. In two 60-minute sessions which take place in Out of Site headquarters in Antwerp (Belgium) you will gain more insight in the possibilities Social Media can offer your brand or company. Also an in-depth view of Google's role in your sales process will add to your key-knowledge of web technologies available to us today. Regular fee is 35 euro a person, which includes an incentive gift, lunch and drinks. Mashable readers can save 15% by entering the discount code OOSMASH159.

September 16-17, 2010, Dallas, TX: This year's 2nd Social Media Optimization Summits event, presented by Multifamilypro, brings together small to mid-sized business owners with an interest in putting social media to work successfully within their organizations. The event offers two full days of intensive, hands-on workshops from the intermediate to advanced level, led by top social media experts including Brian Solis of FutureWorks, Jason Falls of SocialMediaExplorer.com, Shama Kabani of The Marketing Zen Group and Shama.TV, Geno Church of Brains on Fire and more. The unique "See it. Hear it. Do it." approach allows attendees to learn by doing and begin applying newly-acquired skills and knowledge while the event is underway. Register now and save $125 at: http://optimizationsummits.com/. Use discount code Mashable.

September 16-17, San Diego, CA: The San Diego Music & Technology Conference brings people together to enjoy, advance and celebrate the convergence of electronic music and technology. Interactive panels led by industry experts and musicians will be open forums where attendees can collaborate, challenge themselves and walk away inspired. And come experience world-class artists and up-and-coming talent perform in beautiful, sunny San Diego. Register today and save 20% off the ticket price with the code: mashable.

September 17, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Social:Email is a one day conference that offers expert-led guidance on how to engage with customers via email and social media, including tips on how to maximize the impact of your campaigns, insights into new tools and services, how to monitor and measure the results, and trends to watch out for. This is the ultimate event for anyone interested in combining email with social media marketing. Speakers include Brian Solis, Kristin Hersant, Dan Martell, Chase McMichael, Luke Brynley-Jones and Murray Newlands. Register with code mashable to get a 10% discount.

September 17, 2010, Pittsburgh, PA: Join us for a morning of networking and discussion on topics pertaining to how social media affects how you do business in the Pittsburgh region. Lauren Lawley Head, editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times, will moderate the discussion. Some of the topic questions include “How have you used social media to increase your business?”, “What is the biggest change your business has seen due to social media?”, How do you measure the ROI of your social media efforts?”, and “How much time do you devote each week to social media?” Join the discussion of live tweets on Twitter by following the hashtag #pghbiztu. We’ll also be broadcasting live on Ustream. Seating is limited, so register today here!

September 18, 2010, Seattle, WA: Imagine the 200 smartest, most passionate and most influential entrepreneurs and business leaders gathered together to strengthen your business and ventures in Seattle. BizTechDay is an intensive one-day experience where you can meet, learn and be inspired by the most practical business ideas and technology strategies. Get fired up by stories, ideas and strategies from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs. Speakers include Ben Huh, Founder of Cheezburger Network, the Chief People Officer of Zynga, the Founder of Biznik, as well as leaders from Squidoo, Theo Chocolate, Teachstreet, Wildfire App, Madrona Venture, Fox News and Hotel Max. Get your tickets at BizTechDay 2010. It is like Woodstock for Entrepreneurs. Use the promo code BTDMASHWA and save 20%!

September 20-24, Los Angeles, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Milan: Coming this September to a city near you is the second 2010 edition of Social Media Week, which will be held simultaneously in Los Angeles, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Milan. Social Media Week is a co-curated, distributed conference featuring hundreds of free events taking place over the course of the week in interesting venues across each of the five cities. Topically framed around social media, events include panels, parties, product demos, meetups and more, put on by media, communication and technology companies around the globe. Social Media Week was held for the first time in February 2009 in New York City, and followed in February 2010 with an expansion to five more cities, adding London, Berlin, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paolo to the fold. The February 2010 event attracted more than 7,500 attendees across 200 events, nearly all of which were made available for free to attendees thanks to sponsorship from a number of global brands, including Meebo and PepsiCo. Learn more about the September 20-24 event at socialmediaweek.org.

socialmediaweek.org

September 21–22, 2010, London, UK: ad:tech London is the UK’s essential free to attend event for professionals seeking to stay ahead of the latest interactive media, advertising and marketing trends. The event unites advertisers, media owners and agencies to harness the power of digital and deliver real marketing ROI. Alongside the exhibition, there is also a conference featuring 100+ international speakers for serious digital innovators and marketers. Mashable readers can take 20% off their conference ticket price – call John Corrick on + 44 (0) 203 180 6595 and quote Mash10. Register online now at www.ad-techlondon.co.uk.

September 21, 2010, London, UK: Join us at this topical event to ensure that you are fully aware of all the legal and regulatory requirements surrounding data protection, as well as to hear how other organizations are handling these challenges. Speakers include Rosa Barcelo, Senior Legal Adviser to the EUROPEAN DATA PROTECTION SUPERVISOR, and Martin Hoskins of everything everywhere (the company that manage T-Mobile and Orange), who will discuss the lessons learnt from T-Mobile's data breach experience. Plus, don’t miss out on our post-conference workshop on Cloud Computing. Mashable readers save 10% with the following code: KW8112MASH. For more info or to register, go to http://www.ibclegal.com/dataprotectionmash.

September 21, 2010, Chicago, IL: The New Marketing Labs team will be invading Chicago to hold our New Marketing Experience event. Imagine a world where you can take your One Big Idea and tap over 100 other participating conference attendees and experts and each of their One Big Ideas. All of this in a structured, fast-paced and highly interactive one-day program under the direction of Chris Brogan, Justin Levy and the team from New Marketing Labs. New Marketing Experience is that world. Through six key discussion sessions this program will help you analyze and draw the best of what you need form these Big Ideas. For more information, visit us at: http://nmlevents.com. Use the code “MASH50” for a 50% off discount.

September 21, 2010, New York, NY: NY Games Conference — A Day of Power Networking with Leaders in the Exploding Games and Connected Entertainment Industries! NY Games features a lively and fun debate on timely cutting-edge business topics and demos, as well unrivaled access to some of the most progressive companies in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond. We invite you to join us at the event and take part in the discussion with executives, creators, investors, analysts, press and gamers who will be instrumental in shaping the future of this booming business. Mashable readers can receive 10% off registration with promo code MASH10.

September 22-23, 2010, Santa Clara, CA: The Toy, Game and Technology Summit, in Santa Clara, CA is a one-of-a-kind summit that brings together leaders from the toy, video game and technology industries for in-depth discussion, cross-industry networking and the opportunity to generate new business. Capitalize on crossover business opportunities. Gain insight into toy, game and technology design issues, marketing strategies, exclusive market research and the latest trend forecasts. Toy, Game and Technology Summit is co-located with the Virtual Goods Conference. One registration gets you into both events for unparalleled networking and knowledge. Register with promo code MASHVIP and save 15%.

September 22-23, 2010, Singapore, Asia: At Social Media World Forum Asia, become educated, discover, engage, network, share and collaborate in the world of social media. Ideal for those looking to embrace the latest in brand engagement, monitoring, ROI, advertising and building communities. learn from social networks, brands, advertisers and analysts. Mention you are a Mashable reader to receive a 15% discount.

September 22-23, 2010, Chicago, IL: As we fight our way through a tough economy, “change” is the biggest word in business. Anyone who wants their organization to thrive knows that making change happen is better than watching it happen, and that “new ideas,” “fresh thinking” and “continuous innovation” have to be more than buzzwords. When IBM's Institute for Business Value recently asked 1,500 chief executives to name the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future, the number one answer was “creativity” — and creativity is why the Cusp Conference exists. A supercollider for creative thought, Cusp 2010 will feature designers of change like TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, social activist Tim Will, education innovator Diana Rhoten, “doctor of the future” Jay Parkinson and many more. Creativity is contagious. Register with the promo code MASHC and save 10%.

September 22, 2010, Santa Monica, CA: Join us for an evening of fun mingling with other startups, VCs, entrepreneurs, and technology enthusiasts, as we host our first Startup Demo event in Los Angeles. StartupDemo is an informal social gathering of tech companies and people, companies showcasing their new ideas and attendees sharing their feedback. This event is FREE for all attendees. For more information, please visit www.startupdemo.com and/or register here.

September 22, 2010, Toronto, ON (Canada): Social Media Bootcamp: history | strategy | tactics is a perfect introduction to social media for your business or organization, this full-day workshop and seminar will investigate how to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and how to use them successfully. Besides providing a foundation on the origins of the web, we’ll cover the latest and most important trends and dive deep into where this is all going. We’ll cover emerging technologies and look how this will shape our future. Attendees will leave the workshop with an integrated, and more holistic view of how the web is changing and how their businesses and organizations can harness their potential for building relationships online. This knowledge will be used to reach a wider audience and improve community engagement. Register now and save an additional 10% with discount code mashable.

September 23-25, 2010, Richmond, CA: Are you a community leader, organizer, marketing executive, CEO, Executive Director, or media maker? Join us at theCOREconference where community and technology leaders convene to exchange ideas, practices & strategies. Learn how to build, engage, lead, communicate and collaborate with your people from dynamic practitioners across many fields. Grow your social endeavors and understand the economy and ecology of communities. Subjects explored include: collective intelligence, crowd sourcing, alternative currencies, movement building, multi-stakeholder collaborations and the economics of community. Save $50 off with the promo code MASH at http://thecoreconference.com.

September 23, 2010, Atlanta, GA: Lift: The B2B Social Commerce Summit is a "must attend" event for marketers, senior management and business owners looking to apply real-world social tactics that drive sales lift to their business. Co-hosted by Wharton Interactive, OfficeArrow and Social Strategy1, and bringing together the brightest minds in the B2B space, this 2nd annual 1-day information-packed all-inclusive event delivers educational workshops on how to monetize social media, how to quickly generate quality leads, and how to translate social data into measurable conversions. Use promo code MASH2010 and save 10% off $199 admission or $159 early-bird through 8/16.

September 23, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Mediabistro’s Think Mobile conference explores the broadening mobile ecosystem, the application marketplace and the innovation that drives the industry. Hear from visionaries that reinvented businesses by innovating with unique mobile offerings and gain an understanding of key mobile metrics. Speakers include Starbucks CIO Stephen Gillett, Microsoft Sr. Product Manager Anand Iyer, NPD Group Executive Director Ross Rubin, Evernote CEO Phil Libin and more. Register with promo code MASH and save 15%!

September 24-26, 2010, Asheville, NC: Type-A Mom Conference provides bloggers and companies with a chance to network, learn and take it to the next level. The conference will feature some of the most insightful people in social media talking about topics like finding your voice, how businesses can engage bloggers, and turning your passion for blogging into a paycheck. New this year is Dad Track, Type-A Mom Business and Tribes, small group power sessions for blog niches. The popular Blogger Town Hall Meeting and Kid Con will be back this year. Register with the promo code MASHABLE to save 25%.

September 24, 2010, New York, NY: Imagine 400 of the smartest, most passionate and most influential entrepreneurs and business leaders gathered together to strengthen your business and ventures in New York. BizTechDay, an intensive one-day conference where you meet, learn and be inspired by the most practical business ideas and technology strategies. Get fired up by stories, ideas and strategies from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs. Speakers include: Seth Godin, Clay Shirky, Founder of Meetup, Help a Reporter Out, Profounder, Gymboree, Ofoto, Dan Schawbel and Fox News. Get your tickets at BizTechDay 2010. It is like Woodstock for Entrepreneurs. Use promo code BTDMASHNY and save 20%.

September 24, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Mediabistro and Charles Hudson’s Smartphone Games Summit is a one-day conference about emerging trends in the mobile gaming industry. As new developments emerge such as the iPhone Game Center, is it game over for a number of gaming companies, or does it open an even larger opportunity? How do new technologies like the iPad change the game? The conference will bring together leading developers, investors and executives from around the globe to share their collective wisdom on what’s working today and where this exciting industry is heading. Register with promo code MASH and save 15%!

Sep 24, 2010, Mumbai, India: Digital Content and Social Media define the new marketing mantra of the future world, and they go to the heart of Corporate Strategy. Are you in yet? Attend the Digital Media Conclave – the most relevant and cutting-edge conference brought to you by CellStrat, India’s leading Mobile and Digital Media Strategy Consulting firm. Listen to top-notch digital and social media innovators from leading companies across India as well as corporate case studies in the digital media domain undertaken by India’s foremost Digital Marketing experts. Mashable readers will receive a 10% discount upon registration at the event.

September 24, 2010, San Francisco, CA: TEDxSoMa seeks bring the TED experience to a local level, bringing together innovative ideas andconcepts through TEDtalks and inspiring speakers. TEDxSoMa is organized by members of the pariSoma Innovation Loft and other volunteers whose core beliefs are community, collaboration, innovation, openness, and sustainability. Join us in person or by watching the live stream on the day of the event. Learn more and register at www.tedxsoma.com.

September 25, 2010, Atlanta, GA: Produced by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society & Kennesaw State University's Center for Sustainable Journalism, Media Law in the Digital Age – The Rules Have Changed, Have You? provides an overview of the new legal landscape, case studies, cautionary tales and how to make the laws work for you. In a one day conference held at Kennesaw State University, learn what Lawyers, Journalists, Educators, Citizen Media Producers, Communications Directors, Academics and Publishers big and small need to know now. Panelists include the Nation's top Media Law Attorneys, Scholars and Journalists. Register with promo code MASH and save 20%.

September 27-28, 2010, Chicago, IL: midVenturesLAUNCH is the largest startup and innovation conference in the Midwest. Showcasing new startup companies in web, mobile, consumer products, sustainability and greentech, we're bringing together 150+ new companies in three tracks: COMPETE, a startup competition with over $100,000 in cash and prizes; mVDEMO, an area for early-stage startups to gain exposure; and LAUNCH, where later-stage VC- or angel-backed startups and established brands will launch new, innovative products and services from 2010 on our main stage. Featuring key panelists and speakers from the top of the industry, midVenturesLAUNCH is the conference for technology innovators, offering a unique opportunity to seek funding, meet entrepreneurs, investors, developers, designers and leaders, and watch new ideas come to life. All in one space. Visit wwww.midventureslaunch.com for more info.

September 27-28, 2010, Minneapolis, MN: Get your ticket today for the ninth annual MIMA Summit, the premier interactive marketing conference in the Midwest. We're offering summit attendees more session speakers than any year before, a whole new line of intensive workshops, and featuring author and high-energy businessman Gary Vaynerchuk and comedian, author, and vigilante pundit Baratunde Thurston keynoting the event. The MIMA Summit 2010 will offer more than 1,000+ attendees a dynamic range of educational content—from interactive, media, brand and technical strategies, to design, content strategy, the neuro-science of marketing, open-source CMS, and even social media. Early bird pricing is available until September 3rd at www.mimasummit.org.

September 27-29, 2010, Dallas, TX: After 15 years, the Web has lost its “new media” moniker to a new disruptor: mobile. The action is clearly local. Local mobile advertising is forecast to take an even sharper hockey-stick trajectory than the local Web, going from a few hundred million in 2009 to $14 billion in less than five years. Join Borrell Associates for its Local Mobile Advertising Conference to identify what’s working today for local advertisers, what’s likely to work tomorrow, and how to get there. The conference is designed for executives selling mobile-related advertising at the local level. Use promo code MASH100 and save $100!

September 27-30, 2010, New York, NY: Web 2.0 Expo New York assembles top tech influencers for four days of intense talks, workshops, discussions, and networking events. This year, Web 2.0 Expo New York focuses on Platforms for Growth, diving into the platform opportunities for the whole web ecosystem. We'll highlight the important challenges faced by the industry’s key players, and help you pick the winning platforms for growth in a web-fueled world. Connect with other designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and investors at one of the most vibrant events of the year. Use discount code webny10bd14 when you register to save 25%.

September 27, 2010, Miami, FL: Calling all Affiliates, Merchants, Advertisers and Social Media Strategists looking to CONNECT to the right people, LEARN from the experts, increasing their EARNING potential and GROW their business! The Performance Marketing Expo is the premier event for best-in-class educational sessions (become an expert at Landing Page Optimization, Search, Social Media Strategies and Relationship Management), highly effective facilitated networking (in the Tune-Up Shop, Idea Factory, Masters of the Universe Roundtable sessions) and access to the leading Super Affiliates (Stephanie Nelson, Coupon Mom – Zac Johnson, MoneyReign, – Todd Martini, Alex’s Coupons – plus, eCoupons, MarketAmerica, TrialPay, Parent Media and more). Save 15% when using code PME2010MASH at www.iirusa.com/performancemarketingexpo.

September 28-30 2010, London, UK: IIR's Mobile Broadband World is an absolute must for all those involved in the MBB ecosystem, including Mobile Operators, Content Developers, Financial Investors, Press and Media, Consultants, Technology Partners, Handset Developers and more. To claim your 10% discount courtesy of Mashable, please quote I2GS2MASH when registering.

September 28-30, 2010, Hamburg, Germany: Facebook, Twitter & Co are now part of good corporate communication and marketing. They dominate all channels of interaction. To find out how to optimize your business and marketing activities by using these instruments is this year`s topic of the annual Community & Marketing 2.0 Summit in Hamburg. Within two parallel tracks 36 experts from different companies share their experiences and best practices in the fields of community management and marketing 2.0. Register with promo code CMSMASH and save 10%.

September 28, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Want to learn how to leverage technology as a tool to GROW your business? Want to attend the Small Business Technology Tour? The tour is for business owners, entrepreneurs and business professionals who want to have FUN, NETWORK and LEARN. Whether you know nothing about technology or know a lot, the Small Business Technology Tour is for you. Bring a friend! The first 10 attendees who register with discount code MASHABLE – get a complimentary ticket. Use discount code MASHABLEDISCOUNT to get 50% off!

Sept 28, 2010, Brisbane, Australia: Come to Bluewire Media's E-mail Marketing Secrets event and learn how to use email marketing to its full potential. Discover the dos and donts of growing your database, getting the basics right, nailing your newsletter content, calculating your ROI and be amazed by some of the biggest email marketing blunders! Bring your most pressing questions for our guest panel of email marketing professionals – Evan Fortune (Vision 6), David Smerdon (Clemenger), Adam Franklin (Bluewire Media) & MC'd by Toby Jenkins (Bluewire Media). Tickets $50. Early birds $40. Register with the promo code MASHABLE to get $10 off your ticket price!

September 28, 2010, London, UK: Brands are frequently companies’ most valuable asset. The threats to this valuable asset are increasingly coming through online channels. This event will provide practical solutions and risk mitigation strategies for brand owners to combat these critical risks. Join experts from companies including Abercrombie and Vodafone to benefit from the practical advice and guidance they can provide. Not only will they share their own experience of preventing brand abuse, but will explain how they derive real ROI from their brand protection activities. Mashable readers save 10% on the event with the code KW8079MASH. For more info or to register, please go to http://www.ibclegal.com/obpmash.

September 28, 2010, London, UK: The first ever Mobile and Video in Recruitment Conference has been designed to help recruiters get the most from using mobile and video in Recruitment. This unique conference will include speakers from some of the largest and well-known blue chip companies (including YouTube) who are leading players in mobile and online video. The conference will also include case studies and discussion panels and is aimed at forward-thinking recruiters who want to gain a competitive advantage. Save 15% with the discount code MASHABLE.

September 28, 2010, New York, NY: Discover how to best use online media to target the mature consumer and make your brand stand out among the high school demographic. Delve deep into the minds of both consumer groups during our live consumer panels. Led by Ken Colen of Colen Research, these panels will discuss music discovery and purchasing behavior, social media usage and music gifting. Also slated for the agenda are research and best marketing practices presentations offering fresh perspectives, facts and figures. Event speakers include Lori Bitter, President of ContinuumCrew; Scott Hess, VP of Insights for TRU; Scott Jones CEO/Founder of ChaCha; Ron Roy, Partner at Wines That Rock; Joseph Vella, President & Founder of Vella Interactive and boomitude.com; and Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing Group. For presentation descriptions, pricing and registration information, visit knowyourconsumer.eventbrite.com. Use the promo code Mashable100 to receive $100 off the non-memberr ticket price.

September 29-30, 2010, Singapore: The Customer Show Asia 2010 is providing a unique platform that links loyalty and experience strategies with the latest technological tools and media. This conference will gather the world's largest brands, major stakeholders and leading solution providers in the customer care industry to learn, network, establish partnerships and seal profitable business opportunities. For more information, please visit website at http://www.terrapinn.com/2010/customerasia/index.stm. Register with promo code CSAMAS01 and enjoy 10% discounts.

September 29-30, 2010, New York, NY: The Location-Based Marketing Summit in New York City, is the leading event for Fortune 1000 companies seeking to maximize marketing, commerce and business strategies using location-based services. Attendees receive valuable industry insight that can be immediately utilized in developing a location-based strategy. We give you an inside look at the location based marketing activities of major brands. Hear from companies who’ve made the journey and learn from their experiments and activities. We cut through the hype and separate buzz from success. Register with promo code MASHVIP to save an extra $100 off registration. The full schedule and speakers list can be found here.

September 29-30, Denver, CO: Are you a CEO, Owner, or Marketing Executive wondering how you should be using social media to promote your business? Come to our Free 90-minute Social Media Boot Camp for CEOs where you will learn proven techniques and valuable tips to drive customers to your website and generate new leads. Our expert speaker, Paul Slack, will offer abundant detailed strategies you can immediately put into action. We will be in a different city each week, so please check our listings to see when we will be in your area!

September 29, 2010, London, UK: At a time when organisations are having to cut their budgets for training, marketing and communications, we recognise that having the right skills in-house are more important than ever. With this in mind, sounddelivery are proud to announce The Social Media Exchange Express. During this one-day event, you'll have the opportunity to attend four workshops of your choice. From podcasting and video production, to AudioBoo and social media management, you will get hands-on and learn the skills you need to improve your organisation's online presence and increase your confidence in the use of social media, all in bite-size, one-hour chunks.

September 30-October 1, 2010, Lake Tahoe, NV: Tahoe Tech Talk is NOT just about assembling an outstanding lineup of speakers (though we’ve done that, including Digg founder Kevin Rose, Twitter adviser / investor Chris Sacca, and former Facebook strategist Dave Morin). It’s about creating an opportunity for true discussion. Each speaker will return to the stage for a massive interactive session, taking questions from the audience about the technology sphere in 2010 and beyond. Conference registration includes a complimentary night’s stay at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Resort and Casino… all for just $399! Space is extremely limited, so reserve your spot today! For more details, visit www.tahoetechtalkconf.com.

September 30-October 1, 2010, Málaga, Spain: From the organizers of SearchCongress, a new and professional online marketing event, WebCongress, featuring two days of conferences, workshops and networking, will take place at the Palacio de Ferias y Congresos de Málaga. The event offers a wide range of sessions providing you a complete training in social media, developer, hosting and domains, web design, search and marketing online. Come and share with Google, SEMPO, W3C, Sedo, InternetX and the most impressive experts specializing in SEO, SEM, web analytics, accessibility, usability and social media. For more information, please visit www.wcongress.com/malaga.

September 30, 2010, New York, NY: DigitalFlashNYC Productions, in conjunction with Popular Science magazine, presents POPSCI LIVE, a one of a kind digital tech event. For the first time in New York, the future of consumer electronics—from phones and cameras to next-gen 3-D televisions—will be in your hands. Popular Science Deputy Editor Jake Ward will be on hand to discuss these amazing devices in an interactive Q&A about the future of electronics, and what they mean for the future of media. As part of Advertising Week, this event will be the only place that will be providing an interactive forum for you to hold the gadgets you've always wanted to understand, and to ask tough questions about where it's all headed. There’s also a special discount for the Mashable community – enter coupon code DFNYMASH at checkout for a 15% discount off your ticket. Go to www.digitalflashnyc.com to register.

September 30, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Vator, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to connect and learn from one another, is holding its third Splash competition to find 10 promising early-stage startups to present at the Vator Splash event on Sept 30, Thursday. Enter the competition today and join other onstage presenters, such as Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Twitter COO Dick Costolo, Eventbrite founder and CEO Kevin Hartz, and VCs from First Round, FirstMark, Charles River, Felicis Ventures, Javelin Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, Norwest and many more. Buy your 20% discount ticket here using the code MashableSplash.

September 30, 2010, New York, NY: More than ever, ad operations is integral to online advertising. AdMonsters introduces OPS, a forum for the growing Ad Ops community, and invites everyone to join us and dig in. OPS will deliver a deep understanding of the critical technologies, tools, methods and practices that will enable you to turn online ad operations into a source of greater profit. In true AdMonsters fashion, this one day event will focus on what is actionable today that will lead to long term success. Speaking companies include The Wall Street Journal, Turner Broadcasting, The Weather Channel, MTV, NBC, Havas Digital, Universal McCann and more. See the event page for more details and register today.

September 30, 2010, London, UK: Bringing together collective thoughts on Social Media for 2011. We know its going to be much more than an introduction to Social, we're looking forward into the bigger picture about how we communicate within the platforms and how we measure and integrate Social Media into our strategies. We're bringing together some of the leading authorities in Social Media, from app developers to word of mouth evangelists to discuss where and how the industry is evolving! – 'A forward thinking social media conference'. For more information, please visit http://www.social-collective.com. Mashable readers can receive 25% off ticket prices at registration with promo code MASH25

September 30, 2010, London, UK: Get the latest on the attempts to increase regulation surrounding the moderation of UGC. What qualifies as illegal and inappropriate content and how should it be dealt with? This year Luisa Edwards, Head of Commercial, Google Legal EMEA, will share with you her expertise on the interactive online environment, based on experience managing the legal challenges facing Youtube. Plus attend the workshop Social Networking and the Law: Challenges, Risk & Opportunities; a fully interactive guide on protecting your organisation and maximising on the opportunities that social networking presents. Mashable readers save 10% on the event with this code: KW8094MASH. For more info or to register, go to http://www.ibclegal.com/ugcmash.

September 30, 2010, London, UK: Brightlemon Drupal Training – Drupal Development with Views and CCK: Drupal is a powerful CMS solution on its own – but the add-on modules of Views and CCK take that flexibility to a whole new level. This day is dedicated to turning you into an expert of how to integrate the two modules to get a lot done quickly. Buy tickets here.

October 1-2, 2010, New York, NY: The Open Video Conference (OVC) is a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art and activism to explore the future of video on the web. Join us October 1-2 for two days of learning and inspiration, and stick around for the OVC hack labs, presented in partnership with NYU ITP.

October 1, 2010, New York, NY: Produced by Mediabistro and Social Times, the third annual Social Ad Summit explores best practices for social media marketing and advertising. The rapid growth of social media is providing marketers with larger reach, stronger customer relationships and increased relevance. At this showcase of recent case studies from agencies and brands, you'll see firsthand what is working and learn how to implement a successful strategy for your organization or client. Social networks, publishers, ad agencies, marketers, PR agencies, service providers delivering social advertising and anyone else interested in the latest trends in social media marketing will unite at Social Ad Summit. Speakers include Organic SVP Steve Beck, Turner Sports VP of Marketing Jeff Mirman, Skimlinks Co-founder and CEO Alicia Navarro, and more. Register with promo code MASH and save 15%!

October 1, 2010, London, UK: Brightlemon Drupal Training – Drupal e-commerce solutions with Ubercart (London): The course will introduce you to the world of e-commerce Drupal style and show what a powerful and flexible suite of solutions is available. We will build a shop from scratch and through the process explore the various modules and techniques that are required. The main focus is around the Ubercart set of modules. Buy tickets here.

October 2-3, Vancouver, BC, Canada: The Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit is an annual conference to unite and improve the Drupal Community in the Pacific Northwest region. This year’s Drupal Summit is being organized by volunteers from the Surrey, Vancouver and Victoria Drupal User Groups. The camp will feature both scheduled sessions and “unconference” content on both days. Sessions are proposed by community volunteers and programming decisions will be made based on the interests and Drupal experience level of the attendees. In addition to the scheduled sessions, the camp will feature space for community gatherings, Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, hands-on training and more!

October 2-3, 2010, Philadelphia, PA: PodCamp Philly 2010 is targeted to audio and video podcasters, bloggers, social media enthusiasts, professionals and hobbyists, musicians, marketers, and people who generally want to understand more about the new media space. The power of an unConference is you get open access to ideas, thoughts, best practices, and the true "wisdom of crowds" simply by registering and attending. Find out more at http://www.podcampphilly.com, or sign up at http://podcampphilly2010.eventbrite.com.

October 3, 2010, Victoria, British Columbia: Come to Canada’s most beautiful city, and the first city in the world to proclaim Mashable’s Social Media Day! Whether you are an avid Facebook user, interested in learning about Twitter, or you're trying to grow your business by leveraging social media tools – there is something for everyone at this event! Social Media Camp is a one-day event featuring interesting and knowledgeable speakers from around British Columbia, and across North America! Register with promo code SMCV10 and save 15%!

October 4-5, 2010, Barcelona, Spain: Now in its seventh year in the U.S. and its second year in Europe, PdF brings together the top opinion makers, political practitioners, technologists, and journalists to network, exchange ideas, and explore how technology and the Internet are changing politics, democracy, and society. The conference will combine plenary talks and one-on-one conversations with leading thinkers each morning, followed by afternoon breakout sessions on more focused topics and hands-on skills-development sessions, ending with a major closing plenary panel each day. Register with promo code MASHABLE and save 50 Euros. Find out more at www.personaldemocracy.com/pdf-europe-2010.

October 4-6, 2010, New York, NY: At Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, you'll learn to maximize ROI from paid search advertising, optimize your website content for superior organic search results, expand your skills with local and mobile advertising expertise, master social media marketing on Twitter, Facebook and other SMM networks, boost conversions… and increase sales. Use code "smx100mashable" and save $100 off your registration. For more info visit http://www.smxeast.com.

October 4-7, 2010, Atlanta, GA: FutureMedia Fest 2010 – Explore new paradigms in how Content is Created, Distributed and Consumed with FutureMedia at Georgia Tech. Join our mash-up of talent, ideas, trends and technology. Hear directly from top industry execs and visionaries. Talk with investors. Meet interactive marketing experts. Network with potential partners. Experiment real-time with open innovation. Industry leaders, academics, entrepreneurs and VC's will inspire and challenge attendees with provocative panel discussions, facilitated small discussion groups and hands-on demos of next generation technology. Register today at futuremediaglobal.com and use the code FutureMedia 2010.

October 4-7, 2010, New York, NY: Digital Content Monetization 2010 is a multi-stream summit incorporating only the most senior strategists and decision-makers in Film, Sports, TV, Publishing, Games and Music. You'll learn about the latest projects and strategies from 65+ content-owner speakers including companies like Sony Music, Electronic Arts, Lifetime, Universal Pictures, the NFL, Disney, ESPN, New York Times, Playboy and NASCAR. The conference address the major need of content owners: the need to know how to build sustainable business and technology models to enable multi-platform delivery of digital content. Register and use the promo code Mashable for 10% off.

October 4-8, 2010, Boston, MA: FutureMis the first ever week-long, collaborative, multi-location conference in Boston offering participants the opportunity to tap into the freshest thinkers in marketing, media and technology. Leading innovators will come together to share and explore how the newest technologies and insights are changing the way marketers think, create, engage and measure.

October 5-8 2010, Austin, TX: The Game Developers Conference® Online, formerly GDC Austin, is designed for online and connected game developers creating social network games, free-to-play titles, large scale MMOs, and all types of social games. GDC Online focuses on emerging topics in connected game development including microtransactions, the casualization of MMOs, and new distribution models and is ideal for online gameservice providers, tool vendors, and emerging game technology pioneers. Join industry trailblazers from Bigpoint, Disney, Playdom, Tencent, Relic, Zynga and more to discuss best practices and provide insight on the future of online games. Register with code GDCMASH and save 15% off conference passes. Learn more about GDC Online and start the registration process at www.gdconline.com.

October 5-6, 2010, Prague: EyeforTravel's Online Marketing & Social Media in Travel Summit brings together top travel brands to share key insights on how to maximize the impact of your online marketing and social media initiatives. The 2 days are packed full of case studies, presentations and networking opportunities. Speakers hail from across Europe and include Lufthansa, Lonely Planet, Expedia, TripAdvisor, P&O Cruises and many more. Use the code MASHABLE to claim your €100 discount on the price to attend.

October 5-6, 2010, London, UK: Are you looking to quantify your social media efforts? Do you want to have constant customer engagement? If the answer is yes, join us at in London at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel for iStrategy 2010 to learn, network, share ideas, and understand how to build your online marketing strategy to its fullest potential. iStrategy 2010 London brings together Europe's leaders in social media marketing. iStrategy will give delegates the valuable insight they need to: Harness New Technologies, Drive Revenue Growth, Create Value from Digital Assets, Develop Innovative and Creative Online Strategies and achieve a Market Leading Online Position. Register now and Quote MashableLON to receive a 10% discount.

October 6-7, 2010, Boston, MA: The Inbound Marketing Summit is where the online marketing community gathers to solve today’s marketing and business communications challenges. This event features the brightest minds in the business, including world-renowned authors and practitioners, as well as leaders from some of the companies already using the new tools and strategies. This fast-paced and information-packed event is your check-up on your existing business communications strategies and your prescription for the coming months. On October 6 and 7 join Chris Brogan, Justin Levy and the entire New Marketing Labs team along with hundreds of marketers like yourself and 60+ speakers and sponsors at Gillette Stadium for two days of fast-paced, highly interactive, actionable content. For more information, visit us at: Inbound Marketing Summit. Use the code “MASH50” for a 50% discount.

October 6-7, 2010, Los Angeles, CA: Digital Music Forum West: Over 300 of the most influential decision-makers in the music industry gather in Los Angeles each year for this incredible two-day dealmakers’ forum to network, do deals and share ideas about the business. Digital Music Forum West -– now in its fifth year –- features a lively and fun debate on timely cutting-edge business topics and demos, as well as unrivaled access to some of the most progressive companies in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond. Mashable readers can receive 10% off registration with promo code MASH10.

October 6, 2010, San Francisco, CA: As the patient moves to the center of healthcare delivery, innovative personal health technologies empower the consumer with a wealth of data and information. This new consumer is responding by changing their behaviors and taking ownership over their own health outcomes. VITAL brings together all the key stakeholders shaping this revolution to evaluate consumer preferences, and the impact consumer health technologies have on health outcomes to meet the needs of an empowered digital health consumer. Visit www.iirusa.com/vital/vital.xml for more program information. Please use the promo code XP1554MASH when registering.

October 6, 2010, New York, NY: AdWeb 3.0 is an exclusive event taking place at the Cornell Club in New York City focusing upon the latest in business models, solutions and technologies in the digital advertising business in of data, platforms and monetization from the perspectives of buyers and sellers. Registration is open and available at the discount rate of $495. For more information on registration, and a full roster of speakers and sponsors, visit adweb30.com.

October 6, 2010, Seattle, WA: The International Search Summit is coming to the US for the first time and will be held alongside Localization World at the Bell Harbour Conference Center. As with the European events, the Summit will focus on international and multilingual search marketing topics and offer delegates insight and advice on how to effectively develop and manage international online campaigns. Speakers at the event will include Eugene Lomize from Russian search engine Yandex, Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR, Andy Atkins-Krüger from WebCertain, John Yunker of Byte Level Research and Anne Kennedy from Beyond Ink. Topics covered will include International Video Optimization, Twittering in Tongues, International Link Building and Geolocation. The summit is a must for any marketer targeting multiple markets and/or languages online. Register now with the coupon code MASH20 to receive 20% discount.

October 7-8, San Francisco, CA: Every year we bring you our biggest and brightest conference in the Fall in our beautiful hometown of San Francisco. Health 2.0 always features the most comprehensive line-up of technology innovators, as well as leaders in health care, government and finance, and unveils the best new health care technology startups at Launch! You won't want to miss the Fourth Annual Health 2.0 Conference. With nearly a hundred speakers and plenty of new healthcare demos and technologies on display on stage and in the exhibit hall, you'll get a sweeping overview of the ways that information technology and the web are changing healthcare.

October 7-8, 2010, Las Vegas, NV: Over 100 venture capital and angel investors will review and select the top pitches to speak at the PerfectBusiness Summit 2010 in Las Vegas. Some of this year’s speakers and attendees include John Paul DeJoria (founder of Paul Mitchell & Patron Tequila), Gavin Maloof (owner of the Palms Casino & NBA’s Sacramento King, Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos.com), plus 60 other speakers and over 2,000 attendees. For more information, go to www.PerfectBusiness.com/DISCOUNT20 and receive $20 off tickets

October 7, 2010, New York, NY: Please join Google, Cisco and Wikimedia on Thursday, October 7th, as we discuss issues that even the savviest of brands face today — hosted by WOMMA's Brands Council. The Brands Council is a learning community where marketers from Brands and Non-Profits share best practice advice on how to use Word of Mouth and Social Media marketing more effectively. Register before September 24 and save more than 10% off the full ticket price. Use code WOMMATalkMASH. http://womma.org/events/october-7-talkable-brands-exchange/

Oct. 7, 2010, Cheyenne, WY: Last year’s inaugural event was so great, we’re bringing SocialWyo back. And SocialWyo 2.0 will be free! Build on your knowledge of social media for small business and other applications while learning a bit more about keeping your online life in balance with your offline life with Boulder, Colo.’’s Gwen Bell. The only statewide social media conference in Wyoming will be at Laramie County Community College, and once again is sponsored by LCCC and the LCCC Entrepreneurial Program. Space is limited, so register soon at socialwyo.com.

October 7, 2010, New York, NY: The Great Leaders Conference is an invitation-only annual event for C-Suite and senior executives. The goal of the conference is to examine the Changing Culture of Leadership in a Web 2.0 world. The GLC will honor Great Leaders in Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Advocacy, Sustainability and Innovation. Keynote Speakers include Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos, Wyclef Jean, Founder Yele Haiti, Jeffrey Swartz, CEO Timberland, Stephen McDonnell, CEO Applegate Farms and more. Register by September 3 for best price: $999! Learn more and register at greatleadersconference.com.

October 8-10, 2010, Miami, FL: The Blogalicious Weekend conferences are aimed at celebrating the diversity of women of all ethnicities in social media. Over the course of 3 event-filled days, savvy, influential and talented bloggers will ignite a sense of unity within the multicultural blogging community as well as educate marketers on the importance of our demographic in today's marketplace, all while networking, building relationships, and promoting inspiration and success for each other. Imagine a getaway that combines all of the things that you love about blogging with the added element of face-to-face interactions and the intimacy of "IRL" relationships. At Blogalicious 2010, You'll laugh, you'll learn, you'll let your hair down. It will be just like blogging…only better! Register with the promo code MASHABLE10 and save 5%

October 8-10, 2010, Philadelphia, PA: Experience 24 hours of training in iPhone/iPad Development covering basic to advanced features. It is an established certificate training program that trained over 400 iPhone developers since 2008. Matt Campbell, author of “How to Make an IPhone App" for AppMastery Press, will serve as the instructor. Developers will be able to develop an app after the training. For limited time, a 10% discount off the discounted early bird rate – a $400 savings is offered on the registration page using the discount code mashable.

October 8, 2010, Cambridge, MA: The Beyond Cause Marketing summit is bringing together a diverse group of leaders to create a new framework for how companies, charities, and government can better engage and encourage the public to solve social issues. Let’s face it – Cause Marketing isn’t getting the job done. For all the money and attention raised, not enough is being done to address the major challenges facing society today. It’s time to shift our thinking and approach. Register by September 30th for the $49 rate.

October 9-14, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Unlike other conferences out there, DMA2010 is the only Global ROI Marketing Event, focusing on direct and digital marketing integration across all channels! Learn from 300+ experts from brands like Pepsi, LG, HP and Twitter. Network with 10,000 practitioners from 50+ countries giving youaccess to broad and fresh marketing insights. and, create new partnerships with any of 400+ vendors in the comprehensive Exhibit Hall to learn how to merge direct and digital to maximize your ROI! Register and save an additional $250 with the discount code AN500.

October 10-13, 2010, Cincinnati, OH: The HighEdWeb Conference is nationally recognized as the conference designed by and for all higher education Web professionals — from programmers to marketers to designers to all team members in-between — who want to explore the unique Web issues facing colleges and universities. With more than 60 presentations; a robust poster session; daily general session addresses; pre-and post-conference intensive, hands-on workshops; and multiple high-quality networking opportunities, HighEdWeb attendees receive a high-quality professional development experience packed into just a few days. Register by August 31, 2010 and save $125!

October 12-13, 2010, London, UK: a4uexpo is Europe’s largest Performance Marketing Conference with over 1,000 delegates, 48 diverse conference sessions, an all inclusive middle evening party, a pre and post event networking bash, and a buzzing expo hall all being shared with the leading entrepreneurs and players within the dynamic £10bn Affiliate & Performance Marketing industry. A4uexpo London focuses on quality, knowledge transfer and unparalleled networking opportunities with delegates from around the world, whether you’re a new or established affiliate, agency, entrepreneur, search specialist, merchant or network, a4uexpo is simply a must attend, educational and networking event for those serious about making an impact in Affiliate Marketing. Register online today with code MASHABLE25 and save £25 on a full conference pass for a4uexpo London.

October 12, 2010, Orange County CA: Trust Agents: A Special Night of Networking with Chris Brogan. Well known author, A-list speaker and social media mogul Chris Brogan is in Orange County for 1 night only. With themes from his WSJ and NYT best-selling book Trust Agent and a stellar networking opportunity with some of the top marketers, social media influencers and biz talent in SoCal, we hope you’ll join us. Not in SoCal? Join us for the LIVE or On Demand recorded broadcast here.

October 13-14, 2010, New York, NY: The 2010 Social Media Strategies Conference will feature leading digital, client, and agency experts who will reveal how to use social media to increase business and explore the future of this extremely powerful marketing platform. Presented by YouTube and in Association with Buzz Media, this event will be held October 13-14 in New York City. For more information, visit socialmediastrategiesconference.com.

October 13-14, Princeton, NJ: Brought to you by the producer of the sold-out ePharma Summit, the Multi Channel Pharma Marketing Event brings together product managers and marketing operations under one roof to discuss cross-channel media plans for building brand value and elevating top line sales. Join us at the ONLY industry event focused on breaking down internal silos to achieve channel integration and maximize return on engagement. Visit www.multichannelevent.com for more information. Register with Priority Code XP1515MASH to save 15% off standard registration!

October 13, 2010, Nuremberg, Germany: The Social Media Business Conference 2010 highlights the most crucial aspects of Corporate Social Media and provides professional knowledge relevant for your company's success. The SMBC 2010 combines brand new scientific research results with corporate case studies, presented by leading international enterprises such as Dell, IBM, Sony Electronics, Kodak and Citi. Join tailor-made business panels that deal with the most relevant Corporate Social Media topics such as customer service, marketing, employer branding, performance measurement and social media monitoring. Experience the world of Corporate Social Media and the possibilities, chances and risks the Social Web provides for your business! For more info or to register, visit us at www.roedl.de/smbc.

October 14-15, 2010, London, UK: Creating and distributing video online? Join us at Online Video Strategies this October in London and learn how to choose the online video solutions that meet your needs, increase audience engagement with interactivity, use video for marketing, promotion and branding, deliver video to the iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices, leverage video for internal and external corporate communications, make sure your video gets seen by viewers and search engines and measure the ROI of your video projects. In addition, Online Video Strategies is a featured event at Streaming Media Europe and all delegates enjoy unlimited access to the Streaming Media Expo as part of their registration. Register at streamingmediaglobal.com/ovs. Quote priority code MASHABLE20 for a 20% discount.

October 14-16, 2010, Las Vegas, NV: BlogWorld & New Media Expo is the first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of new media including all forms of blogging, podcasting, social media, social networking, online video, music, Internet TV and radio. The BlogWorld conference features more than 120 educational sessions, panel discussions and keynote presentations, while the New Media Expo features the only industry-wide new media marketplace where thousands converge to network and find all of their online business and marketing resources. Running concurrent with the BlogWorld conference, the Social Media Business Summit is the world's largest social media business conference where marketing executives, business owners and world-renowned companies send their teams to learn the strategies, tactics, tools and technologies they need to build their brands and grow their businesses with social media. Register today with the code MASH20 for 20% off!

October 17-19, 2010. New York, NY: Pivot Conference is the only industry conference to explore and evaluate the attitudes, technologies and preferences of the “always on” 18-34 year old consumer. Attend Pivot Conference and hear from those successfully engaging with today’s emerging consumer and create your own action plan for success. Register today with code MASH101 and save 20%.

October 17-20, 2010, Scottsdale, AZ: SuperGlad describes the prosperous life of agencies on the right side of the digital marketing divide. The “have’s” have it. The “have nots” do not. For an agency, in-house digital marketing expertise is now a must, not a nice-to-have. And does the knowledge permeate the agency or rest with just one person operating as a stand-alone department (who, by the way, could leave you high and dry if something better comes along)? Digital marketing is a core competency of the “have” agencies. You might not need to execute on all of it but you need to understand it and drive the strategy upon which decisions are made surrounding it. BOLO 2010 takes on the big task at hand: explaining why digital media leads the charge in SuperGlad agencies. It is not an afterthought. It is dealt with using creative, media, traffic and account service employees who think traditionally first, then translate that thinking to a digital environment. This event will show you how. $799/person (or $599 for agencyside members). Use discount code mashable to save $125 (more than 15%) off full-price registration at any time.

October 18-22, 2010, Chicago, IL: Discover the tools of engagement at SES Chicago Conference and Expo on October 18-22, 2010. No longer just lecturing your customers, learn to listen and converse in a more social world. Our experts will show you how integrating search, social media, and video in even basic ways will transform both your sites visibility and profitability. Our program features 60+ sessions covering everything from marketing attribution, the business value of social media, brand reputation management and more. Save 15% with promo code MHCH15. Register now!

October 18-20, 2010, Washington, D.C.: As Social Media quickly emerges as more than a communication tool, the U.S. Government must proactively leverage this new "environment" to achieve organizational goals. IDGA's 3rd Social Media for Defense and Government provides a forum for senior Government and Military officials, industry partners and academic communities to align shared goals, showcase new technology and define the way forward. This conference will present advanced social media strategies that not only improve communication but actually utilize the tools to improve effectiveness. Register with code MASH4GOV and receive 20% off the standard three-day event fee!

October 18-19, 2010, Dallas, TX: The Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media Marketing Bootcamp event provides the practical knowledge and insights required by restaurant and hotel operators to establish objectives and strategies for your market, properly select the social media platforms to engage guests and monitor and measure the results of these efforts for a greater ROI. This event is presented by RestaurantWorx Consulting and Inside Hospitality. Use the code MASHABLE when registering and receive VIP pricing on “Day 1″ or “Day 1 & 2 Attendance” tickets. See complete event details on the event website at www.restaurantsocialmedia.com.

October 18-19, 2010, Singapore: Build your company's reputation and profits at Online Reputation Management Asia 2010. It only takes a few blog posts or YouTube videos or Facebook threads to destroy reputation and image. Don’t miss this opportunity to benefit from industry leaders' extensive experience, practical insights, and proven business-building tactics that you need to know. Be sure to secure your spot now! For more information, please visit our website or download the brochure. Mashable members/subscribers are entitled to a 10% discount off the registration fee!

October 18, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Join us for the third annual i-stage startup competition, featuring debuts from game-changing apps, products and services. Presented by CEA, i-stage gives tech startups the opportunity to compete for a share of $50,000 in prize money and a free booth at the 2011 International CES. Audience members get the first look at the industry's newest visionaries and network with high profile investors, media and industry leaders. Past winners include Boxee and Regen Inc's ReNu solar charging system. There is no entry fee for competing start-ups. Mashable readers save 10% on attendee tickets. Register now and use discount code IMASH.

October 18, 2010, Washington DC: Digital East 2010 will feature over 75 leading speakers addressing best practices and trends in Social Media, Mobile, Online Advertising, Ecommerce, Cloud Computing, Web Analytics, Search, Online Video, Email, ORM and more! Hear from brands such as ESPN, Google, Intel, Salesforce.com, AOL, Rosetta Stone, National Geographic and the US Dept of Energy just to name a few. When registering, use the code MASH1 for 20% off.

October 19, 2010, New York, NY: Create business value — and discover insight — in enterprise, web, and social content. Smart Content is the profitable future for media & publishing, advertising & on-line commerce, marketing and PR… and for content consumers. Register now for an unmatched opportunity to learn how.

October 20-22, 2010, Las Vegas, NV: Every year, Stamats Integrated Marketing: Technology Conference brings together digital thought leaders from higher education and corporate America to offer fresh, innovative thinking and hands-on, practical strategies and tactics to take back to campus. The conference will cover the crucial building blocks of integrated digital marketing, including Social Media, mROI, Content and UX. Register with the promo code MASHTECH for $50 off the registration fee and a free pre-conference session.

October 20-21, 2010, Baltimore, MD: The Power of eMarketing Conference provides the perfect forum for actionable and relevant best practices, processes and case studies that will transform and improve your marketing programs. 35+ Speakers – 4 Dynamic Modules – 12 Breakout Roundtables – 15 Presentations – 2 Keynote Sessions – 4 Panel Sessions and one great networking party! The conference has several tracks and will cover social, search, email and emerging marketing technology. Register with the promo code linkedin and receive a special 10% discount off your registration.

October 21–22, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Influence People is hosting a one-day social media monitoring conference in San Francisco on 21 October, followed by a half-day training bootcamp on October 22. Monitoring Social Media (San Francisco) will bring together leading brands, PR and marketing experts to discuss the latest ideas, trends and techniques in social media monitoring and measurement. Through a series of presentations, panels and expert-led discussions, we will explore the critical issues that marketers and PR professionals are facing in their efforts to monitor their social media interactions. Register with code mashable to get a 10% discount.

October 20, 2010, Mumbai, India: Social media marketing is about fostering relationships with your end users to continue product and service excellence. Social media websites are also growing by almost 100% year after year in India. This multi-faceted conference will equip you with a holistic approach to social media marketing, providing you with fresh ideas on brand presence, social media tools, current market risks and innovative strategies to improve your organisation's products & services. The Social Media Summit 2010 will examine how social media culture and social networking platforms are having a major impact on business communication, practices and processes. Social Media Marketing is undergoing a lot of structural changes and is poised to grow and contribute greater revenues to the industry in years to come. Please visit our website for more information.

October 21-22, 2010, Princeton, NJ: IIR's 2nd Annual Value-Driven Pharma is not just another managed market event – it delves deeper than ever before to give you the tools to reconcile government, payer and patient perspectives on drug valuation to bring you closer to the patients you serve. Visit www.valuedrivenpharma.com for full program information. Please use the promo code XP1580MASH when registering.

October 22-23, 2010, Petaluma, Sonoma County, CA: SocialBizWorld is a 2-day Social Media and Web 2.0 business conference for private and public-sector business executives, leaders, managers, employees and consultants looking for insightful speakers, hands-on workshops, in-depth discussions and real-world examples to move their business forward with new media. With Basic, Intermediate and Advanced tracks, attendees will have full access to multiple sessions on both days, have numerous networking opportunities, attend the Friday evening Awards and Business Networking reception (with Special Guest “The TwitchHiker”) and have access to experts gathering in Northern California from all over the country. Join us for this fantastic event in beautiful Sonoma County, at the foot of wine country, minutes from Sonoma and Napa, and just 30 minutes north of San Francisco. Mashable readers receive 15% off conference registration with promo code MASHED. Please visit socialbizworld.com for more information.

October 22-23, 2010, Atlanta, GA: Social Media Experts will be in high demand as social media becomes an integral part of PR and marketing campaigns. Will you be one? Designed specifically for marketing and PR professionals of all backgrounds, non-profit organizations and small business owners, the Integrating Social Media Conference goes beyond the buzz words to real-world and proven methods for successfully incorporating social media into your current marketing and PR strategies. You'll hear firsthand from social media experts including Shiv Singh of Pepsi Co., The Brand Builder's Olivier Blanchard, WholeFoods's Marla Erwin, HubSpot's Mike Volpe, Kellye Crane of Crane Communications and more. Register with promo code MASH and save 20%.

October 22, 2010, Nashville, TN: Social Media Marketing Workshops 101 & 201 — a full day, hands-on training for businesses who want to create a social media marketing campaign from the ground up. Featuring top 10+ networking sites with step-by-step setup guides on each application with strategies on how they all work together. Sessions include blogging strategy, social CRM, social monitoring, email & mobile marketing, best of Google Analytics, SEO tactics and special focus on Wordpress websites for businesses. These are no-nonsense, intensive learning workshops you wont find anywhere else! Register with the promo code MASH and save $100!

October 21, 2010, Mountain View, CA: See “Super Angel” pioneer Mike Maples Jr. speak at the The Founder Showcase – Silicon Valley’s premier startup pitch and networking event. This quarterly event brings together over 300 investors, founders, and members of the press to hear talks from leading CEOs, and pitches from 10 hot technology start-ups. Over $1.5mm has been raised by presenting companies at previous Founder Showcase events. Tickets start at just $40 – to register or enter the free Pitch Competition, go to www.FounderShowcase.com. Mashable readers get 15% off by using discount code mashable_15.

October 25-26, 2010, Northborough, MA: The Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media Marketing Bootcamp event provides the practical knowledge and insights required by restaurant and hotel operators to establish objectives and strategies for your market, properly select the social media platforms to engage guests and monitor and measure the results of these efforts for a greater ROI. This event is presented by RestaurantWorx Consulting and Inside Hospitality. Use the code MASHABLE when registering and receive VIP pricing on “Day 1″ or “Day 1 & 2 Attendance” tickets. See complete event details on the event website at www.restaurantsocialmedia.com.

October 25, 2010, Orlando, FL: IIR presents CUSTOMER WORLD, the co-location of three unique customer-centric events (NACCM, Linkage Strategies & Customer UNinterrupted) under one roof. Where the Voice of Your Industry comes together to champion and celebrate CUSTOMERS 1ST. Customer World's flagship event, NACCM, is an industry favorite. It attracts top customer-centric leaders in North America to share new and best practices for strengthening customer relationships. Content areas include customer-centric social media strategies, loyalty, customer experience, innovation, culture, engagement, leadership and more. Register with code CWORLD10MASH and save 15% off the standard rates.

October 26-28, 2010, Frankfurt, Germany: The Enterprise 2.0 wave has spilled over the corporations' boundaries and creates a good deal of discussion about the way businesses will be managed in the future. "Setting the path towards an open and agile E 2.0 driven organization" is therefore the topic of this year's Enterprise 2.0 Summit, the gathering of European experts and practitioners discussing technology trends and adoption topics on Enterprise 2.0. The English-language conference consists of interactive workshops, seminars, expert talks and best practices from all over Europe, e. g. BMW, Hewlett Packard, SONY, Swiss Reinsurance Company, etc. Go to www.e20summit.com and register with the promo code MASH10 and save 10%!

October 26-27, 2010, San Francisco: Join Us at PayPal X Innovate 2010 Developer Conference – The only developer conference dedicated to payments, the PayPal X Innovate 2010 Developer Conference invites developers to explore new ways to integrate payments into web pages, applications, and products using PayPal's open, global APIs. Developers get the chance to code live with PayPal engineers; attend hands-on technical sessions; and network with 2000 peers. Register by September 15th and save $100. Register now.

Participate in the PayPal X Developer Challenge – The PayPal X Developer Challenge is offering a $100,000 grand prize for the most innovative application that integrates the PayPal X Platform. The Challenge also includes X Awards, additional prizes of $10,000
each, in addition to the grand prize in specified categories like mobile, cross-border payments, and integration with Yahoo technologies or eBay. Learn more and submit ideas at www.x.com.

October 26, 2010, San Jose, CA: Get real about social media at SocialTech 2010 — the only conference dedicated to teaching B2B high-tech marketers how to harness the power of social media. You’ll learn from B2B marketing leaders at companies like IBM, Intel, SAP, HP, Adobe and Cisco how to use social media to achieve real, measurable business results. Enjoy networking and keynotes from Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang. Can't make it to San Jose? You can join us online. Register today and save 10% with coupon code MASH10!

October 27-28, 2010: The Caribbean Media Conference & Expo have become the Caribbean's premier regional conference on television, cable and satellite, broadband, wireless, radio, magazines, news and print media, advertising and marketing. The 2010 Caribbean New Media Expo and Conference is unique in that it seeks to strengthen the relationships with new media companies, marketers and advertisers to further capitalize on the benefits of digital, social and mobile media. Presentations and panel discussions will help marketers understand concepts such as online-display advertising, search and social networking and how the impact of new technologies has wrought consumer behavior changes.

October 27-29, 2010, Washington, DC: This event will showcase 15 federal perspectives on different strategies government agencies can implement to comply with the Obama Administration's Open Government Directive. The social media realm will be a prevailing topic of discussion as it has been the prime means federal agencies have taken to achieve compliance, but problems with its use still persist. This event will provide ADVANCED solutions and ideas to the policy, security, monitoring and measuring struggles that many agencies face on a daily-basis. Mashable subscribers will enjoy a 10% discount when they mention MASHABLE in their follow-up email to the event contact listed here: event.

October 27, 2010, New York, NY: With millions of people participating on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, brands can no longer avoid social media as an effective research and marketing channel. ocial Media Bootcamp: Social Media for Research and Marketing explores best practices for using social media as a research and marketing tool. Hear case studies that identify the best tools for listening to the consumer and the best ways to use social networks to listen to and engage your consumers. Speakers include: Chris Boudreaux – Converseon, Frank Cotignola – Kraft Foods, Jeff Rosenblum – Questus, Peter Fasano and The ARF's Lynne d Johnson and Steve Rappaport. $200 discount for ARF Industry Leader Forum registrants.

October 28-30, 2010, Toronto, Canada: Today, companies recognize that Social Media is an important part of an integrated strategy that is woven into every fiber of Sales, Marketing, PR, Advertising, Customer Relations and Branding campaigns. The second unGeeked Elite three-day Retreat brings together 10 keynotes and 16 presenters who'll provide you with examples of best practices, solutions and case studies in a forum where keynotes and presenters ask you to engage, poke them in the eye with questions and get one-on-one responses in this intimate learning environment. RSVP with the promo code unGeekedMashable and save 30% off regular ticket price!

October 28-29, 2010, Chicago, IL: Your customers are more empowered than ever before with social and mobile connections. The only defense you have is to empower your own employees to solve those customers' problems. Forrester's Consumer Forum 2010 connects you with analysts, peers, and industry leaders whose expertise will help you unleash your employees and transform your company. Register with promo code CFXMSH to save 15%. Discount applies to new registrations only and cannot be combined with other offers.

October 28-29, 2010, Exeter, UK: The Like Minds Conference – Autumn 2010 is a 2 day event attended by participants from across Europe focusing upon the subject of “Creativity and Curation”. This year, we have a range of workshops, keynotes and lunch time talks from leaders in marketing, communications and media from around the world. Then, you can relax on Thursday and Friday night with the Like Movies and Like Music festivals. Details and registration at www.wearelikeminds.com.

October 28, 2010, New York, NY: At The AARF Industry Leader Forum: Discovering Consumer Insights, the ARF will unveil its new "Insights Value Creation Model", preliminary results from executive interviews with leading marketing and business executives about research's impact. Industry leaders will share their visions, successes and plans to address the transformation of the research profession, and attendees will learn the skills they need to translate insights into actionable organizational change and how to sustain it. Headline speakers include: Donna Goldfarb – Unilever, Beth LaPierre – Eastman Kodak, Charles Mohs – Pfizer, Drew Westen – author of The Political Brain and Susan Whiting – The Nielsen Company. Register by September 24 to save $100 with our Early Bird rate.

October 28, 2010, London, UK: The International Search Summit will focus once again on international and multilingual search marketing topics and offer delegates insight and advice on how to effectively develop and manage international online campaigns. Speakers at the event will include Eugene Lomize from Russian search engine Yandex, Omar Khaled from Arabic search Engine Ayna, as well as well-known search marketers Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Marty Weintraub, Massimo Burgio and Barry Lloyd. The Summit will be held at The British Library in London and is a must for any marketer targeting multiple markets and/or languages online. Register now with the coupon code MASH20 to receive 20% discount.

October 28, 2010, New York, NY: Join a select group of senior communications professionals in helping you build an integrated PR and marketing engagement strategy that maximizes your impact with your targeted audiences and key influencers. PR+MKTG Camp™ East limits talking head powerpoint presentations. Executives from top agencies and some of the world’s largest brands will lead HIGHLY INTERACTIVE discussions on such topics as assessing the current media landscape, building a integrated strategic engagement vision, executing an action plan, and measuring your results. Mashable readers get a 10% discount with promo code MASHABLECAMPEAST.

November 1-2, 2010, New York, NY: Are you a health marketing and communications professional? Please join us at unNiched 2010, a unique collaborative boot camp where you will actively learn and use collaboration, strategic marketing and communications skills. Using our unNiched Innovation Model, gain the tools to create and drive marketing communications success within (and without) your organization. In addition, you’ll have access to a private online group and learn from a range of experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AIDS.gov, Edelman, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab. Use the discount code Mashable and get 10% off.

November 1-2, 2010, Dubai, UAE: Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Summit at Total Marketing Discuss and debate the opportunities and challenges faced by marketers in leveraging social media as a marketing tool. Hear from leading organizations on how they managed to turn Twitter and LinkedIn amongst others into powerful communication channels! Getting in at the top of any search remains a key focus for many organizations today. Hear from leading practitioners on how best practice strategies and innovative methods to get the most out of the internet. Register and save 15% when using code MASHABLE-TM. For more information, visit www.totalmarketing2010.com.

November 3-5, 2010, San Francisco, CA: DevLearn|10 is the super-charged conference and expo for those involved in the design, development, or management of e-Learning. DevLearn|10 offers the industry's largest expo, over a hundred sessions covering the latest e-Learning tools, technologies, and strategies, plus exciting content stages like the Social Learning Camp, Mobile Learning Jam, Serious Games Zone, and Learning Media Studio . If you want to know what’s coming next in the world of e-Learning and what the top people in the field are thinking, this popular, cutting-edge conference is the place to be.

November 3, 2010, Frankfurt, Germany: The viscom tec.10 conference focuses upon how to create a customer focused experience with technology. Thanks to modern technologies, consumers are now more networked and better informed than ever before. Used to finding the ideal product by making comparisons and consulting with others on a wide range of webservices. In the future the challenge for marketing and technology providers will be to reach this “always on” generation in real life. The conference will highlight the perspectives and visions of the different sectors: from traditional advertising and out-of-home possibilities to web and mobile-based communication and digital signage. Use the early bird pricing and save 200 EUR.

November 4-6, 2010, Savannah, GA: Geekend is the interactive conference phenomenon you have been waiting your whole life for. Geekend is your chance to interact with people taking the tech and creative industries by storm. Join us this November as the brightest geeks, designers, developers, artists, and social media mavericks flock to Savannah for a weekend filled with cutting edge speakers, fun-filled after parties, and amazing networking opportunities. Speakers include Noah Everett of Twitpic, Scott Stratten of Unmarketing, Margaret Francis of Lithium, and many more.

November 4-5, 2010, New York, NY: Influence People is hosting a one-day social media monitoring conference in New York on November 4th, followed by a half-day training bootcamp on November 5th. Monitoring Social Media (New York) will bring together leading brands, PR and marketing experts to discuss the latest ideas, trends and techniques in social media monitoring and measurement. Though a series of presentations, panels and expert-led discussions, we will explore the critical issues that marketers and PR professionals are facing in their efforts to monitor their social media interactions. Register with code mashable to get a 10% discount. Limited tickets still available at www.socialmediamarketing.co.uk.

November 8-11, 2010, Las Vegas, NV: PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry’s biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon holds cutting edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon Las Vegas will also hold a one day two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry’s most respected search professionals. PubCon makes all of this available at some of the most affordable registration rates in the industry. Please use the code ma-8201210 for 10% off the registration price.

November 8-11, 2010, Santa Clara, CA: See the latest collaboration tools and technologies at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara’s comprehensive conference and expo. Gain thought leadership — from strategy to execution and performance monitoring — to bring the power of collaboration to your organization, accelerate information flow, drive revenue and increase productivity. Register with the promo code CNUJES04 to save $100 off the onsite price for passes or for a free expo pass.

November 9-10, 2010, Toronto, Canada: Take back practical strategies for integrating social media tools and measure their ROI at your company – all in just 2 days! The Canadian Institute's 4th Annual Conference on Social Media will provide you with the right tools to integrate and measure the impact of social media in your organization. Learn how to increase the number of your followers, handle negative publicity and attacks in social media, strategically leverage social media as a key tool in crisis communications and much more. Enter Mashable discount code 207AX03 to get 15% off the conference.

November 9, 2010, Philadelphia, PA: BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media features 8 great case studies on the best social media programs at large corporations. SAP, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Scholastic, SunGard, The Hershey Company, Pfizer, and BlackRock share case studies in corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal. From GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council. Save $39 off registration by using the promo code ILoveMashable.

November 9, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Agencies and advertising brands are invited to The Bees Awards – 1st international social media competition for marketing professionals. 20 judges from 13 different countries will gather at the Legion of Honor to grant recognition to the best industry practices. Honor will be granted in 16 different categories including: best use of social media platform, best conversation with consumers, best campaign, agency of the year, client of the year, and others. You are invited to submit your work before October 1st and join the celebrations on November 9th at www.beesawards.com.

November 10-12, 2010, Orlando, FL: Please join the Social Media Club for their first annual conference, Social Media University, in Orlando, FL. The Social Media University event will be a deep dive into the higher ideals and issues affecting Social Media itself, including the rise of the Social Media Professional. It will be quite different from what you have experienced at other conferences on social media. With John Hagel III, David Meerman Scott, KD Paine, Tom Foremski and many other social media masters as our 'faculty', this conference will be invaluable for all Social Media Professionals. Please visit www.socialmediauniversity for more information!

November 11, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Social Media Prom, presented by @FunnyOrDie, is for anyone and everyone who didn’t have a chance to go to prom. Or maybe you did, but you were the wallflower, someone poured punch down your dress, or gave you a wedgy and hung you from a locker. This is your chance to shine, and relive what you may not have been able to experience from the backseat of the car or behind the bleachers. Visit www.socialmediaprom.com to get your tickets! Don’t have a date? No big deal, go stag! Tickets are $20 for couples and $15 for singles.

November 11, 2010, London, UK: The first London Social Gaming Summit is a one day event focused on the intersection of games and the social web. The event focuses on helping social games developers build, monetize, and grow their social games. We’re bringing together the leaders in free-to-play games, social networking, and payments infrastructure for a full day of panels and talks.

November 12, 2010, London, UK: The first London Virtual Goods Summit is a one day event focused on the emerging market opportunity for virtual goods and economies. Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are beginning to influence the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets. The market for virtual goods continues to grow – join us for engaging talks and panels designed to highlight important trends in this fast growing market. This is a must-attend event for those in the games, social media, and entertainment markets. Register now with the promo code MASHABLE010 for 15% off!

November 15–18, 2010, London, UK: Europe's definitive customer strategy experience. Focusing on the strategy behind the concept of loyalty, Loyalty World will provide you with the insight and tools to develop the ultimate loyalty initiative to support your business goals and add measurable value to your bottom line. Loyalty World will examine the relationship between your brand and your customers, look at what drives consumer behaviour, and help you understand how you can identify and harness new trends and tools to really drive engagement. Loyalty World attracts participants from some of the world's most reputable brands. With speakers from retail, financial services, travel, leisure, utilities and telecoms, you will gain cross-transferable loyalty insights and experiences that will help rejuvenate your loyalty strategy, attract, engage and retain customers, and strengthen your market. Register here and SAVE 10%.

November 15, 2010, London, UK: The virtual goods model is the revenue-generating sensation that is taking the world by storm, from games publishers to media companies, from social-networking sites to consumer brands. The Virtual Goods World Europe 2010 promises to be the next step for your business! Major brands will come together to discuss the opportunities presented by the rise of virtual goods. Social networking sites will participate, to learn more from the brands and create business models for the future. Games publishers and developers will learn best practice customer acquisition strategies. All participants will learn new opportunities presented by advances in alternative payment systems. Register now with the promo code VGWMASH and save 10%!

November 17-19, 2010, Las Vegas, NV: The WOMMA Summit 2010 is the pinnacle of all we’ve learned this year as well as trends to watch in 2011 and beyond. WOMMA Summit 2010 showcases the NEXT and BEST practices from some of the innovative and forward thinking brands in word of mouth and social media marketing today. Register before October 1 and save $200 off the full ticket price. Use code WOMMASummitMASH.

November 17-18, 2010, Raleigh, NC: Internet Summit 2010 will feature over 100 speakers and an audience of over 1500 internet execs, entrepreneurs and senior marketers. Join dozens of industry leaders and innovators in the conversation on topics such as Social Media, Mobile, Cloud Computing, Geolocation, Online Advertising, Analytics, Video, E-commerce and more. Use registration code MASH for 20% off.

November 17, 2010, Phoenix, AZ: Fifth Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference (AZEC10). In the current environment, some companies will still come out stronger than before. Has your business suffered? Have you been laid off? Are you trying to grow in difficult circumstances? Here at AZEC10, we’ve got your back. Local investors, local entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley veterans will spend the day discussing the realities of business today. You MUST meet these people and learn from them during the Great Re-Set of 2010. This is the premier entrepreneurship conference in Arizona, benefitting the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation.

November 18-19, 2010, New York, NY: Get your tickets now to attend NextGen:Charity, a conference on non-profit innovation being held in New York City. Learn and network with 500+ executive-level professionals of non-profits and foundations. Featured speakers include Seth Godin, Scott Harrison, Arianna Huffington, Nancy Lublin, Randi Zuckerberg. Visit our website for more information, to learn about all our presenters and get your tickets. Click here to register now!

November 18, 2010, Madrid, Spain: Stepping out of the comfort zone: Innovation & Social Media in Healthcare. Advertising in the new markets of conversations is the big challenge, and realizing that you no longer have the control of the brand is difficult to assume and scary. But wanted or not, the conversation is out there. HCPs are right now storytelling their opinions, experiences, unmet needs, therapeutic strategies and ideas via the Social Web. They are looking for connectivity and knowledge in these new ecosystems which are "common and global grounds". The word of mouth surpasses, in credibility, the traditional communication tools.

November 18, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Join the Real-Time Revolution with code MASHABLE and save 20%! Register today at http://twtrcon.com/sf10. Real-time tools are transforming business, government and non-profits. At TWTRCON SF 2010, you'll see case studies and learn best practices from leading organizations that are using the real-time web to deliver bottom-line results. Speakers from Ford, H&R Block, Wells Fargo, SAP, Southwest, Twitter, Google, stickybits, Roxy Theatre, StatusNet, OneRiot and more. New at TWTRCON SF: Hands-on workshops designed to let you learn the how-tos of real-time applications, tools and platforms. Register at http://twtrcon.com/sf10 use the promo code MASHABLE for 20% off.

November 18, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Calling all women in technology! Vator, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to connect and learn from one another, and Girls in Tech, a social network for women in technology, are holding their first event, Amplify, to recognize women-led startups. Silicon Valley legend Esther Dyson will be the keynote speaker, sharing advice on what it takes to build a company. Amplify is a day-long event and will be held on November 18th in San Francisco. To be among the 15 women-led startup presenters, be sure to enter the competition here. Register and use the promo code MashableAmplify for a 20% discount.

November 25, 2010, London, UK: The media and marketing industry's Global GREEN Awards 2010 recognise and reward creative work that communicates the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility, sustainable development and ethical best practice in any sector and across any marketing discipline. Now in its 5th year the GREEN AWARDS™ are going Global, this year for the first time, all the categories are opened for entry from all over the world. The Awards illustrate the crucial role that needs to be played by green marketing and sustainability communications in informing people about green issues, products and lifestyle choices, and showcase examples of excellence and best practice in communicating sustainability and green issues. The Awards are now open for entry. For more information about the 16 categories and entry process, please visit http://www.greenawards.co.uk.

November 30, 2010 – December 2, 2010, London, UK: Online Information is the largest UK event dedicated to the information industry. Taking place in the Grand Hall at London's Olympia, the exhibition attracts more than 9,000 visitors each year from around the world. This unique, free to attend event consists of an exhibition with more than 200 international exhibitors alongside an extensive seminar programme. Online Information covers 6 core segments: Content Resources, ePublishing Solutions, Library Management, Content Management, Search Solutions and Social Media, providing an annual meeting place for this global industry. Mashable readers may register to attend here.

November 30-December 1, 2010, London, UK: Apps World aims to address the entire app ecosystem and the challenge of delivery, development and design of apps across multiple platforms. The event will bring together leading operators and app stores worldwide, and draw in parallels between the mobile & TV app platforms. Register now to receive the early-bird discount.

November 30, 2010, London, UK: Social Recruiting Conference will gather together leading employers and recruitment industry professionals, to passionately discuss and practically demonstrate the power of Social Recruiting. The conference will be unlike any other Social Media Recruiting conferences you have attended. Our aim is to take the talk from theory to practice; and shift conversations from hype and hope to reality and results. #SRCONF will focus on Social Recruiting case studies, with measurable ROIs. Save 10% when you register with the code MASH10 at http://www.srconf.com.

November 30, 2010, London, UK: Hear how 21 heavyweight brands, including Facebook, Sainsbury’s, Google-YouTube, COI, King of Shaves, Motorola, JustGiving, BBC, Volvo, M&S, FT, Jaguar, Eurostar and Santander are demonstrating real results from social media at the Social Media Results For PR & Comms Conference. Tried and tested strategies to genuinely engage audiences, fully embed and integrate social media practices and clearly demonstrate real results. Mashable readers receive a £150 discount with the promo code MASHABLE if you book before August 19. Click here to download the conference brochure.

December 1-2, 2010, Berlin, Germany: Lead generation, lead nurturing, inbound marketing, B2B social media marketing, SEO, storytelling, mobile marketing and blogging, B2B marketers are facing new challenges in building profitable marketing strategies. The first BB2B Marketing Europe event features a keynote presentation by Chris Brogan and will bring together European B2B marketers to share knowledge through real-world case studies, best practices, lessons learned and offer networking opportunities with some of the biggest brands and businesses today – Forrester Research, Google, Philips, Dassault Systemes, Accenture, HP, Honeywell, Canon, Kodak, Symantec, HubSpot, iTive and more. Register by September 30th to receive an early bird discount.

December 1, 2010, London, UK: The Mobile Cloud Computing Forum will provide a full perspective of mobile cloud computing and SaaS from business value through integration and implementation and to the emergent trends in the industry. Meet some of the best known mobile cloud computing and SaaS professionals in person and exchange your experiences. Register with promo code MCMASH20 and save 20%!

December 1, 2010, Toronto, Canada: The Canadian New Media Awards recognize the highest standards of excellence in all areas of Canadian digital media and seek to honour individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievements over the past year. The CNMA gala will take place during nextMEDIA Toronto at the Design Exchange. Visit www.nextmediaevents.com/cnma for more information.

December 2-3, 2010, Berlin, Germany: Gone are the days of paper surveys or email questionnaires where you often get poor response rates. With the advancement of mobile technology, surveys can be seamlessly integrated into mobile apps, making it more fun for consumers to respond than traditional methods. The international conference on Market Research in the Mobile World: The Next Frontier will be held on the 2 & 3 December 2010 in Berlin. The aim of this conference is to bring together top researchers and practitioners to discuss the key challenges and opportunities of using mobile research applications for generating actionable insights. Mashable subscribers will enjoy a 20% discount off the full registration fee when they use the promo code mashable20 before November 15th.

December 6-7, 2010, Los Angeles, CA: The LA Mobile Entertainment Summit is brought to you by the producers of the widely acclaimed 3D Entertainment Summit, this high level strategy and networking event will explore all facets of the mobile entertainment industry. This event will be presented in association with Variety and in partnership with the Mobile Excellence Awards, the industry's most prestigious awards program for the mobile industry. Located in the heart of the Entertainment industry, the Summit will attract the brightest minds in the mobile ecosystem. Delivering two days of packed in-depth discussions, the summit will deliver strategies to capitalize on this rapidly changing landscape, attracting senior level decision makers, leading press and market analysts.

December 6, 2010, Los Angeles, CA: The Mobile Excellence Awards offers invaluable exposure, PR, branding and networking with the who’s who in mobile entertainment, media, & technology. The event has become one of the most influential and prestigious in the industry, honoring the best in mobile entertainment, technology, marketing & media. Attendees represent the entire mobile ecosystem, including execs from all major studios, entertainment companies, brands, content providers, industry influencers & press. Deadline for submissions is September 20th!

December 7-9, 2010, Santa Clara, CA: Taking place in the heart of Silicon Valley, BIA/Kelsey's Interactive Local Media 2010 (ILM:10) is a unique, three-day mega-conference featuring the true innovators of local media, local directories, local search, local mobile, local social and local direct marketing. One highlight is a special Mobile Local SuperForum offering the deepest and most strategic dive ever presented in the mobile local space. Head's up: Local is hot, and this year's conference should be BIA/Kelsey's largest ever. Register with promo code ILMMASH and save $200!

December 8-10, Reno, NV: Join professionals from marketing, tourism, gaming, service industries and nonprofits in Reno-Tahoe's amazing ski country for Social Media at Reno Tahoe (SM@RT), one of the best values of any similar national conference in 2010. Speakers, along with specialized breakout session presenters, include top authors, practitioners and strategist from media giant, Gannett, winter travel destinations, Vail Resorts, and many other experts in building business for professional service firms. Anchored by the University of Nevada, and its business and journalism schools, attendees get specialized instruction to return home with ways to immediately improve their social media marketing. Register now and save and an additional $100 online for the main conference with the discount code MASH.

January 20-22, 2011, Mumbai, India: Click Asia Summit 2011 is designed to be Asia's largest digital & mobile marketing conference and expo where industry thought leaders congregate to discuss online marketing, challenges faced by agencies, and the changing face of social media. Click Asia Summit 2011 is going to change the way you look at Digital and Mobile marketing. Please register by clicking here. http://www.clickasiasummit.com/register

February 7-10, 2011, Orlando, FL: ARC's 2011 World Industry Forum: Driving Innovation, Sustainability and Performance will take place at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld! This forum will focus on challenges that will help you develop winning strategies. It provides an ideal environment for industry executives to collaborate, share ideas, and find new ways to attack their most pressing problems. The event includes sessions on the major issues facing our industry, with multiple tracks that enable executives to explore these topics from different perspectives. Owner/operators, solution providers, & technical experts will all benefit while contributing to the community's body of knowledge.

February 7-9, 2011, New York, NY: Now in its 10th year, the ePharma Summit is going to be bigger than ever. We are looking ahead to new trends and opportunities in digital marketing with unparalleled insight from leading industry innovators. Join us for more novel mobile strategies, more regulatory insights, more customer perspectives, and more examples of what is really working now from the organizations you admire most. Join us February 7-9 in New York City at the most respected digital marketing event for the life sciences industry as we explore innovative e-strategies and proven techniques to drive business. Register with promo code XP1606MASH and save 10%.

March 8-9, 2011, Brussels, Belgium: Are you looking to unleash the power of social media for CRM? As new channels and strategies emerge it is increasingly important to meet face-to-face to share knowledge, challenges and experiences. Enterprise Social 2.0: CRM will bring social media marketers and CRM experts together to share knowledge through real-world case studies, best practices, lessons learned and offering networking opportunities with some of the biggest brands and businesses today. Past speakers include: Google, Kodak, L'Oreal, Philips, Nokia, Lego, Siemens, Vodafone, SWIFT, SAP, Roger Smith Hotel, Dominos Pizza, Airbus and more. To receive a special discount, register now!

March 28-29, 2011, Paris, France: The Marketing 2.0 Conference features leading social media experts who will discuss and learn about the social media initiatives from brands, advertisers, researchers and analysts. Hear from leading people in social media about their strategies, revenue models and how they are approaching upcoming trends in the field. The event will also examine the current market conditions, future forecasts and predictions from leading researchers. Use the promo code mash2011 to receive a discount off the registration price.

April 13-15, 2011, Singapore: The Internet Show Asia 2011 is a series of seminars and a large end-to-end showcase of the latest internet technologies and solutions. More than 10,000 attendees will be at the exhibition and conference to find new ways of doing internet business and enhancing product offerings through the internet – through case study presentations and speaking directly with solution partners. The show will aim to increase your ROI, it's all about business, not a technology show. For more details and registrations, please visit www.theinternetshows.com/2010/Singapore.

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Amazon Trashes the iPad in New TV Ad [VIDEO]

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 03:27 PM PDT


Amazon has thrown down the gauntlet in a new television ad that directly takes on the shortcomings of the Apple iPad.

The ad, which aired earlier today on Good Morning America, promotes the new Kindle 3 and its new $139 price point. It also directly compares it to what is clearly meant to be an iPad. The two key points Amazon makes about the iPad are that it’s impossible to read in the sunlight and that it costs far more than the new Kindle.

The Kindle 3 may lack color, a large marketplace of applications and the iPad’s screen real estate; but it boasts improved responsiveness, an updated e-ink screen, a month’s worth of battery life and a more affordable price point.

Clearly, Amazon believes its product’s price will help convince consumers to choose its device over the incredibly popular iPad. The Kindle 3 has done pretty well for itself, though; it holds the distinction of being the fastest-selling Kindle ever.


Do you think the ad makes a good point — good enough to sell a few more Kindle 3 units, at least?

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The Future of Social Media in Journalism

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 01:13 PM PDT


This series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. See how it works here.

newsThe future of social media in journalism will see the death of "social media." That is, all media as we know it today will become social, and feature a social component to one extent or another. After all, much of the web experience, particularly in the way we consume content, is becoming social and personalized.

But more importantly, these social tools are inspiring readers to become citizen journalists by enabling them to easily publish and share information on a greater scale. The future journalist will be more embedded with the community than ever, and news outlets will build their newsrooms to focus on utilizing the community and enabling its members to be enrolled as correspondents. Bloggers will no longer be just bloggers, but be relied upon as more credible sources. Here are some trends we are noticing, and we would love to hear your thoughts and observations in the comments below.

Collaborative Reporting

Reporting has always in some ways been a collaborative process between journalists and their sources. But increasingly, there’s a merger between the source and the content producer. As a result, more journalism will happen through collaborative reporting, where the witness of the news becomes the reporter, says David Clinch, editorial director for Storyful and a consultant for Skype. Journalists, Clinch says, must be able to pivot quickly between the idea of using the community as a source of news and as the audience for news, because they are both.

This requires a shift in the mindset of journalists, who are used to deciding what news is and how it is covered, produced and distributed, said Alfred Hermida, professor of integrated journalism at the University of British Columbia. "Social media by its very definition is a participatory medium," Hermida said. "There is a potential for greater engagement and connection with the community, but only if journalists are open to ceding a degree of editorial control to the community."

For those who involve the community in the reporting process, the payoff can be great. A noteworthy example is the way the newly launched TBD.com, a news startup in Washington D.C., has integrated social media and enlisted a community of bloggers into the newsgathering and production process, creating a collaborative reporting environment. This has allowed them to lay claim to several local scoops, said Liz Heron, social media producer at The New York Times. Heron also says TBD’s engaged community gave them an edge in reporting the Discovery Channel hostage situation.

The fact is, whether to the detriment of news gathering or to its benefit, there is no longer a "need" for journalists to provide 90% of the daily coverage in local communities, says Susan Mernit, Founder of Oakland Local, a community news startup. A lot of this can be done by enlisting a community of intelligent contributors who are already doing their own reporting using social media.

"Journalists need to give up their self-adoration as the authority on the topics they write about," said Michele McLellan, a journalist and consultant who works primarily with the Knight Foundation and Knight Digital Center. "Members of any community are the experts in what they are experiencing and seeing on given topics."

McLellan said journalists would be better suited by developing skills to fill the information gaps, offering broader perspective and context on the information, and fostering conversation around it.

Journalists as Community Managers

Journalism has often been done from the top of a mountain — journalists would tell the community what they need to know. Today, much of the news has become a conversation, and journalists are being required to do as much listening to the community as they broadcast to them. The voices in the community were always there, but were often lost at neighborhood meetings and forums. Now, many of these conversations are taking place online, and journalists will more than ever need to think from the start of their reporting about what conversations need to take place as well as what platforms will foster those conversations, McLellan said. Journalists will no longer focus exclusively on gathering information and producing a story. Now they’re managing and amplifying the conversations the community is having; conversations that will happen with or without them. Of course, a recent example of this is the community sharing information on the Boulder fires in Colorado.

"Journalists are going to have to get the conversation ethic down if they want their work to penetrate the noisy web," McLellan said.

Though journalists are taking on new skill sets like programming and multimedia production, more journalists will need to have a grasp on community engagement and developing news "conversationally with readers," said C.W. Anderson, assistant professor of media culture at City University in New York (CUNY). Sure, many news organizations are hiring full-time community or social media managers to focus on just that, but in the future, it may very well be at the core of the journalism process, integrated into traditional beat work.

The Social Beat

A journalist’s future beat of coverage and rolodex of contacts will, and in many cases already does, include the social web. It’s becoming the center of where readers are pointed to news and perhaps more notably where the community shares or creates their own news. Mernit from Oakland Local, said their community uses Facebook to send them information to redistribute. "People don’t send me e-mails, they tag me in a note," she said.

Because for many people social sites have become their landing page for news, journalists have to find ways to integrate their editorial role into the streams, and not just be off to the side on another platform, said Clinch of Storyful. "Powerful journalism can take place on Twitter, Facebook and even YouTube," he said.

Social Stories

The social story interaction — the way users engage content — is entering into the consciousness of news editors and producers as they think through the outline of a story. It could very well be that we’ll see more stories that have deep social integration, especially for in-depth and crowd-sourced pieces. Journalists have always created story packages for different platforms, says Hermida, but the difference with social platforms is that they are shared spaces and so the stories there are more open and collaborative, challenging journalist’s "prevailing dogma of ‘we write, you read.’"

For now, many of the examples include using social content as part of a story, such as CNN’s visualization of what World Cup fans were saying on Twitter. Taking social data and conversation and making sense of it will likely become more streamlined, and perhaps even more accessible to those besides major news organizations who have the resources to develop such packages.

One of the challenges with the social stream as a means for news consumption is that it often lacks context — a challenge on the web in general. It’s likely that taking a fresh approach to publishing this information may help provide that context, which is something newly-launched sites like Intersect are trying to accomplish. They are enabling the community to share stories that are attached to a time and a place and showcase that information on a timeline that intersects with people’s stories.

Other companies, like Context Optional, are jumping into the social market to help publishers create more compelling content on social platforms, specifically rich-media posts on Facebook. This includes wall posts that are more than just blurb text and a link with a thumbnail, but also interactive polls and interactive flash displays.

Online Curation for a "Time-Poor Audience"

Journalists will also have social content creation more integrated into their workflow, whether that means creating content for specific platforms, or using the content from that platform for the purposes of curation. "One of the challenges is giving writers and producers tools that they can use to pull disparate elements into stories from Twitter, YouTube and other sources beyond just text from wires," Clinch said. That’s why Clinch is working on Storyful, which uses professional curators to gather social and web content and produce a story out of it. Here is an example of a curated stream from Storyful that uses a combination of reports and social information available:

"Journalists must be able to professionally and responsibly curate events in real time," Clinch said. "This is not just about curating real-time content from Twitter and other sources but also the ability to pull in context and even commentary in a way that helps the audience understand what is happening."

Anderson from CUNY said the big difference between curation as it once was and what it is now, is that that it is done online, in public. And despite there being less original reporting, he thinks, or maybe just hopes, that the decrease in original "fact gathering" can be made up through smart curation. This enables journalists to play the role of a "trusted guide," says Hermida, which means applying journalistic skill to help the audience negotiate the wealth of information now available.

"In a world of news and information, there is a role of a professional who can curate this for a time-poor audience," Hermida said.

The Social Network as the New Editor

Though journalists clearly have a role in curating web content and making sense of the noise, slowly a new player is emerging to fulfill the role as a partial news editor. That player is the social network of the reader and consumer. Whether it is the people that a reader follows on Twitter or a new iPad application that helps visualize news being shared in the social space, each of these personalized social news streams are helping readers decide what they need to read.

"Platforms like Twitter can turn our social network into our editor," Hermida said. "Once this role was the preserve of a newspaper editor, who decided what the public should read that morning. Now people can turn to their social networks to find out, ‘what do my friends or people I respect think I should read about this morning.’"

Clinch says news agencies must find a way to incorporate and reference the social news wire into their products, or they will continue to lose customers.

Beyond Twitter & Facebook

News organizations that have embraced social media have largely done so as a distribution channel, focusing on Facebook and Twitter because of the referral traffic that the platforms provide to their sites. But as news outlets realize the value is not only measured in clicks, but in an engaged and participating audience, they will look to take advantage of other platforms, and perhaps more importantly, other online communities. The buzz, of course, is out there: Will it be Tumblr? Foursquare? What’s next? And should we be everywhere? At what cost?

Heron, from The New York Times, said she thinks more media companies will start developing "special" content for Tumblr. "It’s a very visual platform that allows more in-depth engagement than Facebook or Twitter, and journalists will have to do something special to distinguish their tumblogs from their existing websites or blogs. Of course, many news organizations, most infamously Newsweek, have jumped on the platform to stake their claim and build an audience there. Many of the tumblogs focus on specific subjects, such as ProPublica’s “Officials Say the Darndest Things.”

Monetizing Social

Though many news organizations would like to engage readers across many social platforms, the missing link is often justifying such resources that aren’t always easy to monetize, says Mathilde Piard, social media manager at Cox Media Group. "It’s all fine and nice to deliver the news in a way that’s targeted to social platforms, but we’ve got to find a way to monetize that if we’re using these social platforms for more than just driving traffic back to our sites," Piard said.

For many outlets, however, the justification is an increase in traffic, which they can then sell ads for on their site. But what about taking advantage of the platforms specifically?

There certainly have been experiments, such as Minnpost.com’s "Real Time Ads," which sells a local businesses widget space to display their Twitter feed. This way, the business directly controls what is displayed on the site and the advertising has the potential to be more effective because of it’s social nature and users can engage it. Plus, the local business gets its social accounts exposed to a larger audience and is able to build a lasting relationship with readers.

Another option that has potential is "in-stream advertising" from companies like Ad.ly, which is mostly known for celebrity-endorsed tweets, but also includes an API that enables publishers to monetize their mobile apps through targeted in-stream ads. Notable users of the service include Newsweek. Though its cost-per-share model isn’t likely to solve any news organization’s revenue issues, the amount advertisers are spending on social media is projected to grow. Experimenting with platforms and user-reactions to social advertising is becoming increasingly important.

A Social Newsroom and the Personal Brand

More newsrooms are hiring community engagers and social media producers. It’s not unlikely that the future newsroom will be filled with socially savvy personnel whose full-time job is to keep track of the pulse in the community.

We’re already seeing that with the Guardian’s network of science blogs, but more newsrooms will put resources into figuring out how to work with the community, not against it. This will also likely be made easier with sites like Ebyline coming into the mix, which simplify the relationship between publishers and a network of freelancers. This isn’t just about news organizations struggling to cover the community, but also that the brand, expertise and in some cases credibility is shifting toward the individual and away from the institution. "Social platforms present journalists with an opportunity to create and develop their brand[s] based on the value they bring to the network," Hermida said.

A Mobile Social Experience

With more users getting their news via mobile, journalists are able to take the social experience with them. News organizations are able to provide more than just another news distribution channel, but a platform where users can engage on multiple levels.

At the Oakland Local, modifying content to accommodate content interaction and consumption via mobile is becoming integrated into the production process, says Mernit, the site’s founder. Mernit says they are increasingly looking at not only content production and how it will be consumed on mobile, but also to support two-way interaction and contributions from the community.

Mobile is certainly helping journalists quickly produce content on-the-go. Though the app of choice on mobile could change quickly, right now it is of course Twitter, says McLellan, that is enabling journalists to easily update readers with news in real-time.

Other mobile tools are enabling journalists to carry a multimedia production studio in their pocket," Hermida said. For example, he said, the 1st Video iPhone app from Vericoder enables journalists to shoot and edit video and audio, and create an audio slideshow, which can be uploaded directly into a newsroom’s production system. As news organizations develop mobile applications, they’ll include features that enable the community to contribute on the go, just as easily as the journalists.

The way readers experience news and information is changing with mobile as well. Heron from The New York Times said news organizations could use augmented reality apps to help people at Fashion Week, for example, to discover hot spots for user tweets and location-based checkins and information about designers there.

What are your thoughts on the future of social media and journalism? Add them in the comments below.

Series supported by Gist


This series is supported by Gist. Gist keeps you better informed with less effort by giving you a full view of your professional network in one place bringing together information from across the web for all your contacts giving you the right information at the right moment to get a meeting, deliver an amazing pitch, or just find a better way to make a connection.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- How CEOs are Using Social Media for Real Results
- How Small Businesses Will Use Social Media in the Future
- How PR Pros Are Using Social Media for Real Results
- How Freelancers Might Use Social Media in the Future
- How Salespeople Are Using Social Media for Real Results

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, enot-poloskun

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Weezer Invades YouTube to Promote New Album [INTERVIEW]

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 12:50 PM PDT


If you found Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” video to be a sating treat back in 2008, you’ll be happy to know that YouTube will soon be serving an entire feast of Weezer fare, as the band will be appearing on myriad viral channels as the day progresses.

The barrage of vids, done in collaboration with DashGo, is being launched to celebrate the release of Weezer’s eighth album, Hurley, which drops on September 14.

“We always like to think of new ways to get the word out to people when we have a new record,” lead singer Rivers Cuomo told us. “There’s something about the YouTube people — they have a similar energy to what we’re doing… [I feel like] there’s a lot of creativity there. And they’re doing it for the right reasons… They’ve pulled their audiences the hard way,” he said.

The band will be appearing on channels belonging to YouTube luminaries such as Fred, Ray William Johnson, Auto-Tune the News, Key of Awesome, Real Annoying Orange, Hot For Words, Onision, Keep The Heat, MysteryGuitarMan, StSandersMisc (Kiss Shreds), Tay Zonday, Magic Hugs and Dave Days.

Although this promises to be one epic viral tour de force, this is hardly Weezer’s first foray into the Internet realm. Back in 2008, they teamed with with a ton of YouTube stars to create a music video for their jam “Pork and Beans,” off of the Red Album, and last year they jokingly hawked something called the Weezer Snuggie (a play on that now-iconic viral travesty in fleece) to promote the disc Raditude.

Yup. We’re a long way from the e-mail newsletter and fanpages on old when it comes to music in the Internet realm. “When we started, no one was using the Internet or cellphones,” Cuomo says. “I’d call my manager from the truck stop at a payphone. Or we’d communicate via fax at the hotel. So it’s a different world now. [But] we’re still playing pretty much the same sort of music and doing the same thing on stage.”

In fact, Cuomo — as well as the majority of rock critics out there — think of Hurley as a continuation of the Weezer sound. “I feel like [it's] kind of an old-school alternative rock record,” he says. “Very raw, unpolished, emotional. It could have been made in the pre-Internet era.”

Check out the gallery of vids below (more will be appearing on YouTube as the day progresses), and then feel free to make your way into the gooey, analysis-y center of this article.


Auto-Tune the News #13: "driving. stripping. swinging." (ft. Weezer)



"CHAOS" SONG BY TAY ZONDAY FEAT. WEEZER



Weezer cut 9 12 10 A2 01 BLIP TV 640x480



DANGER MEETS WEEZER!!!



Ray It Ain't So


A Growing Trend

In recent years, we’ve seen a ton of bands and brands turning to viral venues such as YouTube to promote their music, goods and services. From OK Go launching to stardom via YouTube — and in later years extricating themselves from their label and using YouTube to continue to pimp the band — to Ben Folds and Nick Hornby partnering with twee darlings Pomplamoose to promote their album, Things You Think, ‘Tube’s D.I.Y. darlings have become the go-to source for innovation.

Hell, Hasbro even hooked up with famous YouTubers just last week to hawk the newest version of Trivial Pursuit. It seems all eyes are on the viral sphere now, and more established folks are hoping to creep in via your peripheral vision.

On the flip side, YouTube stars seem to be scabbering toward legitimacy. The Gregory Brothers — of Auto-Tune the News fame — scored a best-selling song on iTunes with “Bed Intruder,” as well as a spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Add to that a Comedy Central pilot and you have more than just an Internet phenom. YouTube is becoming a breeding ground for legit talent, and the more established set doesn’t seem blind to the fact.

Selling Out or Smartening Up?

Some of you are likely huffing about how Weezer is “selling out” by partnering with YouTube — or riding the coattails of the less famous in a quest to stay relevant (especially after that whole are-they-calling-the-album-Hurley-to-sell-clothes? debacle).

And at this juncture, I’ll answer: Well, at least they’re trying. Today, Hypebot featured a pretty interesting interview with Kevin Breuner, marketing project manager at CD Baby. In essence, Breuner told Hypebot that a lot of artists are still scared of taking the plunge into the technological realm.

“I think that it's often erroneously assumed that musicians and artists are on the cutting edge of the web,” Breuner says. “I think this assumption is due to the fact that music has become such an important part to marketing, TV, film and just about anything with pop culture significance.  Some artists are very web savvy (OK Go comes to mind), but many of them are not.”

Breuner goes on to point out that a lot of the bands who are really into the digital space probably have a PR person pulling the strings for them (he cites Arcade Fire as a possible example), but, still, one has to give a band props for not being abjectly terrified of tech (see: Stevie Nicks).

“Change is inevitable, and it makes it more interesting and fun and challenging, that’s for sure,” Cuomo told us. “It feels like it’s not really clear to anyone in the music business how to succeed. Or what that success looks like. And it’s a time where it’s OK to experiment and make mistakes and pick yourself up and try again. That’s very different from the mid-’90s when there was a very established set of rules and you had to play the game and you played it,” he said.

As Cuomo says, we’re at a crossroads in the future of music — a sussing out of who’s going to make it because they’re talented, and who’s going to make it because they can hustle (a skill which still could be ascribed to talent).

“There is a growing class of musicians who are really online marketers who play music, as opposed to musicians who use the web for promotion,” Breuner says.  “One is most likely advancing the creative arts.  The other is learning a lot about marketing and the web.” (At this point, OK Go springs to my mind).

So is it possible to be able to tap into both worlds — to hustle like a marketer while also creating legitimate art? It’s not unheard of and, in essence, it’s the concept that the whole D.I.Y. culture was built upon. In a way, the subversive nature of the viral web is allowing nobodies to flourish outside of the bounds of the traditional label structure (see Pomplamoose), and in others, it’s rewarding those who have an established following by providing them with maximum access (see: Arcade Fire, Weezer, etc).

At this point, musicians at all levels of fame need to figure out what works for them when it comes to marrying music to Internet, because unlike the infamous sweater in “Undone,” this web ain’t unraveling any time soon.

Reviews: Internet, YouTube, news, trivial pursuit

More About: humor, music, pop culture, viral video, viral-vide, weezer, youtube

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Join in Celebrating Social Good Day: Social Media for #SocialGood

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 12:25 PM PDT


Can social media be used to make the world a better place? We believe it can.

Mashable and (RED) invite you to join the social media for social good movement by taking part in Social Good Day on September 23. During UN Week, Mashable and 92Y will host the Social Good Summit in partnership with the UN Foundation and host the UN Week Digital Media Lounge. We want you to get involved, so we’ve gotten together with our friends at (RED), who work to eliminate AIDS in Africa, to invite you to attend or organize a meetup in your community to celebrate, share, educate and engage in a discussion on how social media can be used to tackle some of the world's social challenges and issues.

We're interested in unleashing fresh thinking about how social media can raise awareness and create solutions for social issues around the world. It starts with each community coming together and contributing ideas and, more importantly, solutions. Whatever community you’ll be participating in we want to know, “What’s your solution?” Let the world hear your ideas through social media!

How To Join #SocialGood Day

  • Sign up to attend or organize your own Social Good Day meetup on September 23 on Mashable’s Meetup Everywhere page.
  • Tweet about what your solution is using the #socialgood hashtag. We’d love to hear your solutions @mashable & @joinred. (RED) will host a stream of tweets including the hashtag on its website.
  • Share your solution in the comments below.
  • Write a blog post and share it.
  • Post to Facebook about what you or your company is doing.
  • Record a video about your solution and upload it to YouTube with the #socialgood tag
  • Join (RED) on Facebook and Twitter to share your ideas on how to help fight AIDS in Africa using social media.
  • Get inspired by watching the 30-minute Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs documentary The Lazarus
    Effect     on YouTube. Presented by (RED) and HBO, the film follows the story of HIV-positive people in
    Africa who undergo a remarkable transformation in as few as 40 days thanks to access to treatment.

Suggestions of Things To Discuss

  • What solutions are you coming up with to address some of the world challenges, such as the UN's
    Millennium Development Goals     list, like fighting AIDS in Africa?
  • What's the most effective channel to spread awareness and generate money for causes: Twitter?
    Facebook? YouTube?
  • How can you use geolocation apps like Foursquare and Gowalla for causes?
  • What social causes are getting it right and why?
  • How would you use social media to spread awareness about (RED)’s efforts to help
    eliminate AIDS in Africa?

Facts and Resources to Consider:

  • Thirty-three million people in the world have AIDS. Twenty-two million live in Africa.
  • Every day 3,800 people die in sub-Saharan Africa from AIDS.
  • It costs just 40 cents per day for the life-saving medicine someone living with HIV/AIDS in Africa needs to help them live a healthy and productive life.

#SocialGood Day Tweets


Our Partners

(RED)’s primary objective is to engage the private sector in raising awareness and funds for the Global Fund, founded to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. Companies whose products take on the (PRODUCT) RED mark contribute a significant percentage of the sales or portion of the profits from that product to the Global Fund to help finance AIDS programs in Africa, with an emphasis on the health of women and children. Since its launch in the Spring of 2006, more than $150 million has been generated by (RED) partners and events for the Global Fund. (RED) money is at work in Swaziland, Rwanda, Ghana, Lesotho, Zambia and South Africa, and supports programs that have reached more than 5 million people. For more information, visit www.joinred.com.

The UN Foundation, a public charity, was created in 1998 with entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner's historic $1 billion gift to support UN causes and activities. We are an advocate for the UN and a platform for connecting people, ideas and resources to help the United Nations solve global problems.

  • We help the UN take its best work and ideas to scale—through advocacy, partnerships, constituency building and fund-raising;
  • Partnerships because we have learned what can be achieved when the public and private sectors work together through the United Nations;
  • Advocacy because we know the leverage and impact that sound policy can have on the kind of social, economic and environmental change the UN seeks;
  • Community-building because the UN was created for "we the people," and all of us can give back and contribute to a better world; and
  • We need new and additional resources to power solutions to global challenges.

92Y: Since 1874, 92nd Street Y has been serving its community and the world in a remarkable way, providing exceptional programs across the spectrum—in the arts and culture, Jewish life and education, health and fitness, personal growth and travel, and in classes for adults, families and children. A unique, multifaceted nonprofit institution, 92nd Street Y serves more than 300,000 people annually, from newborns to centenarians, and 4.5 million people through its website and variety of online venues.

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter, YouTube

More About: africa, AIDS, mashable, meetup everwhere, Red, social good, social good day, social media

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Dilbert Takes on Social Media Marketing Managers [PIC]

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 12:10 PM PDT


It’s always been an uphill battle to bring social media to larger companies and organizations. In the case of Dilbert’s company, that uphill battle is more like a mountain.

Our favorite white-collared comic strip has taken on Twitter and tackled the lost iPhone 4 prototype, but Scott Adams has made the subject of today’s comic the strict and sometimes-arcane restrictions big corporations have on social media use in the workplace.

Beth, the company’s new social media marketing manager, has her work cut out for her, though. How is she going to promote the company when Facebook and Twitter are banned at work — via Friendster? At least she isn’t banned from blogging, though we’re pretty sure it wouldn’t take long for the company to block that too.

What kind of rules for social media do you have at your office?

[via Social Times]

Reviews: Facebook, Friendster, Twitter

More About: dilbert, facebook, Marketing manager, social media, twitter

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University Bans Social Media for a Week

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 11:21 AM PDT


Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg University of Science and Technology will enact a week-long social media blackout for all students in residence. The students will be forbidden from using Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging and any other online communication except for e-mail.

NPR reports that university Provost Eric Darr chose to enact the temporary ban because he wants students to think about how much they’re using technology in their daily lives and what kind of impact it has. From NPR’s interview it doesn’t seem that he’s anti-technology or anti-social media per se; he just believes today’s college students take its role in their lives for granted.

“Often, there are behaviors or habits, ways that we use technology that we may ourselves not even be able to articulate because we’re not aware of them,” Darr says. Students will write reflective essays about their experiences after the blackout has ended.

Not all students will be part of this academic exercise. The blackout will simply be enforced by blocking social sites and networks on the campus network, so students living off-campus will be unaffected, and students with smartphones won’t have any trouble staying connected either.

Darr is aware of this. “If someone feels the need to borrow their friend’s phone to go check Facebook,” he says, “it’ll be interesting to ask the question at the end of the week: Why did you feel the need to do that? What compelled you to do that?”

It will be interesting to see how Harrisburg University will be affected during the blackout. What type of impact do you think it will have? With the prevalence of smartphones will the ban be rendered pointless? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, NickS

Reviews: Facebook, iStockphoto

More About: ban, college, eric darr, facebook, harrisburg university, pennsylvania, provost, social media, trending, twitter, university

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15 Mobile Translation Apps for the International Businessperson

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 09:40 AM PDT

This series is brought to you by UPS. Discover the new logistics. It levels playing fields and lets you act locally or globally. It’s for the individual entrepreneur, the small business, or the large company. Put the new logistics to work for you.

chalkboard

One of the best ways to enrich your traveling experiences while doing business abroad is to learn the local languages of the countries you visit. Unfortunately, most people don’t have time to put in the years of study this feat requires before their next business trip.

In this case, it’s still nice to be able to ask where the bathroom is, read a menu, and decode street signs with enough proficiency to not get lost. Furthermore, locals will probably admire your will to try, which can definitely be at least a small business advantage.

Here are 15 apps for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android that will help you navigate another language even if you don’t have time to learn it.

iPhone Translation Apps

1. Lonely Planet Phrasebooks

lonely_planet

If you don't know how to say "where is the bathroom?" in the local language, chances are that you don't have the pronunciation down, either. The Lonely Planet Phrasebooks apps are similar to their hard copy counterparts, but they have the added advantage of speaking critical phrases in the proper accent. For $0.99, each language app comes with 630 spoken phrases organized by activity.

2. iLingual

Why go through the trouble of learning another language when you can fake it with this free app from Emirates? Take a picture of your mouth, choose a male or female voice, and select from 400 phrases. The mouth (your mouth) will move and speak the words you've selected. Hold the phone up to your mouth, and NOBODY WILL NOTICE. The app is available in French, German, or Arabic.

3. World Nomads Language Guides

world_nomads

The free World Nomads Language Guides each contain about 230 spoken phrases for one of 25 available languages. This is enough to get you by, but not enough to really get around. The $1.99 "plus" version comes with 550 phrases. Both come with a conversational language lesson podcast.

4. Babelshot

Babelshot

Not being able to read signs and menus in other languages can create a lot of "this will be funny when we look back on it some day" moments. These can be avoided with the $4.99 purchase of Babelshot, which translates snapshots of text that you take using your phone.

5. Jibbigo

The $24.99 Jibbigo is very expensive for an iPhone app, but it's much cheaper than a human translator, which is pretty much how it functions.

Let's say you speak English and you are conversing with someone who speaks Spanish. After you speak English, your phone will translate what you say into Spanish. Likewise, your friend's Spanish phrases will be translated to English. The app doesn’t need a data connection to function, so you can use it anywhere without fear of data charges.

Reuters actually field tested this app in Japan, and, despite the severe awkwardness of asking someone to speak to your phone, it worked pretty well.

6. Coolgorilla Talking Phrasebooks

Coolgorilla

The biggest advantage of Coolgorilla's phrasebook over some of the other options is the search bar. Instead of browsing through Travel > Basics > Taxi, you can simply type "Taxi" to find its translation. The apps come with about 500 useful words and phrases that are spoken by professional voice-over artists. Each app is $0.99.

BlackBerry Translation Apps

7. Navita Translator

Navita

Navita Translator works like an Internet translation service. In fact, you can choose Google Translator, Google Dictionary, or Bing Translator as a source for your translation. Unfortunately, this means you'll need to connect to the Internet in order to use the app. For a free download, though, it's functional.

8. EmailTranslator

e-mailtranslator

Instead of copying and pasting e-mails into an Internet translator, use EmailTranslator to add a translation option to the option menu in your inbox. The app is free and the translation isn't perfect, but you'll be able to conveniently get the gist of your international e-mail.

9. ProTranslateLite

protranslate

As with most free translation apps, ProTranslateLite needs a data connection and doesn’t provide perfect transcriptions. But its interface makes it slightly easier to use than other versions. Buttons to select languages, translate, copy, e-mail, SMS, and tweet are all conveniently located on the same screen.

10. Babelphone

Babelphone

This free app contains more than 200 practical phrases. The text and spoken translation are both provided, which is helpful if, for instance, you have no idea how to pronounce Chinese characters. Babelphone only has Spanish and Chinese versions.

Android Translation Apps

11. Talk to Me Classic

talktome

This app’s voice is not robotic, but if you want it to accurately translate what you’re saying, you will need to make your voice robotic. Still, it does a pretty good job for being completely free. You’ll need to install three additional downloads, but being able to translate text-to-speech, text-to-text, or speech-to-speech with one app makes it worth it.

12. Google Translate

This app is just like the Google Translate website, but for your phone. Use this free app as a translator or select the rich dictionary option to get in-depth definitions. The app saves all of your searches in a history section in case you come across the same word later. You'll need to download a separate free extension in order to use the text-to-voice option.

13. Translate

Translate is a lot like Google Translate (it uses Google’s data), but with a different interface and a “random word” feature for learning new words. If for some reason you don’t want to use Google’s app, this is a pretty equivalent alternative.

14. Trippo Mondo Voice Translator

trippo_mundo

Aside from having a fun name, this app is useful for translating words in about 30 supported languages. It will also speak the translation if you want.

15. SlavoEd Dictionaries

SlavoEd

Unfortunately, downloading an entire dictionary to your phone is going to take up a lot of memory. But the good news is, you'll be able to reference all the words you need without any data connection. The app also comes with audio pronunciations, a search-by-voice feature, and learning tools like “Word of the Day” and “Flash Cards.” The apps range from $10 to $14 depending on language.

If you’ve done business in another country and found an app that helped you navigate the local language, share it in the comments below.

Series supported by UPS

This series is brought to you by UPS. Discover the new logistics. It levels playing fields and lets you act locally or globally. It’s for the individual entrepreneur, the small business, or the large company. Put the new logistics to work for you.

More Mobile Resources from Mashable:

- Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Commerce Strategy Now
- 8 Free BlackBerry Games Worth Downloading
- 6 BlackBerry Apps to Cure iPhone Envy
- A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Mobile
- 10 Must-Have BlackBerry Apps for Small Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, topshotUK

Reviews: Android, Babelshot, BlackBerry Rocks!, Google, Google translate, Internet, iPhone, iStockphoto

More About: Babelphone, Babelshot, coolgorilla, EmailTranslator, ilingual, International Business Series, Jibbigo, lonely planet, protranslate, SlavoEd, Talk to Me Classic, trippo mundo, world nomads

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“Super Mario Bros.” Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 09:39 AM PDT


Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan 25 years ago today on the Famicom, the Japanese version of what Americans call the Nintendo Entertainment System. Since then, Mario has become one of the most iconic characters and entertainment brands in the world.

Mario had previously appeared in the arcade games Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., but it was Super Mario Bros. that propelled the Italian plumber to icon status and contributed significantly to making video games commonplace in homes around the world and reversing the video game crash of the early ’80s.

The game was bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System in the U.S., and it’s tough to say whether it was successful because of the NES or vice versa, but either way, Super Mario Bros. has sold more than 40 million copies over the past 25 years. In fact, it was the best-selling video game of all time until just recently. That title now belongs to Wii Sports, the game bundled with the Nintendo Wii.

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary, Nintendo released a video, which we’ve embedded below. It’s a sort of video timeline of the major Mario releases, though it omits Super Mario Kart and other genre-bending spinoffs that have featured Mario and friends.

We’ve also included Nintendo’s Mario timeline graphic in case you don’t want to sit through the video. The Guardian also listed 25 fun Mario facts and Nintendo launched a star-studded ad campaign to commemorate the date.

Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary Video

Mario Timeline

Reviews: mario

More About: anniversary, birthday, classic games, classic gaming, gaming, Mario, NES, Nintendo, nintendo entertainment system, super mario bros, video, video games

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15-Year-Old Creates iTunes Instant

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 08:22 AM PDT


First there was Google Instant, and then the novelty apps Google Maps Instant and YouTube Instant. Now, my friends, we have iTunes Instant. And the creator of said app, Stephen Ou, is younger than various pieces of my wardrobe.

iTunes Instant is basically a search engine for iTunes, which the creator said he made because, “Search within iTunes.app is extremely slow and cluster, I’ve never used it. So I use Apple’s Search API instead, and develop[ed] this app in less than three hours that will make your life better.” A quick test of the app reveals that it does work pretty well — a search for relatively obscure jams returned relatively accurate results in near real time. (However, it doesn’t quite work when searching for both artist and song.)

Ou’s also pretty enterprising. “I use Apple’s Affiliate links,” he explains on the site. “If you click on a link and buy an item in iTunes, I will earn 5% commission. I won’t make loads of money, but it does always help.”

Well, if that 5% doesn’t end up cutting it when it comes to pocket money, maybe iTunes will offer Ou a job like YouTube did Feross Aboukhadijeh.

More About: App, Google, itunes, web apps, youtube

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HOW TO: Choose the Best Workspace for Your Business

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 07:55 AM PDT


This series is supported by RingCentral, the leading business phone system designed for today's mobile professionals. Visit RingCentral.com to learn more.

Finding the right workspace is like dating — the Internet has made it a lot more complex. In essence, this means more options.

Whereas the traditional office once served as the default choice for effective communication and collaboration between coworkers, today's businesses can be just as productive by collaborating on the web, with as little as $10 and a Google account. Entrepreneurs operate from coffee shops, kitchen tables, and coworking spaces in addition to the traditional office.

We asked three entrepreneurs with drastically different office strategies for their advice on choosing a workspace. Read on for their tips and add your own in the comments below.

What Kind of Office is Best to Start In?

"When you're starting out, you should absolutely not be spending money on rent," says Jason Fried, the founder of web-based software company 37signals. "It's a huge waste of money."

After Fried started 37signals, he and the other two employees working for the company at the time shared a room with another business. "Basically we had a corner of a desk," he jokes. Assuming you can find another company that is willing to share, teaming up on a space saves cash while still providing a place to work away from the distractions of home.

Others see value in setting up their own offices from the get-go. After a brief stint at the virtual office, Anthony Franco chose a house in Denver to set up his company, EffectiveUI. It wasn't an ideal workspace, but he got a deal on the rent. New employees were often greeted on their first day with an Allen wrench, to be used for assembling their own desks.

"We started at home, but if we were going to handle demand, we needed to have a place where we could come and work," Franco said. He added that the extra value of being able to work as a team (in person) more than made up for the cost of an office.

While the lease route worked out well for EffectiveUI, there's a certain amount of risk involved with jumping into your own space too soon.

"Most commercial leases are for three to four years, and so if you're small and you're starting out and you've got a couple people, you're making way too much of a commitment," Fried argues. "You don't know where you're going to be in three years."

Is Coworking Right for Your Business?

One modern compromise between working completely virtually and committing to a lease is working at a coworking space. These office spaces provide a work environment and an alternative to coffee shops for independent workers.

Campbell McKellar discovered the value of coworking spaces when the company she worked for left their expensive traditional office and started working virtually. The move allowed her to work from anywhere, and she chose Maine. "I was trying to do work in a cottage with family members and dogs running around," she said. "I loved being fully mobile and independent, but I also wanted to have a platform to do my work."

LooseCubes, the company McKellar founded in May, runs a website that matches independent workers with coworking spaces and spare desks in other companies. Quite appropriately, it's currently being run out of a coworking space. McKellar says that working from the space has helped her launch.

"Especially if you're in a creative business, the best way to get ideas is to meet new people," she says. "You can get stale by talking to the same five people every day."

Coworking allows McKellar to "unintentionally network" with the other people in the space, to seek advice from other entrepreneurs, and to host meetings and work with her team at a place that isn't her living room.

On the other hand, coworking has its challenges and might not be a great fit for every company. Coworking spaces can be distracting, and most of them are set up in a way that requires people making phone calls to seek silence in the hallway.

"For us, quiet and privacy is very important," Fried says. "So, coworking spaces and coffee shops don't work for us."

McKellar admits that on days when she's "under the gun," she chooses to work at home. And there is a point at which a company outgrows a coworking space. LooseCubes, for instance, plans to move to its own office space sometime in the next three months.

When Should a Company Transition to a Traditional Office?

"We need to be in a room with a whiteboard that isn't erased every day, where we can have a conference call in an open environment," Campbell says of her hopes for transitioning to an office space. Before she commits, however, she wants to wait to see how her site's public launch goes. In the meantime, she's renting a room at a Manhattan coworking space called New Work City.

All companies should do something along these lines before committing to a lease, Fried says. "You don't know if you're going to be successful," he says. "And if you are, you might need more space than you have right now…You don't want to lock yourself into anything when you're getting started. You want to be as flexible as you possibly can."

For some people, this means staying virtual for as long as possible. For others like Campbell, it means launching from a coworking space. For Fried's 37signals, which is based in Chicago but has employees in 11 cities, it meant working from a variety of shared office spaces for about ten years before finally opting for an office of its own in August.

But how do you know when it's time to make the switch?

One obvious factor is space: "We were only able to rent five or six desks in our last office," Fried says. "We had nine people in Chicago. We were out of desks at six. So everyone couldn't come in at the same time, and that was problem."

Another factor is work environment. If the space you are working in is interfering with your work, it might also be time to opt for an environment you can control. "We work very quietly," explains Fried. "So our whole thing is be as quiet as possible, don't talk throughout the day, just have a very quiet setting like a library…You can't impose those kinds of rules on another company, especially if it's the other company's space."

What are the Benefits of a Traditional Office?

For EffectiveUI, the traditional office was always a great fit. Having grown from a couple of founders to 100 employees since 2005, the company long ago left its house-office behind. They now work from a 12,000-square-foot office space.

But both spaces fulfilled the same requirements: "Whiteboarding, talking with each other and eating lunch together: It's part of the team culture," Franco says.

The more traditional office, however, has given him some additional perks. "We have clients come to visit us. We're able to brand the building and the space, and when people come they can see we're a real business," he says.

A lot of people associate traditional offices with being trapped in a cubicle, but Franco maintains that it doesn't have to be that way. "Just get creative and make it fun, but also give everyone a place to go," he says.

Can I Have an Untraditional Traditional Office?

Fried thinks of his new office as more of a home base than a traditional office. Employees are free to work at home whenever they want, and half of the company still works in other cities.

"We feel that a combination of both is the best route," Fried says. "Because we all do want to get together occasionally, and sometimes small teams of five or six people want to get together for a while."

The home base strategy combines the benefits of virtual and traditional workspaces. When people want to work from another city or find they work better in their pajamas, they can stay home. When they need to collaborate or want to get out of the house, they have a great place to work.

"Our office is highly customized for the way we work," says Fried. For instance, it has soundproof walls, phone booths for people to make uninterrupted calls, and rooms for small teams.

Most employees who work from Chicago come into the new office about three or four days a week. "We want people to work wherever they work best," Fried says.

What are your tips for choosing a workspace? Add them in the comments below.

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More Startup Resources from Mashable:

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- 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, francisblack

Reviews: Internet, RingCentral, iStockphoto

More About: 37signals, Anthony Franco, Campbell McKellar, coworking, EffectiveUI, how to choose an office, Jason Fried, LooseCubes, New Work City, office space, virtual office, Workspace Series

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Boxee Box Now Available for Pre-order

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 07:30 AM PDT


Boxee has announced that its widely anticipated Boxee Box will be available today for pre-order for $199. The pre-order is being conducted exclusively through Amazon, but international consumers will be pleased to hear that the device will be available in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia.

After launching its media center software in 2008, Boxee quickly became a darling of home media enthusiasts. At launch, however, users of the software were required the use of either a home theater PC or a hacked Apple TV. The process compelled many to question when Boxee would bring its powerful media experience directly to consumers.

That question was answered in December 2009 when Boxee announced that it was collaborating with D-Link to create the Boxee Box. Unveiled at CES 2010, the Boxee Box was initially powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2 “system-on-a-chip.”

Today at the Intel Developer Forum Boxee and D-Link will announce that the Boxee Box is now running an Intel Atom CE4100. The new chip is fully capable of running 1080p video with 5.1 surround sound, so your shiny home theaters won’t be going to waste.

With its release date rapidly approaching, the Boxee Box will be hitting the market during a holiday season already cluttered with Google TV and Apple TV. How do you think the Boxee Box will fare?

Reviews: Australia, Boxee

More About: Apple TV, boxee box, D-Link, google tv, home theater, media

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iPad Comes to China on September 17

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 07:26 AM PDT


Apple announced today that the iPad’s Wi-Fi variant will come to its retail stores and select authorized resellers in China this Friday, September 17, at 10:00 a.m.

The prices for the iPad Wi-Fi models in China are CNY3988 ($590) for the 16GB model, CNY4788 ($708) for the 32GB model and CNY5588 ($827) for the 64GB model.

It will be interesting to see how the iPad knockoffs that abound in China will fare against the real deal, considering their prices are much lower.

Apple also announced it will be launching the iPad in “many more countries” by the end of the year. The company promises to announce pricing and availability at a later date.

More About: apple, china, ipad, wifi

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Adobe Illustrator Gets an HTML5 Update

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 06:47 AM PDT


Adobe has made available an update to its vector graphics editor Illustrator that makes it simple to export designs into HTML5 and CSS3-compliant content.

Adobe claims that this update only provides “initial support” for HTML5 and CSS3 to Illustrator, which is understandable since the HTML5 and CSS3 standards themselves have not yet been finalized.

But why wasn’t this functionality shipped with Illustrator CS5 from the start? “During the planning and development of Illustrator CS5, future browser support for the evolving HTML5 and CSS3 specifications was uncertain, and we did not foresee any compatibility issues in the CS5 time frame. While the official specifications are still not yet complete, they are now supported to varying degrees by a number of different desktop browsers,” Adobe explains in an accompanying FAQ. “Given the recent surge of interest around HTML5, a preview of Illustrator compatibility with HTML5, CSS3 SVG is being provided so that you can begin exploring their potential as quickly as possible,” it says.

Adobe recently released a similar update for its web design and development tool Dreamweaver, showing its commitment to embrace HTML5 as a standard, despite the fact that it competes (partly, at least) with its own rich web content standard, Flash.

The update is free and works with both the full and trial versions of Illustrator. If you have any questions about the add-on, the Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack forum is the place to ask them.

[via Technologizer]

More About: adobe, Illustrator, Update, web design

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Mashable Weekend Recap: 13 Stories You Might Have Missed

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 06:25 AM PDT

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It’s Monday! Welcome back to work (or school). We hope you had a fantastic weekend, but the world of tech, social media, entertainment, business and everything else didn’t stop spinning while you were away. Thus, we’ve collected some of the most helpful stories from the weekend right here so you can start your week off as informed and entertained as possible.

This weekend, Facebook tested an app for finding new pages to “Like,” a number of people riffed on Google Instant by “instantizing” other sites like Google Maps and Images, Ask announced that Bloglines will shut down and MTV launched a Twitter Tracker for everyone keeping up with the 2010 VMAs. We also have some resources that should prove helpful, and a couple stories that were just plain fun.

Thanks for reading!

News Essentials

Helpful Resources

Weekend Leisure

Reviews: Bloglines, Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter

More About: afghanistan, Army, art, bloglines, entertainment, facebook, Google, Google Maps, mashable weekend recap, military, myspace, Ping, social media, twitter, video music awards, vmas

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