Monday, February 16, 2009

ChirpCity



Stay updated with local information from Twitter. See the latest tweets from your city or about your city.

Good Baad

Aiming to be the definitive record of public opinion. Vote either Good or Bad on any topic. Discuss your votes and try to persuade others to change their minds. Keep track via email, rss/atom and twitter.

Microsoft Announces Windows Mobile 6.5

No surprises at Microsoft’s MWC press conference today as it announced Windows Mobile 6.5 and a handful of services we’ve already detailed fairly extensively.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Your House Can Now Have An E-mail in-box



Zumbox is an interesting e-mail start-up based on the company's capability to create an electronic mailbox for every residential physical address in the United States.

The idea is that companies that send our paper statements--banks, utility companies, and so on--can now send those documents electronically. The benefits include lower environmental impact, security, and archivability of the messages. More importantly, service providers already know their customers' physical addresses. They can start delivering messages to users immediately, instead of trying to gather their customers' e-mail coordinates.

Mozilla Bespin Tries Taking Coding To The Cloud



Mozilla Labs unveiled a new open-source project called Bespin, a Web-based programming environment its developers hope will combine the speed and power of desktop-based development with the collaborative benefits of cloud computing.

Twisten


Twisten is a new music service from the creators of Grooveshark. If you're listening to something and want to share it with your friends on Twitter you can simply type in the track name and it will automatically add a link for playback inside a tweet. Anyone who clicks it can listen to the entire thing for free over at Grooveshark Lite.

175 Million and counting


Facebook has now reached 175 million users, rather than registered accounts overall.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Web 2.0 Is Dead

Google Trends data suggesting that 2008 saw the term drop consistently and then precipitously as a matter of search interest.

Wear Ur World with Sixth Sense

One of the more interesting mobile apps that seen at TED, a prestigious tech and design conference in California, projects information from the phone onto any surface -- augmenting information from the web with real life and physical spaces. It's called Sixth Sense.

Meet Game Changers Virtually



The SeedMagazine.com Revolutionary Minds section includes video bios of The Game Changers. The series is a way to virtually meet some of the most interesting people who are thinking about and working on the future. For example, John Wilbanks, head of the Science Commons, describes the challenge of achieving useful interaction that takes advantage of the enormous amount of science now online.

Why are Mobile Social Networks Booming?

Why are Mobile Social Networks Booming? What are mobile social networks, who uses them and why are they used, how mobile social networks are monetized as well as where they are going in the future.

Getting Things Done With Twitter

image
After three years on the web, Twitter has become more than just another micro-blogging client. A whole industry of web applications have sprung up to extend and capitalize on Twitter’s capabilities, from the ridiculously silly, to the gobsmackingly useful. Read article.

The Report on Obama's Use of Social Media

"The Social Pulpit" is a very interesting analysis of how the Barack Obama campaign used social media. The folks at Edelman compiled this report, and there are many lessons that businesses can also apply, so check it out.

Where Did Time Go?

On January 24, 1984 Apple introduced Macintosh. Many who worked in the Macintosh division are now asking, “Where did the time go?” The Division had a reunion at the home of Alain Rossman (software evangelist) and Joanna Hoffman (the division’s conscience and first marketing person) to celebrate this occasion, and these are pictures from the event.
Reunion3.jpg

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Twitter Browser

Twitter Browser is a fun, simple and light application (5k according to the author) that allows you to browse through all your twitter friends. You can start by typing a particular twitter username to immediately see all their connections and latest updates. You can then continue clicking and dragging in an endless friend-of-a-friend network.

What's Open

This site lets you find out what places - restaurants, stores, etc, are open near you with a Google maps mashup.

Huffduffer

Have you ever wanted to put together a podcast of audio files that you’ve discovered on the web? It isn’t as easy as it should be. A podcast is an RSS file and making an RSS feed by hand is a pain

Huffduffer takes the pain out of podcasting found sounds.

Troovi

A photo sharing site with the option to be anonymous. Use to post links to your pictures to Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed.

Zealog

A site for keeping track of anything and everything. Users track whatever they like, either publicly or privately. They can either go it alone, or work in groups to see how they stack up against other folks.

zeaLOG graphs and tracking

Kindle 2


Is it really going to happen?

Saturday, February 07, 2009

101 Twitter Resources

I love lists, so here's one you'll like...a listing of 101 resources for Twitter.

Social Media Marketing FAQ

As more and more bloggers and website owners turn to social media as one of their major promotional methods, the need to understand Social Media Marketing becomes even more important.

Congressman Twitters Secret Trip To Iraq


For security reasons, the congressional delegation led by House Minority Leader John Boehner to Iraq today was supposed to be secret.

Google Is Following Your Eyeballs


Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie. So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box. Which of these results would you choose?

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Data Ties Consumer Social Media Activity to Purchase Behavior


Razorfish reflects how purchase behavior directly correlates to how deeply a consumer engages with a piece of social media and where they discover the media.

FaceBook Rolling Out New Product Research Service


According to the Telegraph, Facebook announced at Davos that it will be rolling out a new service to provide real-time research for companies looking to test the appeal of new products.

SimilarWare




The internet is a world of unending information that is growing rapidly from day to day. With the development of the WEB 2.0, more and more information is available on the internet; as a result it is becoming increasingly difficult for users to find the information that they seek.

SimilarWeb offers an improved method of navigating the internet as a complementary product that will assist users and improve their internet surfing experience.

An Elephant Never Forgets


Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

17 Ways To Use Twitter

twitter

Twitter can be actively used as a tool to push out messages that capitalize on the attention you’re receiving from other users. We're talking about self-promotion and marketing. This involves active user engagement.

More Social Media Predictions for 2009

  1. Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions 2009
  2. Junta42: 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
  3. WebMetricsGuru: 2009 Trends in Social Media
  4. Network Solutions: My Horrible Predictions for Social Media in 2009
  5. Social Media Today: 7 Social Media & Web Analytics Predictions for 2009
  6. Social Media Explorer: Social Media Target Strategies For A Better 2009
  7. Beyond Banner: Ten Social Resolutions for Marketers in 2009

Driving Change: Selling SharePoint and Social Media Inside the Enterprise


Businesses and established organizations are vastly different environments than the Web 2.0 social networking-centric universe.

10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009

  "Social media" was the term du jour in 2008. Consumers, companies, and marketers were all talking about it. We have social media gurus, social media startups, social media books, and social media firms. It is now common practice among corporations to hire social media strategists, assign community managers, and launch social media campaigns, all designed to tap into the power of social media

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Internet Explorer 8 in pictures

As Microsoft counts down the final days to when it feels that Internet Explorer 8 is ready for public use, you can take a look at what's coming in this slideshow of IE 8's first Release Candidate. Click on the image below.

Linja Zax replaces 'multitouch' with one finger gestures

Multitouch gestures on the iPhone are simple and really easy to use. Mobile touch-screen devices that don't have it, however, can make Web browsing a harrowing experience. Enter Linja Zax, a new project that's trying to give users an easy way to zoom in and out of Web pages (and potentially other UI elements) with one finger only.

Similar to the "wax on, wax off" mantra of Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, this simply involves moving your finger in a circular motion. Going clockwise zooms in, while counterclockwise zooms you back out. In the demo, which I've embedded at the end of the post, you can see how this would be useful to let users select from multiple pages, which would remove the need to add a dedicated on-screen button.


5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter

Twitter
Back in 2006 when Brian wrote the Viral Copy report, Twitter didn’t even exist. Now Twitter is a force that any serious web publisher needs to reckon with in order to gain maximum exposure for content. Read the article here.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Holographic Dics to Store 20 Times More Than Blu-Ray

Blu-ray technology out-does DVD for one reason only: the discs store more information, so you can fit a higher-resolution movie file in the same physical space. That's a great thing now everyone and their dog has an HDTV. But a new disc material will allow ridiculous amounts of information--perhaps 20 times as much--to be stored on a disc, holographically.

Monday, January 19, 2009

LeapFish

Leapfish
LeapFish, a multi-dimensional search aggregator, claims to have a search engine, that promises to conveniently surprise users with new-found search information as it combines the best of the web in a single search.

Type in a search term and LeapFish instantly delivers a plethora of relevant results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, along with blogs, news, Q&A, videos, images and shopping results from major online destinations including Ebay and YouTube, all conveniently organized in a single, easy to use interface.

Mixx


Mixx - News, photo, and video sharing

Mixx is your link to the web content that really matters.

MADS



MADS delivers a full suite of products including: MADS for Operators, to create, manage and monetize mobile inventory; MADS for Agencies, to plan, book and optimize campaigns; and MADS for Advertisers, to track real-time campaign performance analytics and reports.


MADS unlocks powerful advertising opportunities for brands and creates new revenue streams for operators and publishers across all mobile channels including: Mobile Internet, SMS Push/Insert, MMS Push/Insert, Mobile Video, Mobile Games and Applications, Idle Screen and Ring Back Tones.

Mobile and Wireless Predictions for 2009

Here's an interesting list of what's predicted in the world of mobile computing.

Twitter + Google Maps = Twittervision

David Troy has built a nice Twitter/Google Maps mashup that shows Twitter updates on a world map, as they are posted (with a delay, depending on traffic levels):
screenshot of twittervision


The green and orange buttons let you indicate whether or not you like the particular update. I don't know what their effect is, though. (Any ideas?)

It also provides an alternate view, where you can see where a particular Twitter user has posted from.

Lastly, in true Web 2.0 spirit, he even provides his own Twittervision API. An API for an application built on the Twitter and Google Maps APIs. 

Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Future of Mobile Computing

Future Phone: With Android, Google is betting that the future of computing will be handheld.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Carol Bartz...new CEO at Yahoo

yahoo_hq.03.jpg

Yahoo Inc. is expected to announce that its next CEO will be Carol Bartz, former head of software company Autodesk Inc., according to a source involved in the search.

iPhone Nano...this June?

iphone_nano

According to Chinese-language Economic Daily News a chip manufacturer is going to receive microchip orders from Apple sometime in March which must mean that we should see an iPhone Nano sometime around June. Right? It must. Maybe.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Technology's next frontier: In-car computing

Cell phones and TVs converging with the Internet? That's so 2008. The next big tech trend may be the marriage of computer technology to your car or truck.

Xtranormal

Create your own animated feature using only Flash and typing skills. Select from a range of characters, drag direction icons into your script, and type in your dialog. You can even select different accents for your characters. Currently in beta.

Kakuteru

What do you get when you combine blogging and lifestreaming? You get Kakuteru, a semantic blogging mashup with funny name. The service imports your activity streams from FriendFeed and combines them with longer articles you write yourself. After you set up your Kakuteru site, its URL can then be hidden behind a domain name of your choosing so it appears as if it's your own blog.


Palm Pre Preview: Simply Amazing


Read the review of Palm's new touch screen phone.

Web 2.0 Awards

Here is a listing for the 2008 best Web 2.0 sites both new and old.

Plurk



Plurk is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as plurks) through short messages or links, which can be up to 140 text characters in length.

Updates are then shown on the user's home page using a timeline which lists all the updates received in chronological order, and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Users can respond to other users' updates from their timeline through the Plurk.com website, by instant messaging, or by text messaging.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

CES: The Earphones That Stay Out of Your Ears



One of the few new exhibitors at CES this year is S1 Audio, which is attracting attention with “necksets” that project music from your shoulders up to your ears.

Windows 7 beta ready to go

Windows 7 beta

Windows 7 is going into public beta, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas late on Wednesday.

VAIO P Series

Sony has finally introduced its highly anticipated netbook, the much rumored 8-inch VAIO P series laptop, dubbed the Lifestyle PC. The new ultraportable VAIO laptop has been designed to offer users a computing alternative that will provide them with Internet access and quick access to multimedia files. See Sony for more information.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Cisco Adds Social Networking To Its Forte

Cisco gets social
Two years after it first started courting big media companies, Cisco Systems will finally launch a new product to help these companies harness the power of social networking and connect their brands to fans.

What Can The Book Business Learn From iTunes?

The media is in a squabble over the death rattles coming from the book publishing industry. Yes, it's in dire condition. But a new business model might bring readers back. Call it the Free Lunch model.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Which Mobile Phones Deliver The Real Web


Before 2007, using the internet on your phone would make you want to kill yourself, if you were dumb enough to believe the crap splattered across that tiny screen even was the "internet." But the combination of increased bandwidth and better mobile software means that more phones really are promising to deliver the real internet, in living color.

Sitelauncher, A Firefox add-on

Launcher panel
Firefox extension Site Launcher lets you replace your bookmarks toolbar with an overlay window of links that can be pulled up at any time using a simple keyboard shortcut. You pick which sites you want on the list, and a one-letter keyboard shortcut is given to each.

How to downsize your social network

Tied to too many social networks? Time to do some house cleaning.

Cisco's home-networking push

Cisco Systems, which builds the gear that powers the Internet, is making a big push this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with new products that will help consumers move digital media around their homes.

Monday, January 05, 2009

Xobni

Xobni logo

Outlook plug-in maker Xobni has raised a $7 million series B round of funding led by Cisco. Previous investors from the series A funding (about $4.1 million) also participated in this round.

Xobni is an e-mail add-on that analyzes your in-box to give you context around the people you communicate with. Recent updates also correlate against social sites like LinkedIn to provide even more information on people.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Can Wind Save Steel

Wind power was recently ranked in a comprehensive research study as the top energy alternative in terms of environmental impact and total power potential.

Japanese Private $1 Billion Li-Ion Battery Investment Shames U.S.

While Li-ion battery makers in the US are going cap-in-hand to the government in search of federal aid to keep up with foreign companies, it's been rumored that Nissan and NEC are about to invest around $1 billion of their own capital into making batteries for electric cars.

Guy Kawasaki Gives A Reality Check



He's been a Silicon Valley insider for a long time and his latest book, Reality Check, doles out tons of great advice for entrepreneurs. In this video Guy talks about all sorts of stuff like why he would rather have Twitter than a cell phone.

Facebook sues Power.com


The Power.com service lets users view activities on all of their social networks at once. It also marks up pages to include additional functionality in a way that Greasemonkey users are familiar with.

Eric Schmidt's View on the Future of Business

How the Internet will change the nature of competition, innovation, and company operations.

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Almost Out of a Job


Imagine an online encylopedia anyone can edit — and no one can run. With the calendar running out on 2008, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's sleaze-drenched cofounder, nearlylost his seat on the board. Who's in charge here?

Friday, January 02, 2009

Voike

A voice blog and social media mash-up that allows you to record your voice, music, sounds words, pictures and thoughts by phone, post it in on your Voike account, blog or social networking environment like Facebook. You can also email these voice messages to others, send them to someone's phone and share them with others on Voike.

Wishpot

Wishpot

Wishpot is a free social shopping service that makes it easy to save and share interesting things you find in online stores.

Items are easily collected online or from stores and organized using simple online lists. Lists and items can be kept private or shared with others. You can collect and discover products you like, recommend your favorite stuff, share and explore gift suggestions or ask for opinions and advice.

Jumptags

Jumptags.com is a revolutionary Web 2.0 social bookmarking web service for collecting, storing, sharing and distributing web bookmarks, notes, RSS feeds, contacts, and much more. You can import your IE and Firefox bookmarks, besides those from del.icio.us.

Microsoft planning layoffs in January


Mark January 15 in your calendar: Rumors of layoffs at Microsoft peg that as the day the bad news will come.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Mobile Revolution: You're Holding It In Your Hand


The Future of Mobile Apps

There is a fascinating discussion about the future of mobile apps going on over at Change.org. Nathanial Whittemore started it all with a hopeful and visionary blog post on how mobiles will be changing the world.

Howard Rheingold Shares Thoughts about Robots in Our Future via his blog

Howard RheingoldSpanish researchers have published a study about the potential future impact of robots on society. They think that the potentially widening gap between the first and third worlds will cause a technological imbalance over the next 12 years. One of the researchers said that ‘just as we depend upon mobile phones and cars in our daily lives today, the next 15 years will see mass hybridization between humans and robots.’ So they predict that robots will be around — and inside — us.

Is Google Big Brother?

google_screen.03.jpg
Internet search engines know a lot about their users - maybe too much. Do we really care?

Five predictions for 2009

Take a look and see what you think of Don Reisinger's forecast for 2009.

Name that tune


Scenario: You got a fat iTunes gift card for Christmas and you're loading up on music... but there's that one song that you're dying to download that you just can't remember the name of, or even who sings it, for that matter.

You can try searching for lyrics -- if you have 'em straight -- or you can let your voice do the searching. Check out Midomi, an ingenious website that lets you sing or hum a few bars of any song to figure out what it really is. It is, of course, totally free.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008




The 2008 Crunchies is the second annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Zigtag

Zigtag Home
ZigTag, a social bookmarking tool that has been in the works for years, has finally launched to the public. Competing with services like Delicious and Ma.gnolia, ZigTag categorizes bookmarks through the use of tags and allows users to share those bookmarks with friends. To set itself apart, ZigTag claims its service is "intelligent" and uses semantic technology to understand the meaning of tags. In essence, ZigTag tags have stated definitions, which the company uses to categorize bookmarks more effectively. ZigTag is available upon registration.

Cisco starting a push into home electronics

With a digital stereo, Cisco is starting a push into home electronicsCisco Systems, the dominant provider of the digital pipes that run the Internet, is making a big play in digital entertainment.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

ringful logo


Ringful, is a start-up that focuses on connecting the Web to mobile phones.

OLPC


The OLPC Foundation's mission is to stimulate local grassroots initiatives designed to enhance and sustain over time the effectiveness of laptops as learning tools for children living in lesser-developed countries.

MSearchGroove

msearchgroove logo

MSearchGroove is a premiere knowledge portal providing analysis and commentary on mobile search, mobile advertising, social media and all things digital at the intersection of content and context.

Global sales of Android-handsets to top 5-8 million units in 2009

Most branded handset vendors as well as vendors in China and Japan are all planning to launch Android-powered mobile phones in 2009, reports Taiwanese internet publication Digitimes.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Razorfish and Viral Distribution Metrics


Razorfish filed a patent to measure social media distribution. The patent, which is marketed as a way to measure social influence, is really more about providing metrics for how social media content/widgets/applications virally distribute.

Some Tips On How To Build an Offline Network


In anything, as well as social media, you’re only as good as your plan.

Green:Net



Green:Net is a one-day conference examining how the tools created in the Internet, computing and IT revolutions will be crucial for fighting climate change.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Social Media 2009 Predictions

Social Media 2009

Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold

Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels?

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

TED 2009 Lineup

Flashguide.jpg
With just over 40 days to go till TED 2009, which promises to be the best ever. At a time of deep uncertainty about the world's future, and people hungry for change, the Ted 2009 event promises to provide a few days and hear voices of insight, brilliance, passion and wisdom.