Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “PepsiCo to Air Six Consumer-Created Ads During Super Bowl” |  |
- PepsiCo to Air Six Consumer-Created Ads During Super Bowl
- Veebeam Wirelessly Streams Web Video to Your TV
- Google to Make Its Core Products More Social
- Unreal Engine Games Coming to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
- OnStar Launches Facebook Integration with “Responsible Connectivity”
- 1 in 4 U.S. Adults Now Use Mobile Apps [STATS]
- The New Twitter is an Attack on All Desktop Apps
- Twitter Changes the Default New User Avatar [PIC]
- Here Comes the New Twitter.com [PIC]
- LIVE: Twitter’s Big Announcement
- 10 Ways to Start a Fund for Social Good Online
- Forget Puppies, Adopt a Hacker
- The Facebookification of Twitter
- How You Can Support UN Week 2010 (Tickets, Schedules and Major Updates)
- Formspring Hits One Billion Questions Answered
- 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From
- Twitter Bringing Photos and Videos to the Stream
- Bitbop Brings Streaming TV to Your Android Phone
- Conan Tries to Go Old Spice with Video Q&A
- 25 iPhone Apps for the Mobile Fashionista
- Mashlanta 2.0 Tickets Going Quickly
- E-mail to Barack Obama Gets UK Teen Banned from U.S.
- How Brazil is Blazing a Trail for Electronic Democracy
- $30 BlackBerry Curve 3G Hits Verizon
- “Who Said It?” Makes Guessing Game Out of Public Facebook Status Updates
- Microsoft Launches Webcam with 1080p HD Sensor
- Helvetica Joins the Web Font Revolution
- Get Satisfaction Celebrates Third Anniversary with $6 Million in Funding
- Top 3 Stories in Social Media and Mobile This Morning
- Picksie for iPad Makes Intelligent Recommendations for “Right Now”
| PepsiCo to Air Six Consumer-Created Ads During Super Bowl Posted: 15 Sep 2010 04:06 AM PDT      Five years after its original “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, Doritos is once again inviting consumers to create :30 commercials for the tortilla chip maker to run during the Super Bowl. Parent company Pepsico has also extended the promotion to its Pepsi Max brand, offering up even more chances for contestants to have their ads aired during the year’s most heavily televised football game on February 6. Here’s the deal: Create a :30 video commercial (I know, I know, easier said than done) that showcases your love for Doritos tortilla chips or Pepsi Max, and upload it to crashthesuperbowl.com between September 27 and November 17. Ten finalists — five for Doritos and five for Pepsi Max — will be announced in January 2011 and posted online for fans to vote on. The four spots with the most votes, along with two chosen by Doritos and Pepsi Max executives, will air during the Super Bowl. The final prizes will be determined by how well these ads perform against USA Today’s Ad Meter, which tracks the real-time responses of a panel of ad viewers during the Super Bowl broadcast to determine which ads were liked most and least. If your ads happens to be the most-liked spot of all the commercials to air during the Super Bowl, you’ll awarded $1 million dollars. The consumer goods brands have pledged $600,000 for second place and $400,000 for third. If consumer-created Doritos and Pepsi Max ads manage to garner all three positions on the list (a statistically unlikely feat, for sure), an additional $1 million will be awarded to each of the three winners. In addition, whoever creates the highest-ranking ad — whether or not it makes it into the top three — will be guaranteed a contract to create another ad for the two brands in 2011. To celebrate the launch of the contest, Doritos and Pepsi Max are hosting an event with famed advertising creative directors Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Rob Schwartz from TBWA\Chiat\Day, who will discuss the elements involved in creating a successful Super Bowl ad. They will be joined by actor Betty White, whose Super Bowl ad for Snickers (embedded below) topped the Ad Meter chart earlier this year. The event will be held in L.A. and broadcast live on Ustream at 1 p.m. ET today, September 15. Increasingly, brands are forgoing high-budget, agency-created TV commercials to pursue more interactive opportunities with consumers. Last year, Pepsi decided against airing a Super Bowl ad in favor of a $20 million social media campaign, dubbed Pepsi Refresh, and Mountain Dew has similarly forgone more traditional routes with its social media-heavy Dewmocracy project as well. Amazon has jumped on the consumer-created ad trend as well with its “Your Kindle” commercial contest, which it launched for the second time this year. Are you a fan of the consumer-created advertising trend? Do you tend to prefer ads created by advertising agencies or by consumers? Last Year’s Winning Ad Meter SpotReviews: ustream More About: contest, doritos, MARKETING, pepsi max, pepsico, Super Bowl, Super Bowl ads, super bowl commercials, video For more Entertainment coverage:
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| Veebeam Wirelessly Streams Web Video to Your TV Posted: 15 Sep 2010 03:05 AM PDT   If watching web videos is causing you headaches – probably because you watch them on a small monitor, instead of a large TV – Veebeam, a media streaming solution launched at the Demo Fall 2010 conference on Tuesday, might be right up your alley. Available in both standard and HD versions, Veebeam is a wireless USB media streamer which sends media from your computer, in 720p or 1080p resolution, to your TV, making it effortless to watch content from services such as Hulu or Netflix. Now, there’s plenty media streaming solutions out there, but Veebeam is interesting because it’s dead simple: just plug the (very stylish) Veebeam box into your TV and attach a special USB antenna to your computer or laptop. The content is then streamed to your TV regardless of the provider, so you don’t have to worry that a content provider will block the service. "It's impossible for Hulu to block us. We take a series of little pictures of your computer and project it out to your TV so Hulu doesn't know that the content is on the TV. They think its on the browser," said Patrick Cosson, vice-president of marketing for Veebeam. Even more importantly, Veebeam uses wireless USB for media streaming, which delivers speeds of 420 Mbps. Anyone who ever tried streaming Full HD content over Wi-Fi knows it just won’t work very well because the connection is too slow, but wireless USB provides more than enough bandwidth for Full HD. Wireless USB does have certain disadvantages, though: bandwidth decreases dramatically when the distance between the antenna and the receiver increases over three meters. It could be an issue for those with huge living rooms, but most users probably won’t notice any problems. Last but not least, Veebeam is quite cheap: the SD version of Veebeam will set you back $100, while the HD version costs $140. Reviews: Hulu More About: HDTV, hulu, netflix, Veebeam, Wireless For more Tech coverage:
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| Google to Make Its Core Products More Social Posted: 15 Sep 2010 12:30 AM PDT   Google will most probably launch its social network, dubbed Google Me, later this year. However, the secretive project might be more of an added social layer to Google’s existing products and services than an entirely new service. “We’re trying to take Google’s core products and add a social component,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Google Zeitgeist conference on Tuesday. Rumors about Google building a Facebook competitor became slightly more convincing back in August, when Google acquired Ångströ, a service that brings intelligent search results on someone’s professional network, as well as social app company Slide. Now, however, Google Me is shaping to be more like Buzz, in the sense that it will integrate with Google’s existing popular services such as email and Google’s most important product – search. “If you think about it, it’s obvious. With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better,” Schmidt said. Hearing these words coming out of Schmidt’s mouth must be a a huge confidence booster for Facebook. If social networking is so important for search, well, Facebook has already solved that part of the equation. If Google’s social networking efforts fail, Google may become desperate to partner up with Facebook. Note that Schmidt was very careful to mention users’ permission. Google Buzz made Gmail social, but it also caused a backlash from users who simply didn’t like the fact that some of their email-related info is now shared with other users. It’ll be interesting to see how Google plans to make its services more social without making the same mistakes again. Reviews: Facebook, Gmail, Google, Google Buzz More About: eric schmidt, Google, social networking For more Tech coverage:
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| Unreal Engine Games Coming to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Posted: 14 Sep 2010 10:40 PM PDT   Epic Games announced at the Korea Games Conference that the developer kit for its popular Unreal graphics engine will soon “generate iOS applications.” In other words, one of the most popular and advanced 3D engines used by console and PC video games will soon be used to produce graphically impressive iPhone, iPod touch and iPad games. Epic demonstrated a tech demo game running the Unreal engine called Epic Citadel [iTunes link] at Apple’s event unveiling the new iPod touch earlier this month, then made the demo available as a free download from the App Store. The demo has since been downloaded one million times, so the unprecedented graphics must have impressed iPhone and iPod-wielding gamer geeks. Apple has been trying to make the iPod touch and the iPhone the biggest and best portable gaming devices, and depending on how you measure success, the company might have done just that. Casual games and remastered classics have performed well on the platform, and Apple just launched an Xbox Live-like social gaming platform called Game Center. Epic Games revealed its iOS developer kit plans because it recognizes the potential of the smartphone gaming market. It also revealed that it is running the engine on the Android platform, but it didn’t say when or if that platform would be publicly supported in the developer kit. Do Unreal and iOS Match?First introduced with the 1998 PC game Unreal, the Unreal engine has since been used for dozens and dozens of popular games on virtually every major platform, from Xbox to Wii to PlayStation 3. Hit games that have used the Unreal engine include Gears of War, BioShock, Mass Effect, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3, Red Steel, Mirror’s Edge, Deus Ex, Borderlands and several Harry Potter franchise games. The iPhone is better known for casual games such as Diner Dash, Plants vs Zombies and Angry Birds. Those games are cheaper to develop and arguably have broader appeal than the hardcore, gamer-culture titles the Unreal engine is best known for. While a few graphics-intensive, “hardcore” games like NOVA and Madden NFL 11 have been successful on the platform, it remains to be seen whether there is a large market for console-style games that take large teams and money coffers to develop. Epic Games hasn’t announced the licensing costs or other practical details behind Unreal engine development for iOS, but it did reveal in vague terms what kind of effort it took to produce Epic Citadel; a “small team” created the technology, while “the demo content was almost entirely the work of Principal Artist Shane Caudle, who created the Citadel in just eight weeks.” Caudle received some on-the-side help from the QA department and other team members as needed. There haven’t been enough big success stories to date to prove that $5 games are a reliable bet for high-end 3D game development, but if Epic is able to make the tools easy to use for small teams and keep the licensing and development costs very low, we could see some very technically impressive games on Apple’s mobile devices in the near future. Reviews: Android, App Store, harry potter, iPhone More About: 3D, engine, epic, epic games, graphics, iOS, ipad, iphone, iPod Touch, korea games conference, udk, ue3, unreal, unreal developer kit, unreal engine, unreal engine 3, video games For more Tech coverage:
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| OnStar Launches Facebook Integration with “Responsible Connectivity” Posted: 14 Sep 2010 09:01 PM PDT   OnStar today confirmed rumors of social integration with its next generation in-vehicle technologies. The ninth-generation hardware from OnStar will support both audio Facebook statuses and SMS messages. The service will read Facebook and SMS to drivers, enabling them to respond verbally, with voice transcription handling the typing. These features are part of OnStar’s new “responsible connectivity” initiative, which is aimed squarely at keeping drivers more focused on the task of driving, and less on things like Facebook statuses and SMS messages. For the time being, the service is focused on content delivery, but, given the core OnStar technologies, there’s strong potential for integration with other, more geo-specific applications. Reviews: Facebook More About: facebook, Facebook Places, geolocation, GM, gps, OnStar For more Tech coverage:
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| 1 in 4 U.S. Adults Now Use Mobile Apps [STATS] Posted: 14 Sep 2010 07:14 PM PDT   A new study from the Pew Internet Project illustrates just how rapidly consumers are embracing applications on their mobile devices. Of the 82% of U.S. adults who are now active cellphone users, 43% now have apps on their phones, and more than two-thirds of them use those apps regularly. In other words, 24% of the U.S. adult population actively uses apps, the study estimates. Of the 82% Americans using mobile devices, nearly one-third of them have downloaded apps, and 13% said they have paid for one or more of those apps. More than half of those who said they had downloaded an app claimed they had done so within the last 30 days, and one-third had in the last week. Unsurprisingly, mobile app users tended to be younger, male, more educated and more affluent compared to the rest of the population. App users had an average of 18 apps on their devices and a median of 10, indicating that there were a number of users with a disproportionate number of apps on their phones. This was especially the case with young adults, the study found.  Although apps are not nearly as popular as photo taking (76% of mobile users), text messaging (71%) and accessing the Internet (38%), the stats are impressive given that Apple didn’t even open up its App Store until July 2008, followed by BlackBerry nearly a year later. As SVP and Head of Research and Insights for Telecom Practices at Nielsen Roger Entner observed, "This is a pretty remarkable tech-adoption story, if you consider that there was no apps culture until two years ago.” Yet adoption still has a long way to go. Kristen Purcell, associate director for research at the Pew Internet Project, noted that “many cell owners do not know what their phone can do.” 11% of those surveyed were not even sure if their phones had apps. “The apps market seems somewhat ahead of a majority of adult cellphone users,” she added. Games Top Most Popular Apps List Games make up by far the most popular genre of apps, both in terms of number of downloads and ratio of people who have downloaded them. 60% of those who said they had downloaded an app in the last 30 days said they had also played a gaming app during that period, followed by news/weather (52%), maps/navigation (51%) and social networking (47%). Shopping was much further down the list at 24%. The study also noted varying app behaviors between genders: Games and social networking were more popular with women (63% vs. 58% and 53% vs. 42%, respectively), while productivity (29% vs. 21%) and banking/finance apps (32% vs. 25%) were more popular with men. Those Who Download Apps Use Them FrequentlyOf those who have downloaded apps, nearly 2 in 3 said they use their apps daily, and 1 in 4 use their apps for more than 30 minutes per day. Most (71%) use their apps alone, while roughly half use them while waiting for someone or something, or while at work. Another 36% use their apps while commuting (which happens to be when I use apps most heavily). Users Like to Keep Their Phones OrganizedConsumers value the ability to organize their apps for easy accessibility, the study revealed, noting that 59% of app users had rearranged their apps so that the most frequently used were more accessible. 56% said they delete the apps they don’t use, most within two weeks of downloading them. We’d love to know how these findings compare to your own use of mobile apps. What kinds of apps do you most frequently use? When do you use them? Do you prefer to have lots of apps on your phone, or only the ones you use often? Please share your experiences in the comments. Image courtesy of Vail Resorts. Reviews: App Store, BlackBerry Rocks!, Internet More About: android, apps, blackberry, iphone, iphone apps, Mobile 2.0 For more Mobile coverage:
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| The New Twitter is an Attack on All Desktop Apps Posted: 14 Sep 2010 06:14 PM PDT   “Twitter.com has always been the most popular Twitter client. 78% of active users have used it in the last 30 days,” said Twitter CEO Evan Williams in a tweet earlier today. While that stat has been public knowledge for nearly two weeks now, it carries even more weight as we welcome the completely overhauled new version of Twitter.com. The new web interface effectively makes Twitter desktop clients irrelevant in the long run. Because what’s the point of downloading software and running Silverlight or Adobe Air to engage with Twitter when there’s a brand new, media-rich Twitter experience waiting for you inside any browser? Twitter.com is a Desktop App Minus the Download Look closely. Does the pane style of the new Twitter.com look familiar to you? It should. It’s essentially a version of the sleek new Twitter iPad app but optimized for the web. In the iPad app, Twitter users browse tweets in the typical timeline fashion, with links, photos, videos, profiles and other content opening up in new panes to the right of the timeline. That approach has been brought to the web with the introduction of a two-pane design, mini profiles, a myriad of media partnerships for viewing embedded photos and videos inline, and a details pane for additional context around a particular tweet. The new Twitter is essentially a full-featured desktop application minus the download. The new experience is rich and nicely contained — gone are the days of right-hand navigation searches and unfriendly user profile lookups. Users can now simply tab through their timeline, mentions, retweets, searches and lists via the upper navigation options for fast access to practically everything Twitter has to offer. Let’s be honest, though, the media experience is where the magic happens. Twitter has partnered with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi (formerly TweetPhoto), Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube to put content from the people you follow smack dab in the middle of your timeline. Media posts are tagged as such with their corresponding icons, and you can simply click on them to pull up photos or watch live and recorded videos. Try getting the same quality of experience from your desktop client. Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck come close, but even they can’t compete head-to-head on this front. Twitter Developers Relegated to Niche Markets With dozens if not hundreds of desktop (and mobile) applications competing for just 22% of the market, the competition for your desktop was already fierce. Now each and every one of them — TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop 2 included — will have to fight harder to attract new audiences that continue to show a preference for using Twitter.com. Twitter will let them fight for niche markets, but the new Twitter.com essentially rolls up all the best features from all the best desktop and web clients and repurposes them for mainstream use. Sure, the new Twitter.com won’t be right for every power user out there. But, Twitter has given most of us desktop app-lovers reason enough to come back to the web and little reason for new users to dabble around. Reviews: DailyBooth, Flickr, Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck, TweetPhoto, Twitgoo, Twitpic, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, adobe AIR, deviantART, ustream More About: desktop applications, New Twitter, seesmic, tweetdeck, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Twitter Changes the Default New User Avatar [PIC] Posted: 14 Sep 2010 05:13 PM PDT   In the midst of all of today’s big Twitter news, the microblogging service also changed the default avatar picture to a drawing of an egg — perhaps to symbolize the “hatching” of a new version of Twitter.com (Get it?). Or maybe it’s because an egg signifies a new user, full of potential for tweets as yet unsent (continuing to play on the bird-related imagery associated with the company). In any event, the change happened quietly as Twitter brought members of the media into its San Francisco headquarters to unveil the new version of Twitter.com, which among other things allows users to embed videos, maps and pictures in their tweets without requiring followers to click on any external links. Twitter last changed its default profile image around this time last year, then replacing the terrible eyesore we described as “the weird brown smiley face” with a wide variety of colored Twitter birds. Reviews: Twitter More About: avatar, egg, pic, picture, profile, profile pic, social media, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Here Comes the New Twitter.com [PIC] Posted: 14 Sep 2010 04:30 PM PDT   Twitter has announced that it's rolling out a new version of its web interface. Some users will start seeing the new look as soon as tonight, though the company says on its blog that it “will roll out as a preview over the next several weeks.” News of the company's plan to integrate multimedia into the stream leaked out earlier this afternoon, but we've now learned that the redesign goes much further than that, with an interface that resembles that of a far more sophisticated web app (as well as Twitter’s recently released iPad app). The multimedia partnerships we hinted at earlier today extend to 16 different companies: DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube. Much has been made in recent months of Twitter’s move into areas previously owned by third-party applications. Today’s announcement will no doubt renew such discussion, with many of the best features of Twitter clients like Tweetie, Seesmic Desktop, and TweetDeck now becoming a part of the default Twitter interface. As we also pointed out earlier this afternoon, it also makes Twitter feel a bit more like Facebook. Twitter CEO Evan Williams prefaced his announcement by mentioning that Twitter.com is already far and away the most popular way for accessing the microblogging service, commanding 78% of unique users (which the company defines as “Of all the people who logged into their Twitter account during the month, what percentage did so via each service.”). Combined with Twitter’s growing need to serve up impressions to advertisers, it’s certainly no surprise that the company is now looking to keep people more engaged on its website. Stay tuned to Mashable for additional coverage and analysis of the new interface. In the meantime, check out Twitter’s video demo and some early screenshots: Additional Coverage
VideoScreenshotsHome Screen The new home screen has a wider two-panel interface and is visually similar to the Twitter for iPad app. Twitter Profile Page The new Twitter user page is accessible from a selection at the top bar or by visiting a user's page directly. The new profile layout contains easy access to favorites, lists, followers and who a user is following. Again, this adds functionality similar to what Twitter for the iPhone and Twitter for the iPad offer, but in the browser. Mini Profile Clicking on a user name brings up a mini profile option that shows easy to access stats about a user, an easy way to follow them, add them to a list, send them a message and view recent tweets. User Stream You can also view more tweets from a particular user by selecting their tweet. The second panel houses their other tweets. Inline Video Searching for "youtube" brings up a list of tweets in the left panel, but selecting the right panel shows an embedded YouTube clip inline the tweet itself. Reviews: DailyBooth, Flickr, Mashable, Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck, Twitgoo, Twitpic, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, deviantART, news, tweetie, ustream For more Social Media coverage:
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| LIVE: Twitter’s Big Announcement Posted: 14 Sep 2010 03:58 PM PDT  Twitter is about to make the biggest change to its interface in years when it adds photos and videos in the stream. What will it look like? Will it be a game-changer, or will Twitter’s users revolt? Does Twitter have a few surprise announcements up its sleeve? We’re live here at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to find out. Twitter HQ is electric with energy, and it feels like Twitter’s got even more up its sleeve than has been leaked so far. Representatives of partners like Ustream and Justin.tv are also here, stirring even more speculation. Here are my live notes: LIVE All times are in Pacific Standard Time 3:59 PM: We are seated in Twitter’s main cafeteria as we wait for Twitter’s program to begin. Twitter’s Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Jason Goldman and Kevin Cheng are all speaking. 4:03: Only a few minutes until we start. They’re serving the press and Twitter’s employees beer, cheese, crackers, chips and salsa. Yum. 4:04: Twitter CEO Evan Williams just tweeted the following: “I’m about to send 10 tweets about Twitter.” Something to watch. 4:05: Biz and Ev are now on stage. 4:05: “Thank you for being here on such short notice.” ~ Biz 4:07: Evan is now speaking. Before the big announcement, he’s starting with the context and what’s been happening up until now. 4:08: First “tweet” from Biz Stone: Twitter is getting better — and bigger. 4:10: Twitter mobile usage up 250% this year. Twitter is seeing a massive increase in signups — 370,000 new signups per day, in fact. 4:11: Twitter is a real-time information network. Twitter levels the playing field between creators and consumers of content. 4:13: Twitter just changed its default profile picture to an egg, instead of the old bird montage. 4:15: Technical difficulties. Macbook Pro has crashed. Biz and Ev are stalling for time. 4:16: One of our big challenges is helping users find the stuff that is relevant to them. It was hard to find out who to follow. 4:17: You don’t need to tweet to get value, but a lot of people are tweeting. Nearly 100 million tweets per day. 4:18: Tweet #8: “Infrastructure and performance are our biggest investment. They provide the foundation for new things.” 4:19: Twitter.com is the biggest Twitter cleint. 78% log into Twitter.com on a monthly basis than almost all the other clients. 4:20: Announcement: Today we’re launching a new Twitter.com — faster, easier, richer. Ev is playing a video to help explain/promote it. It shows picutres in the stream. You can click on a tweet and pull up more information on a person, on a n image, on a tweet, etc. YouTube videos are supported. 4:21: It looks like the panel approach of the iPad app. Clicking on a tweet brings up information on the right-hand side. A two pane experience with the timeline and information such as maps, local tweets, etc. 4:24: The mini-profile has arrived. You can bring up information on a user in the timeline, follow users, etc. 4:25: 16 new media partners. TwitPic, Ustream, Justin.tv, YouTube included. 4:26: New profile page. Keep the basic aspects, but increase the prominence of the bio, drill down into tweets (the side panes) and jump around more quickly and easily. 4:29: No more “more” button for tweets. Endless line of tweets. Q&AQ: Who are the partners? What are the terms of the deal? Q: When does the site go live for everybody? Q: Lists? What’s changing with them? Q: Developers? What do they get access to? Q: How did testing go? Was it tested externally? Q: Just asked a question on iPad app’s influence and the influence of Loren, the creator of Tweetie, on this project Q: Monetization focus? Q: Multiple accounts? Q: What’s the new Twitter’s affect on the load? Q: Changes to Twitter Search? Reviews: Flickr, Twitpic, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, tweetie, ustream More About: live, liveblog, twitter
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| 10 Ways to Start a Fund for Social Good Online Posted: 14 Sep 2010 03:16 PM PDT   Fundraising is a key component for most social good campaigns and projects. Thanks to the the Internet and the social web, raising money for a non-profit, community project or charitable organization or relief effort is easier than ever before. The web makes it possible to get your message across and collect money from people all over the world and to include your social graph in the process. If you have an idea or a cause that you want to bring awareness to and raise funds around, there are lots of great online tools to help get you started. Whether you want to raise money for a local community center or help fundraise as part of a broader social good campaign, these tools make it easy to get the word out and collect the funds you need. 1. FirstGiving The U.S. subsidiary of JustGiving.com, FirstGiving lets users raise money for any non-profit in the GuideStar database. It’s free to create a basic account, but if you pay $300 you can fully customize your donations page and link them back to your own website. FirstGiving lets you create fundraising around upcoming events, marathons and walk-a-thons too, which is a nice touch. The processing fee for donation is 5% plus another 2% for credit card transactions. 2. Crowdrise We mentioned Crowdrise in a recent post about alternatives to Facebook Causes and it is a great tool for both charities and general purpose fundraisers. Once you start a project, you can share your project’s link via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. You can also earn points from the community based on your project and your overall campaign. Crowdrise also has an ongoing series of promotions and sweepstakes that you can add to your project to sweeten the incentive to give. 3. Kickstarter Kickstarter is most often used by aspiring creatives to fund projects but it can also be used for great effect for local social good community efforts. Kickstarter is unique in that if your goal amount isn’t reached, none of the money is collected. This “all-or-nothing” approach often leads to Kickstarter campaigns being more active and more involved than a traditional “donate widget.” A great part of Kickstarter for the social fund creator is the ability to reward donors at certain levels. Much like PBS and NPR offer trinkets if you give a certain amount, Kickstarter lets its project creators do the same thing. You can get really creative with your different donor levels to drive people to give more. 4. WhatGives WhatGives offers a great widget you can use on Facebook or on your personal webpage to collect donations for your non-profit. WhatGives is nice because not only does it integrate well with Facebook, but all donations are handled through PayPal. You need to be a registered non-profit with an approved PayPal account, and all donations are channeled directly into that account. You can customize the platform and embed it as a Facebook app or on your blog or website. 5. Change.org Change.org lets users create programs to generate actions from others. That can be as simple as signing a petition or writing a letter, or as generous as donating money. For non-profits in the GuideStar database, you can create your own donation pages to collect funds and also draw attention to other action items. Change.org is very focused on making it easy to virally spread a message, and the site itself also acts as a portal to different organizations and awareness campaigns. 6. Chipin Chipin is one of the most popular donation widget tools on the web and it’s a great way to collect money for a good cause. We love the Chipin widget because you can see instant progress on donations, and it accepts many forms of payment. Unlike many of the services on this list, Chipin isn’t just for non-profits or community organizations. You can use it for any project you want. 7. Razoo Razoo has options for individuals, non-profits, foundations and corporations to raise money for their causes. Individuals can choose to create a fundraising page for any registered non-profit that Razoo recognizes (they have a database of about a million) and non-profits can create custom pages for their organizations and connect with supporters and encourage them to create their own fundraising pages. What we love about Razoo, in addition to its simple interface and great UI, is that it also offers donation-matching for corporations or foundations looking for an easy way to raise money. 8. Convio Convio offers software for online fundraising and membership, and while its target audience is probably bigger groups or organizations, it’s still worth a look. For example, Convio’s TeamRaiser lets organizations make it easy for volunteers to create their own websites for tracking and attracting donations. If you’re organizing a social good fund for a big charity walk or event where volunteers go door-to-door to get donations, check-out Convio because it makes managing that process much, much easier. 9. Facebook Causes Causes is an increasingly common way for individuals to raise money and start their own funds that are tied to a non-profit. Because Causes is so well-integrated into Facebook, it makes getting the word out and raising awareness and funds for your cause that much simpler. 10. StayClassy A newer player in the arena of online giving, San Diego’s StayClassy is focused not just on helping non-profits collect donations online, but also manage events and campaigns, track their fundraising results and plug-in. The world of online fundraising is vast and diverse. What tools have you used when starting your own social good funds? Let us know in the comments. Brought to you by the Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit  This post was brought to you by the groundbreaking Social Good Summit. On September 20, as global leaders head to New York for United Nations Week — including a historic summit on global issues known as the "Millennium Development Goals" (MDGs) and the annual General Assembly — Mashable, 92nd Street Y and the UN Foundation will bring together leaders from the digital industry, policy and media worlds to focus on how technology and social networks can play a leading role in addressing the world's most intractable problems. Date: Monday, September 20, 2010 Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PinkTag Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto More About: change.org, ChipIn, convio, crowdrise, facebook, facebook causes, firstgiving, Fund, fundraising, kickstarter, non-profit, online giving, social good, stayclassy, twitter, whatgives For more Social Media coverage:
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| Forget Puppies, Adopt a Hacker Posted: 14 Sep 2010 03:04 PM PDT   Have you always wanted a hacker of your very own? Well, now you can take one home with Adopt a Hacker — provided you’re part of the New York startup scene, that is. Adopt A Hacker is a project that launched yesterday in order to persuade more hackers (read: developers) to find their way into the NYC fold, as well as to facilitate the travels of any hackers too bashful/scared to visit the city on their own. Adopt A Hacker is the brainchild of Jonathan Wegener and Ben Fisher (as well as the startup weekend team of Aaron Knight, Michael Tseng, Nick Khuu, Michael DeFranco, Heather John, and Ariel Zavala), who built the site this past weekend after mulling over the Big Apple’s lack of hackers. An article titled “Bus in the Hackers: NYC Startup Weekend” detailing the decided derth, as well as a tourist/local matchmaking service called Big Apple Greeter served as inspiration for the duo. Adopt A Hacker basically allows hackers to find techies they can stay with while in New York, or — at the very least — people in the scene to meet up with over coffee. “It’s an ambassador program for hackers who want to come to New York, but are intimidated by the city,” Wegener says. The program itself is pretty simple. Hackers go to the site, sign in through Facebook and fill out an application detailing their skills, interests, background, social networks, etc. The team has developed a recommendation engine that then attempts to link up hackers and startup folks (all NYC volunteers) by degree of separation — three to four friends on Facebook, two to three connections of LinkedIn. The host then OKs the match, and the Hacker is sent an e-mail containing a list of hosts, complete with Facebook snaps and info. So far, 150 New Yorkers have volunteered, and 25 hackers have planned trips to the city since Monday’s launch. Hackers: Would you test out this service prior to visiting the city? NB from the founders: “Hey, Ben & Jonathan here! Just wanted to add that Adopt A Hacker was built over the weekend for Startup Weekend, which was graciously housed at New Work City!” Reviews: Facebook, LinkedIn More About: facebook, hackers, tech For more Tech coverage:
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| The Facebookification of Twitter Posted: 14 Sep 2010 02:43 PM PDT   Twitter is about to become a major multimedia destination, thanks to some new partners and features. Earlier today, we reported that Twitter is bringing multimedia to the stream. If you tweet a link to a video, for example, it will be embedded and play right in the Twitter stream. Twitter has “multiple partners” for today’s launch, including web video, live-streaming video, and video platform partners. Bringing pictures and videos to the stream is one of the biggest changes Twitter has ever made. Instead of going off-site to watch your favorite YouTube video or livestream, you can stay on Twitter.com and browse multimedia all day long. In other words, today’s changes will make Twitter feel more like Facebook. A Convergence of PlatformsFacebook is a destination; people spend hours browsing videos, adding friends, uploading pictures, changing profile information and playing FarmVille. That’s part of the reason why it now has more than 500 million users and those users spend more time on it than any other website. While Twitter describes itself as information network and not a social network, the company has been launching an awful lot of Facebook-esque features in recent months. The company’s “You Both Follow” feature is all about helping users build up their social graphs. Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie was part of an effort to unify the Twitter experience on multiple platforms. The same is true about the company’s Android, BlackBerry and iPhone apps. But today’s forthcoming features are the big ones. By adding multimedia to the stream, Twitter evolves from a source of information and links to a destination website where users can simply kill time by watching all of the YouTube videos their friends are sharing. While there may not be photo albums on Twitter anytime soon, we could imagine friends checking their Twitter accounts every day (or every hour) to see what photos their friends are tweeting. To be clear, we don’t think Twitter is trying to become Facebook — again, the service defines itself as an information network and not a social network. However, that isn’t to say the company isn’t envious of Facebook’s success and doesn’t want to become a destination website. After all, if it’s a destination, it can serve more ads. Last year, the story was all about the “Twitterification” of Facebook. Today will be about the “Facebookification” of Twitter. Reviews: Android, BlackBerry Rocks!, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iPhone More About: facebook, multimedia, Opinion, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| How You Can Support UN Week 2010 (Tickets, Schedules and Major Updates) Posted: 14 Sep 2010 02:04 PM PDT   This year, Mashable has been working with the UN Foundation and 92nd Street Y to produce a series of events that we hope will break the mold of the traditionally closed concept of UN Week. We have an amazing lineup of speakers coming to the stage and are excited to announce that Geena Davis, Academy Award-winning actor and founder of See Jane, is joining us. She will be interviewed by Soledad O'Brien, anchor and special correspondent at CNN. The Mashable and 92Y Social Good Summit brings together people who are directly working on solving the world’s most intractable problems through the frameworks of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Through Mashable and our audience, we are aiming to bring the new media and social media worlds into the events, whether in person or via webcast, to help spread mass awareness and support for solutions to the MDGs. Mashable needs your help in supporting us, the UN Foundation, its initiatives and the world. Ways To Get Involved
Big Updates Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit: The current agenda and schedule for the Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit in partnership with the UN Foundation* 12:00 p.m. – Registration
Date: Tuesday, September 21 to Friday, September 24, 2010 Some highlights on the schedule for the UN Week Digital Media Lounge.* Full schedule can be found on the Digital Media Lounge site. Tuesday, September 21 Wednesday, September 22 Thursday, September 23 Friday, September 24 Organizations involved include: Representatives from the following NGO's will be present throughout the week: In Partnership With Livestream is the most powerful live broadcast platform on the Internet. Producers can use the Livestream browser-based Studio application to create LIVE, scheduled and on-demand internet television to broadcast anywhere on the web through a single player widget. Our service comes in two flavors Free (ad-supported) and Premium (white-label, no-ads, pay for usage). Unique features include the ability to mix multiple live cameras, imported videos clips, and overlay graphics. With Livestream, producers can broadcast live from a mobile phone; use a customizable flash player with integrated chat; and develop a branded channel page on www.Livestream.com that incorporates interactive chat. Supporting Sponsors Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, enabling them to improve operational efficiency, build strong relationships, and raise more money to support their missions. Since 1981, Blackbaud's sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com.  Johnson & Johnson is committed to helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in the areas of maternal and child health by applying innovative mobile technologies. The rapid proliferation of cell phones has made it possible to provide timely health information in even the most remote locations. In February 2010, Johnson & Johnson launched Text4Baby in the U.S. through its partnership with the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB). In September 2010, we announced a five year initiative with our affiliate, BabyCenter, focusing on mobile health outreach to mothers in six countries starting with China, India and South Africa. Ticketing Partner At Eventbrite, we're passionate about bringing people together around a live experience. Whether it’s a photography class or a sold-out concert, an inspiring conference or an air-guitar competition — we’re true believers in the magic of events and the power of connecting people. Our service allows everyone to discover events and experience the excitement of bringing them to life. We do this by making it incredibly easy to create, find or attend an event. We help you manage the hard stuff — such as registrations and selling tickets — and we set you up with the tools to help your event spread virally through social networks. It’s event management, search, and promotion all coming together for the first time. We call it social commerce. Reviews: Facebook, Internet, Mashable, Twitter More About: 92y, cnn, social good, social good summit, un foundation, UN week For more Social Media coverage:
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| Formspring Hits One Billion Questions Answered Posted: 14 Sep 2010 01:36 PM PDT   Formspring, the extremely viral Q&A platform, hit a huge milestone this past weekend: one billion questions answered. Formspring, which launched around nine months ago, has been going like gangbusters lately. According to a company rep, the site currently has 16.5 million users — up from 14 million two months ago — and it’s seeing 5 million questions answered each day, with a daily peak of about 9,000 answers per minute. Why this explosive growth? It probably has something to do with its increasing innovation and growth. The site went multiplayer in July, allowing users to pose questions to more than one friend, and recently launched a feature called Connections, which lets you see who you’ve interacted with. Also, there have been a bevy of third-party extensions of late, including Taptivate’s Spring iPhone app, Seesmic’s Desktop 2 featuring a Formspring plugin and an extension courtesy of Flavors.me. Integrations with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, MySpace and WordPress, probably also contributed greatly to the one-billion figure. An excess of 200,000 users took advantage of the WordPress/MySpace integration within the first few days of its launch alone. Images courtesy of Flickr, crystaljingsr Reviews: Facebook, Family Connections, Flickr, FormSpring, MySpace, Tumblr, Twitter, WordPress, blogger More About: blogger, facebook, formspring.me, myspace, tumblr, twitter, Wordpress For more Social Media coverage:
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| 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From Posted: 14 Sep 2010 01:32 PM PDT
Making a social media campaign work sometimes requires a certain je ne sais quoi. We looked into some successful campaigns from the past year to figure out what they did right and what lessons they can provide. We know we left out some brilliant social media campaigns, especially for niche and small-scale markets. Add your voice to the comments below, and let us know which social media campaigns you admire and what lessons they offer. 1. Gap The Campaign: Gap teamed up with popular group-buying site Groupon to offer a nation-wide deal: $50 worth of apparel for just $25. By the end of the day, 441,000 groupons were sold bringing in a little more than $11 million. What Worked: The sale marked Groupon’s first nation-wide deal with a major brand. For Gap, the deal brought in a ton of cash and, hopefully, new customers. “We’re really trying to reach new customers,” said Chris Gayton, Gap’s Senior Director of Media. “To reach them in ways that are part of their everyday so that it becomes like a conversation.” Gap’s other social media efforts, including deals for Foursquare users, are about building a community. Gayton said that 70% of people that buy something in a Gap store started browsing on their website. Social media is a way to reach those people and bring them under their brand. Part of that is encapsulated in their 1969 denim stream. Billed as a catch-all resource on denim (not just Gap-sponsored ads, though they are there as well), Gap built it to offer added value and create conversation. Online loyalty will hopefully turn into profit. What Flopped: Some people, like digital marketing expert Augustine Fou, commented that the Groupon deal was a bust because Gap doesn’t “need” more word of mouth. He saw it in terms of revenue loss rather than customer gain. 2. Toy Story 3 The Campaign: Pixar and Disney let out a barrage of videos, tie-ins, and ads to promote Toy Story 3. Aside from traditional banner ads and billboards, Disney created viral videos including fake, vintage-style ads featuring the new characters, an iAd featured on the iPhone 4, and a Facebook Page complete with a built-in ticket-buying app. What Worked: The video successfully played on the nostalgia of their entire demographic. Kids could appreciate the fake toy commercials while their parents could reminisce about their own childhood toys; a sentiment entirely in line with the Toy Story brand. The Facebook app was connected to news streams such that you could share when you bought tickets to the movie. Word-of-mouth and in-stream recommendations are a powerful tool. “The whole idea is that no friend gets left behind,” a Disney exec told the IFC. It’s both a play on the movie’s tagline (“No Toy Gets Left Behind”) and pressure to join in when your friends buy tickets. What Flopped: The social media campaign was pretty solid on most counts. The danger of associating with major brands (like the iAd) is that your product can appear too polished or too corporate. It all comes down to knowing your product and knowing your brand. In this case, Disney-Pixar hit a home run. 3. AOL The Campaign: AOL set out to hire an ambassador for its social aggregation site Lifestream. More than just a mascot, the ambassador position was known as “the best job ever” with bonuses like a cushy apartment and VIP access to concerts and events across the country. The hiring process was a mix of traditional “resume and interview” applications and an extensive social media voting process headed up by the hopeful employees. The eventual ambassador was asked to reach out to their fans with regular updates. What Worked: AOL is trying to reboot as a “cool” brand. Rather than spend a fortune on commercials with hip people using the product (cough, BBM, cough), AOL offered a service that its desired demographic would actually want; namely, a sweet job. Having the position decided by fan vote helped organically spread the word and create a supportive community that was invested in their product. “The attempt was to recruit a person to the position,” said Tessa Petrich, the eventual winner. “… Secondly it was to pump up the position, to get more eyeballs to the product… Thirdly to that, what it did really well was to get people excited about AOL.” Speaking about the campaign’s organic fan base, Petrich said: “You need to give people the opportunity to get excited about you. Your strongest outreach are your own customers.” What Flopped: The campaign just ended so it’s too early too tell its long-term effect. One let down was the inevitable decrease in hype. The buzz around AOL’s new dream job died down once the spot was filled. No amount of celebrity spottings or updates from the winning ambassador could compete with the initial creativity of the campaign. Planned follow-up campaigns are also suffering from this. 4. Starbucks The Campaign: Starbucks has been busy with a bunch of successful social media campaigns across a range of networks. The coffee giant offered mayorship deals on Foursquare, free goodies for Tax Day via Twitter’s then-new promoted tweets, and a free pastry day promoted through Twitter and Facebook. What Worked: If you’re going to offer discounts, make sure they’re on products you want to feature. Rather than setting up blanket deals, Starbucks focused on areas where they wanted to improve sales. Free pastry day got publicity for their non-coffee offerings, the mayor deals often provide discounts on new products, tax day’s free coffee promoted recycling — part of the brand’s greener image. Jumping on Twitter’s promoted tweets early also garnered Starbucks a lot of publicity in the tech and social media worlds — a demographic that generally has money to spend on premium coffee. Essentially, if a news organization wanted to cover promoted tweets as they launched, Starbucks was a major go-to example. What Flopped: Starbucks is good at promoting things — its social media campaigns seem less concerned, however, with building a vibrant community. Starbucks already has near-religious levels of customer loyalty, so this may be a smart resource allocation rather than oversight. 5. Mountain Dew The Campaign: When Mountain Dew wanted to create a new flavor, they did it the social media way. DEWmocracy was a multi-part, long-term project aimed at creating a new soda flavor through fan voting. The campaign started by narrowing down a series of fan-made flavors with home-tasting packs. The three were chosen through a country-wide tour complete with voting and video booths. Mountain Dew then created “Flavor Nations” composed of fans, experts, and professional ad agencies. Each flavor nation was responsible for the packaging, graphics, and social marketing of their flavor including viral videos, promotion on Twitter, and professional commercials. The winner was chosen by mass vote. What Worked: Like AOL, Mountain Dew gained a ton of exposure and loyalty by mobilizing its customers to help grow the brand. The largely grassroots movement built natural buzz around the new flavors with a huge net of social media exposure. Mountain Dew was also able to keep the projects on-brand. Despite having disparate communities working on the flavor nations, the ad agencies and experts helped guide the discussion and create a polished finished product while allowing fans to have a real say on the company’s marketing direction. What Flopped: The nature of the campaign means that two of the flavors won’t get made. Assuming the voting was close, this means Mountain Dew could alienate a relatively large portion of its fans who worked on the losing, discontinued flavors. This also assumes that Mountain Dew’s fans took the campaign to heart and would be more frustrated at losing the competition rather than excited to be shaping their brand’s future. Speed Round We’ve gone through five campaigns in relative depth, but there were a slew of recent great ones. Below, we run through some honorable mentions of interesting, unique, or just plain polished social media campaigns.
Series supported by Awareness  Awareness builds social marketing software for marketers leveraging multiple social channels to engage with customers, build their brand, and increase revenues. Built upon Awareness' expertise deploying more than 200 communities and social media projects for the world's biggest brands including Sony, JetBlue, Kodak, ASOS.com and AIRMiles, The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is a leading enterprise-grade application for marketers struggling with the social media chaos of managing multiple social channels. With the Awareness Social Marketing Hub, marketers are now able to publish, manage and measure across all their social channels from one central location using advanced built-in permissioning, workflow and audit controls. More Social Media Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59 Reviews: Chrome, Facebook, Google, Google Chrome, Internet, Twitter, iPhone, iStockphoto More About: aol, aol lifestream, arcade-fire, campaign, car town, dewmocracy, disney, facebook, ford, Foursqaure, free pastry day, gap, Google, google chrome, groupon, honda cr-z, mountain dew, old spice, pixar, social media campaign, social media for business leaders series, starbucks, The last exorcism, toy story, toy story 3, TRON, twitter For more Business coverage:
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| Twitter Bringing Photos and Videos to the Stream Posted: 14 Sep 2010 01:13 PM PDT   At Twitter’s event later this afternoon, the company will announce new ways to embed multimedia into the stream — including the ability to embed and play back video content directly from the Twitter home page — according to sources at two partners that are part of the announcement. This would presumably be an extension of the Twitter Media feature that was tested earlier this summer. Our sources lead us to believe that several companies will be involved with Twitter’s multimedia efforts, handling different parts of the backend and distribution. Similar to how Twitter has started to work with TweetMeme to support the backend for the official Twitter Buttons, Twitter could potentially be utilizing other services to make things like video, photos and even live streaming content accessible from the Twitter interface. The big question now is: What form will multimedia take in Twitter? Will this be a feature available to everyone, or will this be part of a long-rumored Twitter Pro subscription? Multimedia could be a big incentive for brands, companies and large-scale users to pay for a Twitter Pro account, especially if the hosting and serving was all taken care of by Twitter. Of course, it’s also possible Twitter could be bringing multimedia to all users, in essence blurring the line between Twitter and Here’s what the “Twitter Media” setting looked like when it was briefly available back in July:  Reviews: Facebook, Tweetmeme, Twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Bitbop Brings Streaming TV to Your Android Phone Posted: 14 Sep 2010 12:41 PM PDT   At the DEMO Fall event Tuesday, Fox Mobile-backed startup Bitbop unveiled its first Android application, designed to bring streaming, full-length TV shows from a variety of networks and production companies to smartphone users over 3G or Wi-Fi. The new Android app is now available for the Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC EVO 4G, Droid 2, Droid X and Nexus One handsets. A beta version for select BlackBerry handsets has also been out for a few months now. Looking at its list of shows, Bitbop’s offering is extremely similar to Hulu and Hulu Plus. Like Bitbop, Hulu Plus is also $9.99 per month. Fox has a stake in both companies. The big difference, from what we can tell right now, is that Bitbop offers commercial-free content and the ability to download or stream shows, whereas Hulu Plus is streaming-only and has some advertisements for newer shows. The other difference lies in content selection. Although there is some overlap in the types of shows that both products carry, there are some shows that aren’t on Hulu that are on Bitbop (namely a number of CBS or Viacom properties), although Hulu Plus has a much better and broader back catalog of episodes. We’ll be providing our own hands-on Bitbop review later on. If you’re the owner of one of the compatible Android devices, give it a download and let us know what you think in the comments. Reviews: Android, Hulu More About: android, bitbop, demofall2010, hulu, hulu plus, streaming tv, television For more Mobile coverage:
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| Conan Tries to Go Old Spice with Video Q&A Posted: 14 Sep 2010 12:05 PM PDT Treading in the footsteps of great men like U.S. President Barack Obama and the Old Spice Guy, Conan has taken to YouTube today to ask his fans and followers to submit questions about his upcoming show on TBS. He will then answer said questions in another video. There is no word, however, on whether or not he will take his shirt off. Former The Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien — a.k.a. "Coco" — has worked his way up to become an Internet personality following the demise of his late-night gig. He joined Twitter about six months ago, and since then has basically created an online fanbase for himself, as well as launched a live tour titled "The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour," a reference to the deal he made with NBC that keeps O'Brien off the air until the fall. Well, summer’s over now, folks (or it will be on September 21) and Conan will be back on the air in November on a show called Conan, airing on TBS — which is why he’s beating the old publicity drum by asking for your queries via his Facebook Page. Answers will then appear on his YouTube page. What do you think of Conan’s impersonation of Mr. Old Spice? Do you think he’ll keep up his social media efforts once the cameras start rolling? Share your myriad thoughts in the comments. Reviews: Internet, YouTube More About: coco, conan o'brien, facebook, humor, pop culture, television, twitter, youtube For more Entertainment coverage:
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| 25 iPhone Apps for the Mobile Fashionista Posted: 14 Sep 2010 11:27 AM PDT This series is brought to you by Nordstrom Conversation. To share your own thoughts on apps and social media in the fashion industry and more, join the Conversation at Nordstrom.   If you’re passionate about style, chances are you’ve downloaded a few fashion-related apps for your smartphone. You’ve probably also noticed that the quality and utility of these apps varies widely, and that many of them overlap in functionality. To combat that problem, we’ve divided the existing coterie of fashion apps into six main categories to help you find the most efficient organizer for your existing wardrobe, the most robust shopping guide for both online and retail stores, the best app from an individual designer, and the most comprehensive resources for fashion news, style advice and style inspiration. Because the majority of big brands have opted to develop quality apps for iOS exclusively, we’ve only included apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. If you have any recommendations to share for those platforms, we hope you’ll do so in the comments below. Best Wardrobe Organizer While there are a number of free apps that promise to help you organize your wardrobe and effectively mix-and-match items to create outfits, nothing is as robust as Stylebook’s $3.99 app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Like runners-up Touch Closet and Gap StyleMixer, which are available for $0.99 and free, respectively, you can use the app to photograph and organize your clothing by category. You can then collage these images to create different outfits. What’s especially useful about Stylebook, however, is that you can remove the background from images of clothing, which helps you create clean, layered collages (in all fairness, the “background removal” tool is often ineffective — it’s best to use the manual eraser or edit out backgrounds in Photoshop). You can even resize clothing by spreading or pinching your thumb and forefinger — a feature that Gap StyleMixer and Vogue Stylist lack. In addition, Stylebook sports a calendar that allows you to track when they wore outfits and plan outfits ahead of time — great for figuring out when you’re going to need to have your favorite dress dry cleaned for that special after-work event next week, for instance. You can also keep a log of what outfits or pieces you’ve worn to avoid repetition. If you’re serious about organizing your wardrobe on your mobile device, Stylebook is worth the $3.99 price tag, in our opinion. Best App for Style Inspiration Fashion begins with inspiration. And although style inspiration is available everywhere — on the runways, in magazines, on countless style blogs and in just about every kind of design — synthesizing and re-presenting that information in a meaningful way isn’t necessarily easy. Magazine-like style blog WhoWhatWear brings its collection of trend reports and celebrity-inspired style ideas to the iPhone and iPod touch in a visually fresh and editorially concise manner. It provides the same trend reports — with accompanying styling suggestions — that you can find in magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Lucky, but for free. The only notable runner-up in this category is Chicfeed, a free, no-frills app that collects and organizes the latest images from street style blogs like The Sartorialist and Face Hunter into a simple slideshow. Best Shopping App Lucky magazine’s much-lauded Lucky at Your Service iPhone app not only helps you find the best apparel, accessories and beauty products (at least according to Lucky editors) of the moment, it also helps you track them down online and, in some cases, at nearby retail outlets using GPS. Lucky will even call the store to reserve it for same-day pickup. Best of all, it’s entirely free. Although Lucky’s app has some killer features, it’s not a one-stop shopping app; its selection is limited to editors’ recommendations. If you’re looking to browse a wider online inventory, ShopStyle’s free app is your best bet; it compiles items from more than one hundred online retailers, such as Neiman Marcus and Bluefly, to help you access a broad range of brands, styles, prices and colors, and identify the lowest prices. If you prefer retail stores to e-commerce sites, however, Lustr Fashion Finder is your free, go-to app. Lustr uses GPS to pull up the best current and upcoming sales and promotions in your proximity. You can also search other neighborhoods and sale timelines, as well as the kinds of products you are looking for, and compile all of the information into a shopping itinerary. The app also offers exclusive promotions to its users. Bargain hunters will also appreciate Gilt’s iPhone and iPad apps to take advantage of the site’s luxury flash sales, which are scheduled at different hours throughout the week. The deals to be found through eBay Fashion’s app are also worth checking out. Other runners-up include Rugby Ralph Lauren Make Your Own, which lets you design, share and purchase your own rugby shirt, polo shirt or sweater; Yoox and Net-a-Porter, for browsing their extensive catalogs; and iShoes, which makes up for its lack of browsing options with above-average close-up photographs of more than 50,000 shoes. Best App for Style Advice If you’re looking for style advice, look no further than Glamour magazine’s free Ask a Stylist for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Simply snap a photo of the item or ensemble in question, upload it to the app along with your question for almost immediate advice. (Glamour promises a wait of no more than fifteen minutes.) You can even browse the bios of the participating stylists to submit it to one whose taste is most similar to yours. To get a second opinion (or third, or tenth), check out runner-up Fashism, which lets you solicit opinions from the site’s online community. Best App by Individual Designer Apps by individual designers are, by and large, roughly the same. Each generally offers runway photographs and video footage, a slideshow of the current season catalog, a news feed, some background history about the designer and a store locator. Some, like runners-up Gucci and Donna Karan, include a few novel elements; the latter uniquely allows you to mix and record your own music, for instance, while Donna Karan’s enables you to book appointments with personal shoppers, and read the designer’s interviews with the likes of Susan Sarandon, as well as peruse Karan’s answers to style questions from fans (unfortunately, there is no option to submit additional questions). But the winner in this category goes to Ralph Lauren’s app, which includes fantastic behind-the-scenes video and photo montages of the design and casting processes, archival runway footage and interviews with the designer. Of all the apps, its design is perhaps the most elegant, ultimately presenting Ralph Lauren’s rich heritage in a holistic and engaging manner. Other runners-up include Diane von Furstenberg, which allows you to shop for items through the app, including an exclusive $325 wrap dress; Chanel, which allows you to view close-ups of accessories on the runway by rotating your device (but which does not, unfortunately, include any video); and D&G, in which Stefano Gabanna’s tweets are featured prominently alongside the rest of the app’s (mainly visual) features. Best Fashion News Resource Already one of the leading sources for fashion and party news on the web, Style.com’s app is the best for keeping up with the news on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. There’s no quicker way to access high-quality runway photos and videos on your mobile device during Fashion Week, which are also accompanied by intelligent reviews. The app also includes archival footage, international party coverage and features from the site’s style blog. If Style.com’s app isn’t enough, check out Fashion News, a basic RSS aggregator that comes pre-loaded with a list of fashion and beauty blogs, which you add to, remove from and read offline — and that’s about it. (In other words, if you’re a developer and looking to create a fashion app, fashion news is ripe for innovation.) Have you tried any of the apps above? What did you think? What other fashion-related apps would you recommend to users, or like to see made available for smartphones? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments. Series supported by Nordstrom This series is brought to you by Nordstrom Conversation. To share your own thoughts on apps and social media in the fashion industry and more, join the Conversation at Nordstrom. More Fashion Resources from Mashable:
Reviews: Adobe Photoshop, Apps, iPhone More About: app store, apps, fashion, fashion apps, ipad, ipad app, iphone, iphone app, iPod Touch, Mobile 2.0 For more Mobile coverage:
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| Mashlanta 2.0 Tickets Going Quickly Posted: 14 Sep 2010 11:04 AM PDT   On September 30, we’re coming to Atlanta to host Mashlanta 2.0 in partnership with Regator and you’re invited! After an amazing event last year, we’ve gone bigger (200 to 300 more tickets) and longer (an extra hour). This year, Adam Hirsch, Adam Ostrow, Vadim Lavrusik, Brett Petersel and our very own Atlanta-based Christina Warren, along with the Regator team, would like to welcome everyone to come and connect with your local social and tech community. Tickets are are going quickly and sponsorship opportunities are available. Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010 Thanks to our Co-host "With hand-selected blogs on more than 500 topics, Regator is the top source for high-quality blog content and trends. Visit Regator on the web or via Regator Premium for iPhone to easily find, read and share posts on the things that interest you.” Thanks to our VIP Lounge Sponsor “Definition 6 is a unified marketing agency that helps clients create experiences that unite brands and people. Definition 6 helps clients, including The Coca-Cola Company, VeriFone, HBO, Cox, La Quinta Inn & Suites, Nickelodeon and Cinnabon, to bridge the gap between marketing and technology. For more information, visit http://www.definition6.com.” Thanks to our Platinum Sponsors "Vitrue is a leading social media management company providing tools to help companies maximize their social presence. Vitrue delivers a comprehensive solution to manage content and create unique fan engagement apps."  "MailChimp makes email marketing fun, easy and powerful. It’s completely free, too. Sign up and see why everyone’s switching to MailChimp." Thanks to our Startup SponsorsChirbit: “Chirbit is a tool that enables users to record, upload and share audio easily. It is simple, useful, and fun.” TechDrawl: “TechDrawl is a video blog, fresh from the South, showcasing the latest in technology and geekery.” Looxii: “Looxii: The only social media analytics provider strong enough to prove Pauly Shore still has a career. Try it free.” Sticker Mule: "Sticker Mule is the fast and simple way to buy custom stickers. Prices start at $69 for 100 custom stickers with free shipping to the US and Canada." Creative Circus: "The Creative Circus is a two-year portfolio school specializing in the creative side of interactive development, advertising, photography, and design." Thanks to Our Official Ticketing Partner “Eventbrite is the world's largest self-service online ticketing site. Eventbrite makes it easy for anyone to sell out an event.” Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter More About: atlanta, Events, mashable, mashlanta, social media For more Social Media coverage:
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| E-mail to Barack Obama Gets UK Teen Banned from U.S. Posted: 14 Sep 2010 10:43 AM PDT   UK teen Luke Angel sent an angry e-mail to the White House and was consequently visited by local police and banned for life from stepping foot on U.S. soil. This state of affairs proves that the U.S. government takes digital threats just as seriously as any others. The 17-year-old Bedfordshire resident became upset after watching a TV documentary about 9/11, leading him to compose an expletive-laden e-mail that called U.S. President Barack Obama a “prick.” The FBI took the e-mail very seriously and contacted the local British police, who visited Angel at his home and took his picture, then informed him that he would not be able to enter the U.S. It has become necessary for government officials to monitor e-mail and other social media to find potential threats. Last year, the nation of Colombia arrested a man who used Facebook to announce, “I promise to kill Jeronimo Alberto Uribe, son of Alvaro Uribe.” Alvaro Uribe was the president of Colombia. While we harbor a healthy skepticism about some of the FBI’s online monitoring ambitions, it’s perfectly legit to use e-mails sent directly to the government to identify threats. That said, Angel claimed that he was drunk when he wrote the e-mail, so he might not be a long-term threat — but maybe you can never be too careful. Angel said in a newspaper interview that he doesn’t care about the ban, but his parents are reportedly less than thrilled. More About: 911, ban, banned, barack obama, e-mail, email, luke angel, obama, politics, teen, Teenager, White House For more Social Media coverage:
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| How Brazil is Blazing a Trail for Electronic Democracy Posted: 14 Sep 2010 09:13 AM PDT   Gregory Ferenstein is a freelance journalist who investigates the intersection of technology and society. He also designs communication curricula for college students. Follow him on Twitter @ferenstein or at his website. In the land of all-night samba clubs and soccer fanatics, Brazil is throwing its famously high-energy spirit into the untested waters of online democracy. Multimillion dollar budgets are being handed over to online “town halls,” and the federal government is crowdsourcing legislative consulting through interactive web tools. While the effectiveness of e-democracy has yet to be proven, there are some signs of more equitable resource distribution and increased participation. Here, we’ll take a look at participatory budgeting, e-legislation, and why the United States Congress has been more hesitant to adopt such technologies. A History of Democratic InnovationReaders who are somewhat familiar with Brazil's tattered history of corruption may have difficulty swallowing the idea of Brazil as an oasis of democracy. But, beyond the ever present scandals, Brazil has consistently been a pioneer in small-scale, highly participatory governance. For instance, in the sunny vacation destination of Porto Alegre, citizens have enjoyed one of the world's only participatory budgeting processes since 1989. Instead of leaving the state's budgeting to backroom deals between elected officials and deep-pocketed lobbyists, the process convenes a representative council of citizens from the various surrounding cities to make suggestions to the legislature, many of which are approved. The results have been a more equitable distribution of public resources, such as health care and public schools [PDF]. Additionally, within the sprawling streets of Sao Paulo, Semco Inc. has been honored as one of the world's most democratic (and profitable) workplaces. At Semco, many employees can set their own salaries, hire their bosses in town hall meetings, and even overturn decisions by the CEO. Before Google's famous 20% time, Semco was the forerunner to the modern movement in decentralized management. It should be no surprise then that Brazil jumped at the opportunity to plug their participatory spirit into the Internet. E-budgeting in Belo HorizonteIn the rolling hills of landlocked Belo Horizonte, participatory budgeting has been a staple of governance since 1993. Every two years, a handful of citizens assemble from each of its 41 districts, debate the merits of a number of public works projects, and vote to give the green light to the most desirable of these projects. In 2006, the government dove into its first e-democracy experiment [PDF], allocating additional funds for citizens who participated online. This portion totaled about one-fourth of its regular participatory budget. Instead of face-to-face meetings, the online platform educated citizens through text and rich multimedia. Online forms permitted extended dialog between citizens, experts, and politicians, and a dedicated staff member provided timely e-mail responses to direct questions. Among countries with e-democracy measures, none are "even close to the results of [Belo Hoizonte's] e-participatory budgeting both in terms of citizen participation and positive impacts in policy-making processes," says Tiago Peixoto, a research coordinator at the e-democracy center in Zurich, in an e-mail. Overall online civic engagement dwarfed traditional offline participatory budgeting and accounted for a sevenfold increase in votes cast over the prior year when no online component was present. This may sound impressive, but, statistics reveal that Brazilians may actually have an uneasy commitment to direct democracy. When participatory budgeting is compared to the percentage of people who vote in traditional elections, stats show that less than 10% of citizens voted in the online budgeting process of 2006. Peixoto noted in an e-mail that voting in elections is mandatory in Brazil — an important factor in their average 83% turn out in municipal elections. But there have been instances that proved more successful. In Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting is credited with increasing access to clean water and service to sewage systems for 98% and 85% of the population, respectively. Though there aren’t similar statistics for e-democracy (for logistical reasons), the poorest areas were among the most represented, giving hope that e-democracy is imbued with the same spirit of grassroots empowerment. Wiki-LegislatingNot content to let local provinces steal their thunder, the federal legislators of Brazil implemented a sophisticated online platform to crowdsource citizen expertise through Wikipedia-style legislation. "Relying on the use of social media, combined with offline legislative events (e.g. committee hearings, conferences), the initiative is intended to reach a broad segment of the public, including citizens, parliamentarians, civil servants, researchers, nongovernmental organizations and interest groups," writes Cristiano Ferri, co-developer of the online platform and researcher at Harvard's Kennedy School. After securing support from legislators and creating buzz in social media circles, Ferri's team set up a two-phase process for participants. First, construct an online town hall of chats, forums, and an online library with support from experienced congressional experts. Second, use wiki-style consensus to present a concrete proposal to government representatives. As far as outcomes, like e-budgeting, online legislation was a mixed bag. The project enhanced the legitimacy of a process historically tainted by strong interest group influence, and there were noticeable adoptions in at least one bill on the regulation of youth rights. However, like its offline counterpart, citizen legislating receives a luke-warm reception in nearly every part of the world it is attempted, and the Brazilian politicians' support was "very very low," according to Ferri. This is, in part, because actual bills are an almost incomprehensible mess of legal jargon. As a result, Ferri says, citizens are not able to actually write a bill themselves. However, e-legislating is still in its infancy, and crowdsourcing expertise has, in other arenas, shocked the world with its power and sophistication. Brazil's parliament is committed to another round with e-legislation, and Ferri is optimistic the lessons learned from last year can make a big difference. What About the U.S. Congress? The U.S. congress's attempts at e-democracy have been a "baby step compared to what others have done around the world," says Matt Lira, the digital communication director for Congressman Eric Cantor. For Lira, there are some key reasons why he's had difficulty pressuring Congress to become more digitally savvy. He contends that the political party in power has little incentive to give up authority to an experimental process that may tip the balance of power. However, Lira was quick to rebuke his Republican colleagues for the same technological myopia when they held power back in 2006. Congress's two most significant e-initiatives have been launched by Republicans — America Speaking Out, an aggregation platform where users list and prioritize various social issues, and YouCut, an SMS-based voting system to select which programs a few Republican congressman will attempt to cut. Social media is not a salient issue for the older members of congress, many of whom were sworn in before the personal computing revolution. It shouldn't be surprising then that the first use of an iPad on the House floor was from 39 year-old freshman congressman Charles Djou. As more members of Generation Y occupy Congress, we should expect more digital integration. Perhaps the next State of the Union will look more like a modern college lecture hall full of dimly lit faces peering up over laptops Indeed, Lira himself is indicative of what that the future might look like. He's the first digital communications director in Congress to hold the same authority as the other communications directors in his office, and he spoke enthusiastically about how a wiki-style discussion with physicians could have improved the health care debate. Though the Internet has not been the yellow brick road to the populist utopia that many had hoped it would be, the world is changing. While government may lag just behind, there are indicators that e-democracy has the potential to instill big improvements. More Government and Tech Resources from Mashable:
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, tgellan, scibak, and Flickr, o palsson Reviews: Flickr, Internet, Wikipedia, iStockphoto More About: Brazil, e-democracy, e-legislation, elections, online voting, participatory budgeting, politics, United States Congress For more Tech coverage:
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| $30 BlackBerry Curve 3G Hits Verizon Posted: 14 Sep 2010 08:53 AM PDT   RIM and Verizon have just announced the new BlackBerry Curve 3G 9330. The BlackBerry Curve 3G ships with BlackBerry 5 but is BlackBerry 6-ready. It features built-in Wi-Fi and GPS, a 2-megapixel camera, a microSD slot expandable to 32GB and support for BlackBerry App World. The Curve 3G might not have as many bells and whistles as some other smartphones on the market, but it is affordable. The phone will be available for $29.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a new, two-year customer agreement. The Curve 3G will be available via Verizon business channels on September 16 and via Verizon retail stores and the web in the coming weeks. Do you think a $30 BlackBerry will appeal to consumers? More About: blackberry, blackberry curve 3g, RIM, verizon For more Mobile coverage:
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| “Who Said It?” Makes Guessing Game Out of Public Facebook Status Updates Posted: 14 Sep 2010 08:28 AM PDT   Hey folks, here’s a hot tip: If you’re going to say offensive, mean things via your Facebook status, you might want to go ahead and make your profile private. That’s the thrust of the online game Who Said It?, which recently sprung from the evil genius of Tom Scott. Scott — who is also the brains behind the Evil Facebook app, Tweleted and Stupid Fight — sent this particular game our way this morning with the addendum, “I’m not sure if I’ve crossed a line with this one or not…” Why such a rumination? Well, probably because the game crosses several lines. The premise of Who Said It? is simple: You’re presented with three pictures and a status update, and then you’re instructed to guess who said it. The catch is that all status updates are real (yoinked from unprotected profiles) and are chosen so as to be contentious — “those including profanity, hate speech, religious references,” etc., according to the site. So basically you’re being asking to stereotype Facebookers based on their pictures (line number one). Social experiments like this are nothing new. The Facebook-inspired OpenBook displays unprotected status updates that probably should be kept under wraps, and geolocation-targeted Please Rob Me showed just how many people leave their whereabouts out in the open. Who Said It? continues in the grand tradition of depicting how flagrantly people flaunt their personal info (line number two). What do you think of Scott’s newest creation? Clever, cautionary social experiment or needlessly needling toy? Reviews: Facebook More About: facebook, games, humor, pop culture, tech, web apps For more Social Media coverage:
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| Microsoft Launches Webcam with 1080p HD Sensor Posted: 14 Sep 2010 08:15 AM PDT   Microsoft has launched a new webcam dubbed LifeCam Studio with a Full HD (1080p) sensor. The LifeCam Studio features 360-degree view range, improved auto focus and Microsoft’s TrueColor and ClearFrame technologies, which keep the colors bright and the video smooth even under low-light conditions. Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger 2011, which is currently available in beta, supports HD video calling in 16:9 format, a feature that should go hand-in-hand with the company’s new webcam. However, bear in mind that the video software that comes with the camera caps video chatting/recording at 720p. LifeCam Studio will be available exclusively at Best Buy stores later this month for an estimated price of $99.95. It’s currently available for pre-order on the retailer’s website. More About: gadgets, lifecam, microsoft, tech, webcam For more Tech coverage:
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| Helvetica Joins the Web Font Revolution Posted: 14 Sep 2010 07:30 AM PDT   Monotype Imaging, the company that houses the Monotype, Linotype and ITC typeface libraries, has just opened its Fonts.com Web Fonts solution to the general public. Fonts.com Web Fonts has been in beta for the last few months and Monotype has taken user feedback from that beta to make its web font solution better and more robust. With Fonts.com Web Fonts, designers, creative agencies, publishers and individuals can infuse their web apps or web pages with more typography options. Fonts.com Web Fonts joins a growing list of web font services, including Typekit, Fontdeck and Google’s new Font Directory. Fonts.com Web Fonts is similar to some of these existing solutions, but it has some additional features and supports a few other platforms that make it a unique offering in the web font space. Huge LibraryAs a company, Monotype houses some of the biggest font libraries in the world. Typefaces like Helvetica, Frutiger and Univers are all part of Monotype and available to Fonts.com Web Fonts users. Just like Typekit’s recent partnership with Adobe, the ability to use premium type families and well-known fonts in web design is a huge step in the overall world of web typography. Monotype has made more than 7,500 fonts available via the service and more will be added in the future. Monotype has also committed to bringing all ITC, Linotype and Monotype font faces developed in the ensuing years to the platform. Beyond just the sheer number of typefaces, Monotype also supports more than 40 different languages — many non-Latin character sets are supported too. Extended character sets are available for many fonts and users can also access Asian-specific font foundries. Through the course of the beta, Monotype has also changed how its international fonts are hinted and kerned, so that Chinese or Japanese fonts are easier for users to read. For big brands that rely on a typeface as part of its greater identity, having international support across languages can be very important. Pricing PlansFonts.com Web Fonts pricing takes place at a few different tiers. Tiers are based on subscription type and then on page views. Regardless of the subscription, Fonts.com Web Fonts can be used on as many projects or domains as you want and you can use as many fonts as you want per project. For instance, there is a free plan that gives anyone access to more than 2,200 fonts. The free is good for 25,000 pageviews each month, which makes it ideal for most individual users or bloggers.  The standard plan, which adds another 5,000 or so fonts to the library, starts at $10 per month for 250,000 pageviews. If you need more pageviews, you can adjust the pricing accordingly. For agencies, bigger brands or large sites, the professional subscription plan starts at $100 a month for 2.5 million pageviews. It has all the same fonts as the standard subscription, but with one big benefit: The ability to download 50 fonts per month to the desktop. Whenever we write about type and the web or web fonts in general, users tell us they love the idea of web fonts, but are frustrated because they can’t do their designs in Photoshop or other tools of choice, because they don’t have access to the font file itself. Allowing professional-tier subscribers to download 50 typefaces per month is a great solution to this problem. It also represents a pretty significant shift on the part of the font foundries. Years ago, one of the big reasons that foundries pushed back against the idea of web fonts was because many were afraid users would find a way to download and steal their fonts. I asked Monotype about this 180-degree shift last week. Vice President of Marketing Chris Roberts told me that Monotype doesn’t want to risk being passed over simply because it’s not willing to embrace the future. That’s one reason he said Monotype is so enthusiastic about the future of web fonts. Type is its core business and that means giving users all the tools that they need. iOS, Internet Explorer and JavaScript-free Support
Monotype already has a history of making innovations in mobile, so expect more mobile support to come in the future. Most web font services use JavaScript to serve and embed web fonts. It makes sense, as this is generally an easy way to add support and it means that any changes to the font you want to use can generally be made independent of the code itself. However, for accessibility and other purposes, JavaScript isn’t always ideal. Thus, for standard and professional subscribers, a JavaScript-free option is available as well. Fonts can also be declared in a stylesheet directly by using CSS selectors. Typophiles RejoiceWith Typekit, Google Font Directory and now the Fonts.com Web Fonts service, we’re finally reaching a place where typography on the web can go beyond the built-in, web-safe font choices of yesteryear. It’s great to see other companies enter this space not only to spur on competition, but to give users and brands more options. Have you used web font services with your designs? What do you think of Monotype’s new offering? Reviews: Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari More About: fonts, helvetica, monotype imaging, typekit, typography, web fonts, web typography For more Dev & Design coverage:
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| Get Satisfaction Celebrates Third Anniversary with $6 Million in Funding Posted: 14 Sep 2010 07:08 AM PDT   Just yesterday, Get Satisfaction celebrated the third anniversary of its customer support platform’s launch. Today, the startup is announcing a $6 million Series A round of financing — led by Azure Capital — and private communities, a brand new feature for enterprise clients. The company will use the additional funding for expansion purposes, and aims to attack the middle market to attract more paying customers. Most of the company’s growth thus far has been organic in nature, so funds will also be used for more aggressive marketing and sales purposes. With the funding news, Get Satisfaction is rebranding a bit to match its marketing goals and repurposed mission around social support, a mission that extends beyond “slapping the word social on to some CRM system,” according to Co-founder Thor Muller. Today the company is unveiling a new website, new logo and an anti-mascot — a tongue-in-cheek representation of the opposite of what Get Satisfaction stands for — who goes by the name of JarGon (pictured above). “JarGon is a lovably inept robot that pokes fun at social buzzwords,” Muller says. “Business interest in what we’ve done has skyrocketed,” Muller claims. He says businesses are expressing even more need to map social media strategies to business opportunities, and he believes that’s the startup’s core strength. To further cater to customer needs, Get Satisfaction is quietly rolling out private communities to its enterprise communities. The feature will enable customers to create private communities for beta testing product ideas in stealth mode. To date, Get Satisfaction has raised $11 million in funding. The startup operates around a freemium model and has roughly 2,000 paying customers. Muller says it is not yet profitable, but that the focus is more on product and growth right now. Reviews: Get Satisfaction More About: funding, GetSatisfaction, series a, software, support For more Business coverage:
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| Top 3 Stories in Social Media and Mobile This Morning Posted: 14 Sep 2010 06:25 AM PDT This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.   Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. We're keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today. Nokia Unveils Three New Symbian^3 Smartphones Nokia announced a lineup of three new Symbian^3 smartphones at its Nokia World event in London this morning, dubbed the Nokia E7, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6. All three will run on the Symbian^3 OS. The E7, designed for business owners, sports a full QWERTY keyboard, a 4-inch, 640×460-pixel touchscreen, and a 8-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video, as well as 16GB of storage memory and 350 MB of internal memory. It can also create PowerPoint slides on the go. The device is priced at €495 ($638). The €335 ($430) C7 has a 3.5-inch AMOLED screen, a stainless steel and glass frame, an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and the ability to record 720p video. It comes with up to 350MB of internal user memory and 8GB of storage memory, which can be expanded to 32GB with a microsSD memory card. The €260 ($334) C6 has all of the same specs as the C7, although the screen is .3 inches narrower and the device has 10MB less of internal user memory. All three devices are scheduled to become available before the end of the year. Israel Takes Ownership of Its Twitter Account Israel has acquired the Twitter username @israel from the Miami-based owner of a pornographic website, The New York Times reports. The purchase was confirmed by Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who declined to disclose how much was paid for the account. "We thought we could put it to better use than he did," Palmor explained, citing Israel's recent initiative to participate in social media. John Mayer Leaves Twitter After amassing an impressive 3.7 million followers on Twitter, John Mayer has announced his decision to leave the microblogging service. Apparently the account was only needed to promote his recent tour, Battle Studies, which has now drawn to a close. Mayer hasn’t given up on social media entirely, however; he will continue to communicate with his fans through his blog and his Tumblr. Further News
Series supported by HTC EVO 4G This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology. Reviews: Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, blog More About: first to know series, Israel, john mayer, Mobile 2.0, Nokia, Nokia C6, Nokia C7, Nokia E7, Symbian^3, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Picksie for iPad Makes Intelligent Recommendations for “Right Now” Posted: 14 Sep 2010 06:01 AM PDT   Bored out of your mind? Hungry, but unsure of where to grab a bite to eat? There are dozens of apps that you could use to find restaurants, bars and activities, but newcomer Picksie hopes to tackle location-based discovery on the iPad for lackadaisical types by determining what you can and want to do, right here, right now. Picksie takes into account your location, tastes and preferences, the weather, the time of day and the day of the week to return personalized recommendations for what to do. The iPad-optimized web-based application, developed by Ishi Systems, is launching at DEMO today. An alpha version of the product will be available today in New York and San Francisco. “Right Now” Recommendations The application takes a map-centric approach to discovery, and will pinpoint nearby venues and activities — using colorful and descriptive icons — based on your personal preferences and environmental context. If it’s raining outside, for instance, Picksie won’t recommend venues that are outdoor-only. Picksie will also only highlight places that are actually open at the time of your search. You can select a venue in Picksie to view more details and see why the place in question was recommended to you. You can save a place to your favorites, give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, and help build out a venue’s place page by adding tags, reviews, or uploading your own photos and videos. You can also book a reservation through OpenTable. Picksie’s recommendations take into account what you explicitly like through your in-app behaviors, which means the recommendations will get better over time. The application also works to find other people that have similar tastes and will propose options that they like as well. Plan for the Future Picksie is very much about “here and now” recommendations, but if you’d rather plan ahead, it can accommodate for that as well. Simply specify a later time, date and location to fast-forward to the future. Loopt Pulse for iPad was built with a similar purpose in mind, but Picksie focuses more on the user’s preferences over what’s trending in a city at any given time. In that capacity, the application does a better job of helping you find something you want to do right now or at a later time with very little effort. Place Data and Picksie’s Plan for ExpansionPicksie product manager Saju Thomas explains that Picksie licenses its data — instead of going with open source options — in the cities where it operates to ensure the highest quality data. This means that at launch, you’ll probably notice that Picksie is light on neighborhood events like farmers’ markets and street fairs. Thomas asserts that the company is constantly on the look out for top-notch, curated data, and has plans to enhance the types of places and activities Picksie recommends over time. Picksie is also working with Meetup to surface those events in the application. Picksie is self-funded through parent company Ishi Systems, but has plans to go after a round of financing at a later date. The service will expanded to other cities in the U.S. over the next 18 months. Image courtesy of Incase, Flickr Reviews: Flickr More About: Apple iPad, demo, demofall2010, ipad, ishi systems, picksie, recommendation For more Tech coverage:
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Companies are starting to broaden what they consider online advertising, and are opting to run some amazing social media campaigns. Rather than slapping a banner ad on a site, social media campaigns take full advantage of the web’s unique properties like interactivity, community-building, and the ability to specialize local offers.
Right now, Fonts.com Web Fonts works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. It also works on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. Monotype added | You are subscribed to email updates from Mashable! To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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