RSSMix.com Mix ID 114273

Project Natal Sacks PlayStation Move in Reader Vote

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:37:00 -0400

Last week, Sony announced the PlayStation Move, a new motion-based controller to compete with both the Wii and, more importantly, Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal full-body motion controller.

That’s why we made the topic of the latest edition of our Web Faceoff about Sony and Microsoft’s upcoming next-generation gaming controllers. We asked you to tell us which excited you more: Microsoft’s Natal or Sony’s Move. After over 2000 votes…

…Project Natal emerged victorious. With 56% of the vote (1,268 votes), Natal was more than a match for the PlayStation Move, which mustered 30% of the ballots (668 votes). 170 voted that you didn’t care for motion controllers, while antoher 150 preferred the Wii.

Tune in tomorrow for the next edition of our web faceoff series!

Tags: microsoft, Nintendo, playstation move, poll, project natal, PS3, sony, web faceoff, Wii, xbox, Xbox 360

Zimbalam brings mass distibution to indie musicians

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:03:20 -0400

Zimbalam, which launched in Europe in 2009 to help artists get their music widely distributed without a lot of work, opened its doors to US stores this week, meaning any artist using Zimbalam can now sell their music in the United States.

Zimbalam promises to distribute an artist’s music across multiple services, from Spotify and eMusic to behemoths like iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon. The company is hooked into 35 different outlets, which lead to hundreds of other stores a huge distribution network for musicians. Like competitor Tunec

The companys revenue stream is simple: It charges $19.99 for an artist to distribute a single, or $29.99 for an album. After the initial release, theres a yearly fee of $9.99 or $19.98, respectively. The company keeps all the royalties from sales until that figure is met and then gives 100% of subsequent royalties to the artist. In a surprisingly musician-friendly move, if the music doesnt make more than the subscription fee, Zimbalam only charges what the music earned, and no more.

Through March 31, because of South By Southwest, Zimbalam is offering an even better deal for artists, charging only $3.99 for a single release and $5.99 for an album. All a musician has to do is use the coupon code SXSW when they sign up.

Zimbalam offers some free tools as well. It has developed a number of widgets for artists that let them do everything from embed their music on a website to create apps on Facebook and MySpace to interact with their fans.

Like its competitor Tunecore, Zimbalam takes a non-exclusive right on the sales of an album. Users can pick and choose where their music gets distributed, and can see aggregated or individualized reports on how their album is doing. They also get control of the price and release date of their album, as well as all the details of how it gets sold.

Zimbalams parent company is Paris-based Believe Digital, which says its the leading digital distributor and services provider for independent artists and labels in Europe. Zimbalam seems to be a natural extension of what Believe Digital already does and takes advantage of the relationships the company already has. The company was founded by music executives from around the world, with a lot of experience in the digital music industry.

The model seems to be working in Europe: Zimbalams website boasts that Believe Digital has paid $22 million in royalties since 2005 and has had 10 number one digital singles in the same time span. If the company can get similarly entrenched in the American music scene, it might become an invaluable resource for independent artists in the US.

Believe Digital, based in Paris, is a 70-employee company with $8.5 million in funding from xAnge and Ventech.

Companies: co:believe digital, co:zimbalam

NSFW: Tis Pity We Called Her A Whore And Other Ineffectual Digital Apologies

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:44:02 -0400

Having now written two books about my failures in work, life and love, I think I'm qualified to say that the only difference between a memoirist and a prostitute is timing.A prostitute sells sex for money - that money being payable either immediately before or immediately after the act. A memoirist also receives money for having sex - but our payment comes via a publisher, months or years later, once we've recounted the amusing or titillating details in print. In the final analysis, really, we're all whores.And yet, in terms of public perception, the distinction of payment and timing is vital. Actual prostitutes are - generally speaking - looked down on by society: labels like 'whore' and 'hooker' being, almost without exception, used pejoratively. Memoirists, on the other hand, tend to be reasonably well regarded, not least by themselves. For that reason, accidentally calling a hooker a memoirist is unlikely to cause offense, but accidentally call a memoirist a hooker and... hoo boy...

Pete Cashmore Talks Twitter, Location and Mashable on Time.com [VIDEO]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:27:20 -0400

It seems that the question on everyone’s mind over at SXSW this year is: What will be the next Twitter? Well, as our own Pete Cashmore said the other day during an interview with Bloomberg, and during a recent interview with Time.com’s Dan Fletcher: It’s all about location.

Twitter still remains a SXSW legend, even though some point to stats demonstrating that Twitter’s web traffic has been leveling off as of late. Still, the microblogging site asserts that it’s going as strong as ever, arguing that the true rubric for success is the number of tweets being sent out as opposed to the number of people logging on to Twitter via a web browser.

Now, location-sharing services like Foursquare seem to be creating a ton of buzz down South. Foursquare was first introduced a year ago at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX, and has only become more popular in the ensuing months — just the other day it garnered 347,000 checkins in a single day (mostly due to folks checking in in Austin). Other services like Gowalla have also joined the fray, as well as Facebook and Twitter, who have adopted or plan to adopt location features.

Check out the video below to see Pete chatting with Time at SXSW about Twitter and Foursquare, as well as how Mashable was born, the evolution of social networking, and what trends Pete sees dominating in 2010.

What do you think of the future of Twitter and the advent of location-sharing services? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: facebook, foursquare, gowalla, mashable, pete cashmore, sxsw-2010, twitter

Digital Activism in China: A Discussion Between Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey and Richard MacManus

Frederic Lardinois — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:43:21 -0400

Earlier tonight, the Paley Center hosted a discussion about social media and digital activism with celebrated artist, architectural designer, activist and blogger Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and ReadWriteWeb's editor and founder Richard MacManus. The discussion touched upon a large variety of topics related to social media and digital activism in China, including translating Twitter into Chinese and Google's exit from the Chinese market.

Sponsor

Jack Dorsey joined the conversation via satellite from San Francisco. The conversation was moderated by Emily Parker, the Arthur Ross Fellow at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, who is currently working on a book about China and the Internet.

To start out the discussion, MacManus pointed out that it was the read/write aspect of the Internet that spawned the growth of social networks like Facebook and Twitter over the last few years. In the Western world, this development allowed users to connect and express their thoughts freely. In China, however, even though the same tools are available as in the West, a lot of them are currently blocked and censored. In addition to this, Ai Weiwei noted that sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, as well as TV channels like CNN, are currently blocked in China.

Even though there are a number of Facebook and Twitter clones in China, Ai Weiwei argued that those companies work within the framework that the Chinese government has set for them with regards to what users can say on these services. Ai Weiwei's name, for example, can never be used on these sites without getting censored. Indeed, said Ai Weiwei, using Twitter in China is "very physical and dangerous."

Translating Twitter

Asked about the reason for Twitter's popularity among netizens, Ai Weiwei noted that services like Twitter and blogs are easy to use, but once he got too popular, his blog was quickly shut down. Even though Twitter has a 140-character limit, Twitter's users in China can easily express in-depth thoughts because the Chinese language allows Twitter users to express 140 words on Twitter and not just 140 characters.

With regards to how Twitter is being used in China, Ai Weiwei noted that the most active Twitter users in China often use the service for political and philosophical discussions.

Jack Dorsey, after recapping the basic history of Twitter and his fascination with maps, and open, public databases, noted that messages on Twitter, even though they are often trivial, do show that "we are human" and remind us that we are all the same. Twitter, which he called a utility, was extended by the user and the developer ecosystem that grew up around it. Internet users across the world can now use it to communicate, talk to their governments, build a business and create political movements.

Ai Weiwei told Dorsey that the "Chinese people think you are some kind of God" because Twitter allows people to express themselves without worrying about censorship.

A lot of the discussion with Jack Dorsey focused on had to do with what Twitter can do to to help its users in China. Ai Weiwei directly asked Dorsey why Twitter doesn't provide its users a Chinese-language version of Twitter. According to Dorsey, it is just a question of time and mostly a technological issue. Given Twitter's problems with scaling the service, making it work for every character set creates some issues for Twitter because of the legacy framework that Twitter established in its early days. Currently, the company doesn't really have the resources to devote to this. Doresey did, however, argue that users already know how the service is meant to work and understand the setup of the Twitter page.

Dorsey also noted that Twitter isn't sure that it really wants to move into the Chinese market, but would like to offer a Chinese translation of its service at some point. Indeed, Dorsey noted that he wasn't even aware that Twitter was blocked in China until just a few weeks ago.

Censorship and Twitter

MacManus then asked Ai Weiwei if the Chinese government couldn't just censor Twitter or force Twitter to censor its service. Ai Weiwei, however, pointed out that Twitter could easily translate Twitter's registration page to help Chinese users. He noted that he isn't asking Twitter to set up an operation in China - he just wants Twitter to make the service easier to use for Chinese users and to translate large parts of the service. The Internet companies in China, as MacManus noted, tend to "self-discipline" themselves and censor their own content. MacManus wondered what would happen to a Chinese language version of Twitter, and if it wouldn't just get blocked and censored just like other international services.

Ai Weiwei noted that a lot of international companies that would like to enter the Chinese market have a responsibility to not give up on basic human rights. While the discussion didn't go into depth with regards to the issues surrounding Google's exit from China, MacManus noted that Google was one of the few Western services that entered the Chinese market, even though it faced a strong Chinese competitor. According to MacManus, leaving the Chinese market was a "brave move" by Google that sends a strong message that these companies are willing to stand up to the Chinese government.

Twitter's Moral Responsibility

Twitter and other technology companies have, said Dorsey, a responsibility to follow basic moral guidelines, and in his view, many technology companies have helped to push the messages of the U.S. government (and other governments) forward with regards to acknowledging human rights violations in China.

Asked specifically if companies do have a moral responsibility, Dorsey said that Twitter - as a company - is focused on opening information as completely as possible and wants to ensure that everybody can participate in the conversations on the service. Twitter, which according to Dorsey was founded around the principles of immediacy and transparency, allows users to create a shared experience among users around the world and create more empathy.

Towards the end of the discussion, Dorsey said that Twitter is just a tool and that it can't change any governments itself, but that it is the users who can use it to change governments.

As MacManus noted during the discussion, it is people like Ai Weiwei that are using these tools effectively. One day, Ai Weiwei noted towards the end of the discussion, we won't need tools like Twitter to change our governments anymore.

Discuss

Wait, It Seems Like NO ONE Is Using Gowalla

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:32:00 -0400

We got flamed the other day for suggesting that Foursquare was winning the battle to the death between Foursquare and Gowalla -- because we counted a lot more Foursquare check-in Tweets in Austin, TX, than Gowalla check-in Tweets when we checked our Twitter feeds.

Gowalla investor Chris Sacca said the Twitter phenomenon was mostly the result of default Twitter pushes by Foursquare's app. Foursquare and Gowalla, Chris says, are running neck and neck.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

Chatroulette + Improv Piano Player = Love! [VIDEO]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:48:45 -0400

Chatroulette has had its share of stormtroopers and Jon Stewart parodies, but now there’s a new star on the block: the Chatroulette improv piano player.

The webcam network has quickly ascended to become one of the web’s biggest phenomenons. The anonymous webcam network, estimated to be made up of 71% males, 15% females, and 14% perverts, has gained huge traffic that has attracted venture capital interest and, of course, funny viral videos.

The Chatroulette improv piano player, who we found via the Huffington Post, uses only his playing prowess and freestyle vocal to entertain random dudes and win the hearts of teenage girls in hilarious fashion. It’s no wonder this video’s already going viral.

Watch and listen to the improv piano man himself; you won’t regret it:

Tags: chatroulette, music, Piano, video, web video, youtube

Here's What Twitter's CEO Was Trying To Tell You About @Anywhere When Umair Haque Wrecked His SXSW Keynote

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:35:05 -0400

We gather Ev Williams's SXSW keynote interview was so dull it made attendees "want to scratch their eyes out."

In any event, courtesy of Ev's partner Biz Stone on Twitter's blog, here's what he was trying to say:

When we designed Twitter, we took a different approach—we didn’t require a relationship model like that of a social network. Keeping things open meant you could browse our site to read tweets from friends, celebrities, companies, media outlets, fictional characters, and more. You could follow any account and be followed by any account. As a result, companies started interacting with customers, celebrities connected with fans, governments became more transparent, and people started discovering and sharing information in a new, participatory manner.

We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.

Twitter will be part of our favorite sites!

When we're ready to launch, initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube. Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning. Twitter has proven to be compelling in a variety of ways. With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

Earth Days PBS Documentary to Premiere on Facebook

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:52:42 -0400

Feature-length documentary film Earth Days will premiere on Facebook with a live video stream and a chat at 8 PM EST on April 11, more than a week before the over-the-air PBS television premiere at 9 PM EST on April 19.

The film chronicles the history of Earth Day in the United States and investigates issues related to the today’s American environmentalism movement. It has been playing the festival circuit and in select theaters for months, leading up to its PBS American Experience premiere. Earth Days has pulled a 70 rating on Metacritic “generally favorable reviews.”

The Facebook event will use a new social streaming platform provided by a company called Brand Networks. The entire documentary will play (its producers claim this will be the first feature-length documentary to stream on Facebook) alongside a social stream of updates that can either be restricted to folks watching the event, or made available to other Facebook friends.

Director Robert Stone will be joined by American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samels to interact with the community watching the film, though nobody’s said what that interaction will entail.

You can RSVP to the Facebook event page. It currently has 543 confirmed guests, 398 maybes, and 2,344 from which it’s awaiting reply. That’s just the event page, though; there’s no telling how many will show up without RSVPing. In case you’re on the fence, here’s the trailer.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: american experience, brand ntworks, documentary, earth days, facebook, live video, mark samels, pbs, robert stone, television, tv

Magento Scores $22.5 Million For Open Source E-commerce Platform Play

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:47:16 -0400

According to a regulatory filing, LA-based Magento Commerce, which develops an open source e-commerce software suite, has recently received a $22.5 million capital injection in an equity funding round. Magento was originally a product developed and marketed by Varien, a 9-year old company that also delivers e-commerce business consulting and other services, but has now effectively been incorporated as a stand-alone venture. It's unclear whether the financing of Magento comes from Varien, or if the latter company's existing and / or other investors have stepped in to provide funding. Either way, the company says it concerns 'fresh' cash.

PayPal Launches Revamped iPhone App, Teams With Bump For Phone-Tapping Money Transfers

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:20:59 -0400

PayPal has just launched an upgraded iPhone application that adds new features and includes a facelift that's meant to help instill a greater sense of security. And it also brings with it big news for Bump Technologies, the startup that lets you exchange information simply by tapping smartphones together: Bump is now prominently featured in the PayPal iPhone application as a quick way to initiate transactions. You can download the free app here.PayPal has offered a free application for the iPhone ever since the App Store launched in mid-2008, and it has gradually been improving over time. Today's release brings a handful of significant new features. First, it now allows you to send a money request to your contacts (it's essentially a bill). Second, you can now withdraw money out of your PayPal account and deposit it into your bank account. And there's the Bump integration, which allows you to exchange money simply by tapping two iPhones together and entering the amount of the transaction finally, an easy way to collect money from those friends who always seem to be out of cash.

Tweet #RefreshMashable to Help Raise $50,000 for Volunteerism App

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:11:27 -0400

Voting ends tonight (11:59PM CT) in the Pepsi Refresh SXSW Challenge, where Mashable is supporting SparkHelp, a location-based mobile application that looks to connect people to opportunities to volunteer in their communities.

As a quick refresher, were competing against two other teams to help SparkHelp win $50,000 in funding so they can pursue their idea. If you want to help us out, you can append the hashtag #RefreshMashable to your tweets until voting ends, as the idea whose hashtag is used the most gets the prize.

Meanwhile, the project and the competition have received a variety of media attention over the past few days. Below you can find our interviews with Blip.tv and The Derrick Ashong Experience on Oprahs XM radio channel (our segment is around the 2:00 mark), where we talk more about the project. CNN and CNET have also written about the competition.

Blip.tv

The Derrick Ashong Experience

Reviews: BLIP

Tags: sxsw

Twitter CEO Says No to Acquisition in Next Two Years

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:49:21 -0400

A few hours ago, Twitter CEO Evan Williams keynoted SXSW in an on-stage interview with Umair Haque of Havs Media Lab. During it, Mr. Williams announced the @Anywhere platform and answered Mr. Haque’s questions.

While Mr. Haque did ask a lot of questions, some thought that he did not ask enough tough questions about the future of Twitter. Perhaps that’s why Twitter’s CEO decided to answer more questions via the microblogging site:

“I heard on the backchannel that people want me to answer tougher questions. What’ya want to know? Will answer 10. Go.”

The result was a flood of questions — and a flood of answers, including a few gems, including a definitive answer to: “Will Twitter be sold or merged in the next 2 years?”

The Questions

Before I dive into analysis, what I’m going to do is actually repost the first 12 questions and the answers Evan Williams gave in chronological order. Most of the questions he answered were superfluous or humorous, but I’ve bolded some very interesting questions and answers:

Q1: @ev why is location an after-thought?

A1: @bitcollector we didn’t start with location but are making serious in roads with it right now. It will be a major part of Twitter soon.

Q2: @ev when will you expand your capacity? The whale is cute and all but I see him way too often! Thank you!

A2: @MadysonsMallows we expand it every day. But we can do better.

Q3: @ev Here’s one: why is your api team so unresponsive?

A3: @mickhagen they’ve been really flooded and are getting more resources (2 new developer advocates this month). Also: come to Chirp

Q4: @ev OK, not a profit question. Soccer. Who will win the World Cup this year?

A4: @MatthewLumby sounds like you’re conflicted.

Q5: @ev What do you think is your next Aha! idea?

A5: @vivekunc always hard to know that ahead of time

Q6: @ev How do you see things settling out among Google, Facebook, and Twitter? Am interested because our daughter now works at Facebook.

A6: @BobMetcalfe she should probably apply at Twitter.

Q7: @ev What am I thinking right now?

A7: @TMDavenport @ladygaga

Q8: @ev Will @anywhere put API developers out of work?

A8: @steyblind only if they can’t think of what o do on top of it. It should allow them to create more value.

Q9: @ev what is your favorite bourbon?

A9: @thewebdawg now THAT’s a good question. I like Evan Williams Single Barrel, but that’s probably too obvious.

Q10: @ev Why would I ever, ever want a newspaper to @anywhere link to @anildash instead of using HTML to link to anildash.com?

A10: @anildash It’s not an either/or. It’s a hover action. Link still exists. Will result in more followers and ultimately traffic

Q11: @ev Why hasn’t Twitter named me as their Spirit Promoter since I made a Substancial Entity for Dialogue and Connection out of just tweeting

A11: @RoseProphecy um… Yeah. Have to think about that one.

Q12: @ev will Twitter be sold or merged in the next 2 years?

A12: @ds5384 No.

The Big Question Still Remains…

We’re still looking through the questions people asked and answers Mr. Williams gave, but we can say a few things:

- We like this transparent step by Twitter’s CEO with his very interested audience. He was perceptive of the audience reaction to his keynote and essentially opened up the floor to questions.

- With that said, he did not reveal all that much. Questions like the one below dominated his answers:

- The biggest piece was something we already suspected: That Twitter is not selling anytime soon.

- Another piece of news: Twitter will be revealing more details about how it will fight Facebook Connect at the Chirp conference. He provided this answer to GigaOm’s Om Malik.

- Twitter lists could be much better, and the team is working on making them a stronger feature.

Still, there are a lot of questions we have, including one we had hoped he would answer during his keynote today: Is there a Twitter advertising platform, and if so, when will it launch?

Hopefully we’ll get our answer soon. If not today directly from @Ev, then most likely at the Chirp conference next month.

Tags: evan williams, facebook, social media, sxsw-2010, twitter

SEC Filing Shows CoTweet Sold For At Least $8.1 Million

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:21:01 -0400

When CoTweet sold to ExactTarget a couple weeks ago, the acquisition price was not disclosed. But an SEC filing put out today suggests that ExactTweet paid at least $8.1 million in stock for CoTweet. That is the value of "securities offered . . . as partial consideration in connection with a merger," meaning there was likely a cash portion as well. While this isn't a huge sum, it's not a terrible return for an initial investment of $1.1 million.CoTweet helps businesses manage multiple Twitter accounts and use it more effectively as marketing channel. The CoTweet acquisition is now being pointed to as an example of how businesses can be built on top of Twitter. So now we know how much the stock portion of the deal was worth.

Historic Conversation With Ai Weiwei Streamed Live

Mike Melanson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:19:00 -0400

ReadWriteWeb is pleased to be hosting a live-stream for tonight's Ai Weiwei event at the Paley Center in New York City. You can watch it live on our site, where we will be discussing social media and digital activism. Ai Weiwei will be joined by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, our own Richard MacManus, and moderator Emily Parker. Make sure to tune in tonight at 6:30 pm Eastern.

Special thanks to Conjunctured Coworking in Austin for hosting the RWW team during the event. To take part in the conversation on Twitter use the hashtag #aiweiwei.

Sponsor

Ai Weiwei and Digital Activism in China

ReadWriteWeb has been actively covering events in China this year, in particular Google's struggle to effect change regarding censorship in China. So I'm personally thrilled to join the conversation with these three smart and influential people: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey and Orville Schell.

Ai Weiwei is undoubtedly the star attraction. He is China's leading digital activist and a pioneer in the use of blogging and Twitter in China. He's also a renown international artist and architect. In the early 2000s, he collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron on the famous "Bird's Nest" design of the National Stadium for the Beijing Olympics. Ai Weiwei later renounced that design as a "pretend smile" from the Chinese government.

Details About the Participants

This information comes from the Paley Center website:

Ai Weiwei is a conceptual artist, curator, architect, social commentator, and activist. He was born in 1957 into the domestic political exile of his father, the noted modernist poet Ai Qing. Ai Weiwei's birthright was simultaneously one of a cultural insider and a political outsider, and he quickly perceived the contradictions of his condition.

Ai Weiwei's art has been shown in museums and galleries internationally. As a curator, he is known for cutting-edge exhibitions. In the early 2000s, he collaborated with the acclaimed Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron on the winning design for the National Stadium project for the Beijing Olympics, popularly known as the "Bird's Nest," which he later renounced as a "pretend smile."

Ai Weiwei has never sought foreign citizenship and maintains his credibility among a devoted Chinese following as a highly active blogger, with his finger on the pulse of modern China. Unafraid to spotlight injustices, he has documented the arbitrary conviction and swift execution of alleged cop-killer Yang Jia in Shanghai, investigated shoddy school construction in Sichuan, and led a movement to oppose the nationwide installation of Internet filtering software in new computers. He is critical of one-party rule and government corruption, as well as the nationalist tendencies of China's citizenry, which allow state power to go unchecked. As a result his blogs are shut down, his home studio is under surveillance, and he's had to have cranial surgery for injuries sustained during a recent altercation with local police in Sichuan.

Jack Dorsey is the creator, cofounder, and chairman of Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Louis, Jack's early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it their own every day. Jack is dedicated to creating public goods which foster approachability, immediacy, and transparency, and is starting a second company named Square focused on bringing these concepts to commerce.

Richard MacManus is the founder and editor in chief of ReadWriteWeb, one of the most popular and influential technology blogs in the world. New Zealander MacManus founded ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and grew his blog about the evolving Internet into an international team of journalists. ReadWriteWeb is read by millions of thought leaders and consumers, and is syndicated daily by the New York Times.

From the early days of blogging, social networks and YouTube to the future of machine learning, aggregate data analysis and other meta-trends, MacManus is widely recognized as a leader in articulating what's next in technology and what it means for society at large.

Discuss

6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home

Deane Rimerman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:15:00 -0400

What if we took the leading sensor-based products currently being developed or already on the market, put them all under one roof, and added a typical American family? Would they just be the techiest family on the block, or would it have a significant impact on their lives?

Here are six ways this Internet of Things family can see their lives change. They exercise more, save energy and water, budget better, know where their kids are at any moment, and they'll always have the right lighting for activities in the house.

Sponsor

Bank Account-based Motivation

We last month about Green Goose, which is a green egg with an ethernet connection that can sense how many miles a person has ridden on their bicycle instead of a car. This data ultimately could be synced up with each family members' bank account. So if they chose to ride a bike instead of a car, an automatic transfer of the allotted monthly gas money saved goes from a checking account into a savings account. Green Goose has plans for other similar sensors.

Health and Fitness
When it comes to physical fitness, this family has all the devices we explained in our sensors to keep you fit post. From Nike Plus running shoes, which sends running data to Mom's iPod via a sensor, to grandpa's exercise games via Wii Fit to their youngest son's training program via NordicTracks iFit, to Dad's miCoach pacer, this family is being encouraged by sensors to better understand and improve their physical health.

Water Conservation

The Waterpebble is a simple sensor that's placed in the shower. It measures the duration of the first shower, and when the next person takes a shower a green light inside the pebble will turn to orange to let the person know that their shower-time is half way up. Once the shower goes longer than the recorded time, the pebble gives off a red light. The best part is that after each shower the Waterpebble will fractionally reduce the amount of time the person will be allowed to shower. There's also a reset button for when someone in the family is having a bad day and needs a longer shower.

Energy Use Scoreboard

All electrical appliances in this house plug into Picowatt Wi-Fi smart plugs, which allow the family to communicate and control energy usage via a command center like Intel's prototype home energy monitor. This monitor is what the New York Times refers to as an Energy Use Scoreboard, which calculates energy usage and displays costs in real-time. Once this technology hits the market, the family will be able to add a few goal-setting apps to the control panel and they'll have the tools they
need to minimize their energy use.

Alert Services

Last January we reported on Trackle and the emerging era of alert services. In the Internet of Things house not only does Trackle alert the family about vital events and information going on in their neighborhood, but when Mom wants to make sure her daughter gets safely home from school on her own, she simply puts a Touchatag RFID tag in her backpack, which alerts Mom when her daughter is safely home.

Lighting Optimization

Finally, this home's lighting can be regulated by Pachube (pronounced patch-bay) and Arduino. As we reported last summer, light sensors can be connected to Arduino, which is an open-source electronics prototyping platform. The light sensor data is then sent to Pachube, which connects the sensor data to the Web where the lighting can be controlled via twitter or via a home energy monitor.

Overall, it's important to remember that we're still in the early days of Internet of Things. As these products continue to develop we'll find more and more ways for our devices to coax us to refine our health and our environment.

Did we describe your dream home? Would you live in the Internet of Things home? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo by Svilen Milev.

Discuss

Web Illiteracy: How Much Is Your Fault?

Guest Author — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:10:00 -0400

When hundreds of clueless commenters decided mid-February that ReadWriteWeb was the place to log in to Facebook, alerts went off in my personal network like alarms at a fire station. For the past few years I've been doing research on misunderstandings online; since it's the subject of my doctoral thesis, all my friends know I eat, sleep, and breathe this topic, and was likely to be so buried in it that I'd miss new developments.

It's a good thing they woke me from doctoral sluggishness; with thousands of comments, this is the biggest such thread I've seen. The ReadWriteWeb/Facebook thread looks a lot like previous threads, but it has some interesting new developments.

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Guest author Gillian Andrews is finishing her dissertation at Columbia University. She collects other examples of misunderstandings on Gumbaby.com. She channels her Internet literacy energies into the hacker radio show Off The Hook and producing The Media Show on YouTube, an irreverent, puppet-fueled stab at mass education.

As ReadWriteWeb readers have learned, misunderstandings like these never fail to entertain and astound. They've been a repeat topic of interest on community blogs; MetaFilter, for example, has scratched its collective head about this many a time. Accusations always fly: these "strangers" (as I've come to call them) are idiots, illiterates, came from AOL, shouldn't be allowed out on the Internet without someone to hold their hand. Less often, a few voices speak up from the development community and say, Wait a minute, we build the software the Internet runs on - isn't this partly our fault?

The ReadWriteWeb thread lays the blame to some extent on search engines, as ReadWriteWeb writer Mike Melanson has already written. But it also points to the rise of social networking services as a culprit.

Social Networking Software Changed the Landscape

Examples of misunderstandings abound in listservs, blog comment threads, newspaper article comment sections and even Wikipedia. Blogs where people ask to get an account canceled are pretty common. The login fiasco on this website is the first time I've seen a firestorm of misunderstanding sparked specifically by people trying to log on to an unrelated website.

But then, the ability to log into a service from an unrelated website is only a few years old. Is it any surprise that people are thrown by it? These commenters arrived from a search engine, looking for Facebook. At the bottom of the page where they landed, ReadWriteWeb offered them the opportunity to "Sign in with Facebook." They did - many comments link directly to a Facebook profile. What happened when they signed in? They were dropped right back on the ReadWriteWeb page where they started, with no indication of what had happened save for the line "Thanks for signing in, X. Now you can comment."

Text Boxes: They're Confusing

When commenters signed in to Facebook on ReadWriteWeb, it rewarded them with a text box labeled "Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)." Where do these comments go? It doesn't say. It's down at the bottom of a huge window, which means when you're looking at it, you can't see most of the page's identifying information at the top of the page. (Except for the URL, but I'll get to that in a minute.) Many text boxes around the Web are woefully under-labeled.

When I was beginning my research, a guy who worked at Blogger said to me, "People will put just anything in a text box," and it seems to be true. Evidence abounds that people interpret comment boxes in any number of ways. Some think they are sending private email. Some think they're sending a chat message, and get belligerent when nobody responds right away. A few seem to think it's a word processor, and "Submit" means the same thing as "save."

A comment which really blew my mind was posted to a blog by a woman who appeared to confuse comments on a blog with "online prayer" - an Internet activity which is probably unfamiliar to most denizens of high-tech blogs. Google it, though, and you'll find numerous pages, with Pat Robertson's organization ranking among the top ones.

Online prayer sites provide a form that lets you include your name, contact information, and a comment about what prayers you need - a form which looks startlingly like a blog comment form. The idea is that your message will be sent to Robertson or other church staff, and they will pray for you. Sometimes the form includes a promise that your message will be kept confidential; other times, there is no such promise, but it seems to matter little to those who don't understand where a comment form goes anyway.

Online prayer may be new to you. Logging in to Facebook through another site is new to most of us. It's worth keeping in mind that the vast majority of people alive today were never taught to read a webpage in school, the way they were taught to read the title, author information and pages of a book. This brings us to another theme in the ReadWriteWeb thread which is repeated across most other misunderstandings of this type.

Literacy is Not the Problem - New Kinds of Literacy Are

ReadWriteWeb readers and other "natives" call errant commenters any number of nasty names (and use an upsetting amount of eugenic language, suggesting these "idiot" commenters should be "weeded out of the gene pool.") One favorite insult is "illiterate."

As stated, this is a little unfair when most of these people never had a chance to learn Internet skills in school, where skills might be broken down into simple elements that most of us don't even remember learning. (When you learn to read a book, for example, you learn which way to hold the book, how to turn pages, reading left to right, chunking letters into phonemes and words into sentences.)

But beyond being unfair, it's not wholly correct to call them illiterate. They do read and write. They just don't always do so in ways that are considered appropriate by the technologically skilled (and the code they write).

Literacy has never been a single monolithic skill. It involves both reading and writing, and these two skills are independent of each other. More to the point, literacy involves reading and writing differently in a range of situations. You may consider yourself literate because you have read Shakespeare, or because you can write a coherent quarterly report. But you don't write your quarterly report as a sonnet. Different forms of literacy apply at different times, and people can be good at some kinds of literacy while needing assistance in others.

Basic decoding (reading) and writing are rarely the problem in these misunderstandings. While many comments left by strangers on the threads I have studied are misspelled, use bad grammar, or are written in all-caps (or, even more confusingly, All Initial Caps), plenty can't be distinguished from the comments left by tech-savvy commenters when it comes to writing skill.

In fact, "strangers" are more likely than natives to write their comments in ways we all learned in school. In most of the threads I have studied, they make it clear who they are addressing ("Dear Facebook,") who is writing ("Thanks, Linda") and even how to understand where they are coming from geographically. They do this to the point of redundancy, sometimes entering this information into more than one comment field.

One stranger, trying to reach Maury Povich on a classic thread dug up by MetaFilter, writes a spellchecked-perfect traditional letter, right down to the formatting of the date and greetings. (When was the last time you spellchecked a hastily written comment?) Other errant commenters are published authors, or even have advanced degrees. Again, their problem is not traditional literacy; the problem is that the Internet demands new kinds of literacy, and they haven't had the training yet. Mocking them in a comment thread doesn't improve their skills.

Reading-wise, there are plenty of indications in my data that strangers have read other parts of the page. There seems to be a general trend that they are less likely to directly address a celebrity (for example) when the comments right above their own come from natives who say "ommfg, this is not Maury Povich's website!" My favorite example of a stranger demonstrating her reading skills is a commenter on a thread where a blogger wrote about his joy at learning that all kinds of things - M&Ms, ketchup bottles, soda, etc - could now be customized. The blogger titled his post "Ketchup of the People." The commenter wrote:

I found the order for custom printed m & m's in the coupon section of the providence journal sunday paper. It said nothing about ordering ketchup first or anything about the blog. All I wanted was to surprise my 80 year old aunt who loves m & m's with this special custom order. What is this a scam or something? If it is, it's pretty cruel? Please respond.

Through some referral-log forensics, the blogger and his readers determined that this commenter had, in fact, entered the URL provided by her newspaper. The problem was, the offer had expired, and the only remaining reference to this URL was on the blogger's page, where she landed. So she set about trying to make sense of what she found in the best way she could. Would she have to order ketchup first? Was the blog somehow a gatekeeper to the order? This all sounded fishy - was it a scam?

Presented with apparent nonsense, all of us do our best to make sense of it; that's just what the human brain does. On the Web, people don't always have the information they need to understand what's going on.

Next page: What is a URL?

What is a URL?

One of the most important elements errant commenters aren't using, which the tech-savvy have at their command, is a page's URL. Internet-illiterate commenters generally don't know what "URL" means, or what one does. Check the URLs attached to their names in blog comments; you will often find they have entered an email address, subject line, their name, or something to the effect of "I don't know what this is" in the URL field that went with their comment.The fact that many errant commenters seem to enter "Facebook" into Google's search field to get to the page also suggests that URLs aren't a part of their Internet literacy skills.

Interface designers aren't helping. Most URL bars now resolve into search results. This may seem like a good UI solution, but it is a catastrophic mistake from a literacy perspective. URLs aren't just how we get to a page; they are involved in how we judge its content, accuracy, point of view, and most importantly who owns it.

Obscuring or drawing attention away from URLs keeps people from understanding how to judge the quality of material on the Internet. Considering that most people have not had schooling to help them understand the Internet - and it's unlikely that even kids in school today have formal opportunities to learn about URLs, considering the number of schools which limit Internet access - these steps taken by UI designers simply compound the problem.

Which leads me to my final point:

They're Not Illiterate - You Are

As crazy as it sounds, Melanson makes a certain amount of sense when he lays the blame for the Facebook flap at Google's feet. Google is the best search engine going right now, but it's not perfect. The shift to real-time results and its underlying popularity-contest mechanic make it ineffective in specific settings. ("Specific" being key; the other problem with search engines, and the subject of extensive research in schools of information, is their inability to respond to a given user's context. But that's a topic for another article.)

Facebook - and even ReadWriteWeb - are also somewhat to blame, considering how the cross-site login service is presented to users; as I noted, the messages sent to those signing in are unclear (thanks for signing in to what? Now you can comment where? What does it mean to sign in to Facebook on ReadWriteWeb, anyway? Is this a scam?)

Literacy is a two-way street. They may be dumb for not reading the pages right, but some of the code, search algorithms, and interfaces involved aren't perfect, either. Not to mention the way "savvy" commenters and other bloggers write. The more people linked to the original ReadWriteWeb thread with the words "Facebook login" in the link, the more the ReadWriteWeb thread appeared to Google to be relevant to Facebook login.

As has been noted, blog posts with "Facebook" in the title were likely to see more unwanted traffic as well. This even spread the problem to other blogs linking to ReadWriteWeb, some of whom also started to see login requests in their comment threads. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has noted bad titling among a number of bloggers' other bad writing habits, including poor-quality About pages which don't explain who is writing.

These are ways of writing which bring about undesired consequences, and yet bloggers and other members of the technological elite use them all the time. Is this part of the new illiteracy?

The funny thing about the patterns in these misunderstandings is that they predate the Web. Newspapers receive misdirected mail for celebrities. Scientists receive email from people who want help registering a patent. Fans have been writing letters to the heroine of Romeo and Juliet at least since the release of the first movie in the 1930s; they arrive by the mailbag in Verona, Italy every year, despite the fact that if you've read through to the end, Juliet clearly isn't in any state to write a letter back. The Internet simply makes this kind of confusion more obvious to the rest of us.

The great thing about watching these train wrecks happen in real time is they leave such great evidence of how they could be fixed. Web designers could be paying more attention to labeling their text boxes. Browser designers could be building ways to help people understand URLs better, like the Firefox Flagfox extension, which shows a page's country of origin and makes it trivial to run a WhoIs lookup. We could all be a little smarter in writing links and titling our blog posts.

Fixing search engines is a much thornier problem. More complicated still is the chicken-and-egg problem of how to make a large population Internet literate, when many teachers don't understand the Internet themselves, and when schools face legal threats if their students have enough Internet access to accidentally stray onto pornographic sites.

But again: calling commenters "illiterate," "stupid," or "sub-literate monotremes" (yeah Miles, we see what you did there) is not the same thing as a solution to the problem.

Photo by Miguel Ugalde

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The Meaning & Future of Blippy, the Credit Card Data Social Network

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:07:42 -0400

Would you broadcast information about your credit card transactions publicly on the Internet? That might sound frighteningly irresponsible, but serial entrepreneur Phil Kaplan says his new social network Blippy does that and represents the way of the future. I thought he was crazy - until I sat down and talked with him today at SXSW. In just a few minutes Kaplan melted my skepticism and got me excited about what Blippy is doing.

You may have read about Blippy on sites like TechCrunch, Venturebeat and CNN. Kaplan shared a few things with us today that haven't been published anywhere else though, and the story of Blippy is generally interesting. Here are seven things you probably don't know about Blippy, a very far-out social network.

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1. Users can manually review each item before it's published or set up certain substreams that do different things - like automatically publish my iTunes transactions but ask me before publishing my Amazon purchases. Kaplan has two credit cards, one with a Blippy sticker on it to remind him that purchases made with that card are posted immediately to the web.

2. It's not about the money. Kaplan says he wants Blippy to be a way for offline activity to publish online conversation. The things you buy are often convenient signals for activities that are important to you. The conversations that go on around the items are quite interesting... at least on Kaplan's profile. He can buy a movie on iTunes and find a conversation about it swarming around his automatic Blippy post before the opening previews are over. Other users often don't see any comments on their activity at all. Jason Calacanis sees some good conversation.

3. Blippy now sees $2 million worth of user transactions streaming through the site per week, Kaplan says, and has seen close to $15 million in transactions total since it launched publicly January 15.

4. Kaplan doesn't think sharing credit card data is that big a deal. He cites LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman's argument that people will share anything if there's enough of a benefit to sharing it. Friendster was the first site where people used their real names on the Internet, and people weren't comfortable with that at first, either.

"The more insane someone thinks something is, the more value they put on the data. People say 'I can't believe you're doing this, it's so insane I'm going to jump out the window!' Then I ask them, 'Do you want the data?' And they say 'Yes!'"

5. Data portability: Kaplan is working on a Blippy App Programming Interface and "it's going to have everything." Data caching policy is something "we have to think about still." Imagine a website that recommends recipes based on the food it knows you have in your refridgerator. That's one example of the kind of service that could be built on top of Blippy.

6. Aggregate data analysis isn't something Kaplan is personally interested in, he says. It's hard to believe but he says he'll leave that kind of thing up to third parties using the Blippy API if they want to. The company will focus all its energy on making Blippy a good experiene for users. Really, that's what he said.

7. Location data is something Blippy sees but doesn't expose right now. Kaplan says it's coming, though. He thinks the current location-based social networks need to deliver more value to users, and says that's something Blippy can do.

People these days produce all kinds of data streams, Kaplan says - from Facebook to Twitter to Smart Grid utility use and electronic medical data. Some of those streams you wouldn't want to be public about at all, but some of them you can benefit from partially exposing. He thinks that at least some of your credit card transactions are better shared than kept private. Time will tell whether or not other people agree with him.

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FCCs Broadband Plan Heads to Congress

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:01:12 -0400

The FCC has just submitted its National Broadband plan to Congress. The plan is pretty ambitious; the FCC wants at least 100 million U.S. homes to have access to affordable broadband of at least 100Mbps download speeds. Likening broadband to electricity, the executive summary calls the technology “a foundation for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life.”

Congress directed the FCC to develop a National Broadband Plan early last year. This would ensure that every American “has access to broadband capability.” Congress further stipulated that the plan include a detailed strategy for how this goal would be achieved affordably and with maximum efficiency.

The four points outlined in the plan are:

Design policies to ensure competition

Ensure efficiency in asset management and allocations

Reform current deployment services in high-cost areas

Reform policies to maximize the benefits of broadband when used in public sectors like education, health care and government.

If you’re interested in the entire overview, be sure to take a look at the plan. It will be interesting to see the Congressional response to this plan.

While there are lots of calls for government regulations to ensure fair pricing and service speeds, the bulk of infrastructure development and roll-out costs are assumed to be provided by the private sector. How these two areas can be reconciled will likely be one of central issues in actually implementing any National Broadband Plan.

What do you think of what the FCC is proposing? Let us know!

[img credit: Matti Mattila]

Tags: broadband, fcc, national broadband plan, politics

Is The Path Between VCs and Entrepreneurs A One-Way Street?

Chris Cameron — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:00:00 -0400

Over the weekend, Frist Round Capital Entrepreneur in Residence Charlie O'Donnell wrote an interesting blog post that is making its way around the venture capital and startup communities and drawing a variety of responses. O'Donnell suggests that while some VCs began their careers as entrepreneurs, most native venture capitalists have trouble making the switch the other way. His reason behind this is that VCs operate with different goals, methods and mindsets which make the transition from VC to entrepreneur is an uphill climb.

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O'Donnell speaks from his own personal experiences as a VC who tried to start his own company, Path 101, which ultimately failed. "I learned a ton about what it really takes to drive a successful business forward--skills and a mindset that doesn't necessarily square with the way venture investors think of the world," he says.

One of the differences between VCs and entrepreneurs he points out is the type of employees each values. O'Donnell says VCs tend to look at the leadership and the entrepreneurs as the top priority employees, while entrepreneurs will tend to place higher importance on the people "in the trenches," doing the programming and development. "Not many VCs really know how to evaluate team talent if they haven't run a company before--and that's a critical skill as an entrepreneur," he says.

Another wedge between these two types of businessmen that he notes is that entrepreneurs focus much more about what they can do with the resources they have, while VCs are constantly looking at what a company needs. O'Donnell says switching these mindsets can be difficult and that he spent too much time thinking of creating the "next big thing," rather than focusing on short-term goals and creating a solid foundation upon which to build.

Of course, as he points out, there are exceptions to the notion that a VC can't become a successful entrepreneur. As a commenter on O'Donnell's post points out, Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon began as an investor at Arbitrade and Bessemer Venture Partners before starting his own companies. Another commenter argues that its hard to make assumptions about this topic when the sample size of VCs trying to become entrepreneurs is relatively small.

Whether O'Donnell's suggestion has validity or not is certainly an interesting discussion, but the real lesson to learn from his post comes from his personal experiences in failure. One of the reasons O'Donnell doesn't think VCs make good entrepreneurs is that they may be prone to approaching the situation with advice for how to succeed permeating their brains. The trick is, success can be the product of any of a million different variables, and there is no single proven path to success. Instead, the best way to get there is to avoid failures.

Focus on the errors that most unsuccessful startups make and go out of your way to avoid them; more often than not you will find yourself inching closer and closer towards your goal this way. Just remember that errors and failures are not always things that were done that went wrong, they are sometimes things that were never done in the first place.

The question of whether VCs have a difficult time become entrepreneurs has drawn a mixed response so far from O'Donnell's blog, so what do you think? Is the road between them marked by a one-way street? Or is one side just paved a little more smoothly? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Evan Williams tries to do-over SXSW interview via Twitter

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:56:40 -0400

Although Twitter co-founder and and chief executive Evan Williams made a couple of interesting points during his keynote interview, the consensus was that it did not go well — as a number of Twitter users noted, it seemed like interviewer Umair Haque spent as much time talking about his own ideas as Williams did. I sat near the front of the packed keynote auditorium, and by halfway through I noticed that the seats around me were starting to empty. Someone told me afterward that they fell asleep.

Following the tradition of journalist Sarah Lacy’s similarly-criticized interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW in 2008, where Zuckerberg staged a second interview where he engaged more directly with the audience, Williams offered to answer more questions over Twitter:

I heard on the backchannel that people want me to answer tougher questions,” he tweeted. “What’ya want to know? Will answer 10. Go.”

A lot of the questions and especially answers have been pretty vague, but sometimes Williams wasn’t afraid to get specific. For example: “What am I thinking right now?” Williams: “Lady Gaga.”

Companies: Twitter

People: Evan Williams

Justin.TV Turns To Law Professor Eric Goldman As It Battles Live Video Piracy

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:45:40 -0400

Before livestreaming video networks like Justin.TV can become attractive to advertisers, they need to deal with their piracy issues. It's the same thing YouTube had to go through, except with live video streams. Like YouTube, Justin.tv complies with DMCA takedown notices and is developing digital fingerprinting technology to identify copyrighted video on its network automatically. It also invites copyright owners to police the site directly.Despite these measures, a casual perusal of the most popular streams on Justin.tv is filled with pirated streams of professional sports, TV shows, and movies. Right now, for instance, you can watch King of Queens or CNN International, taken straight from TV. The company finds itself increasingly under fire for copyright issues. To help it deal with these issues, Justin.tv now has a new adviser, Eric Goldman, the director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clare University and a highly-respected Internet law blogger. Unlike Justin.TV's very-expensive lawyers at Wilson Sonsini, Goldman will be less constrained in speaking publicly on behalf of the company about these issues. Goldman is an expert on how copyright law is applied to user-generated content. But in many ways live video on the Web is a new beast.

Facebook ousts Google as most popular U.S. site

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:41:52 -0400

Facebook is now the most popular site in the U.S., according to analytics firm Hitwise. In the week ending March 13, 2010, Facebook surpassed the previous most popular site, Google, in terms of overall traffic for the week.

Facebook sat at 7.07 percent for all U.S. web traffic, whereas Google was at 7.03 percent. Looking at the graph above, it’s clear that Facebook has seen a steady rise in traffic since last year. Traffic to Facebook increased 185 percent compared to the same week last year, whereas visits to Google increased only 9 percent.

In early 2008, there were reports of Facebook’s traffic plateauing, but now it doesn’t seem like the site needs to worry about that too much. I would attribute the major rise in Facebook’s traffic in 2009 to the release of Farmville in June, and similar social games throughout the year.

Looking at the graph above, there’s a distinct rise in traffic starting in June. In late August, we reported on Zynga’s claims that Farmville was the fastest growing social game ever. In little over two months, Farmville had acquired over 11 million active users. As of today, the game has over 83 million active users.

Compared to the rise of social games on Facebook, there was little happening at Google to encourage traffic growth.

Comscore, another analytics firm, still ranks Google ahead of Facebook. Google is the top site by reach at 81 percent of the U.S. population. Facebook sits behind Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft at 53 percent, according to TechCrunch.

Tags: Farmville

Companies: Facebook, hitwise

SXSW Attendees Rip Into Twitter CEO's Keynote

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:33:00 -0400

Twitter CEO Ev Williams just delivered the keynote address at SXSW.

It did not go well.

(Remember Sarah Lacy's horrible interview keynote with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2008? This was worse)

Read the rest of this story »

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Titanic to Return to Theaters in 3D

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:27:46 -0400

Jeffrey Katzenberg was right: 3D is the future of movies. USA Today interviewed Avatar director James Cameron about this new era of filmmaking, and the director revealed plans to bring a certain unsinkable hit back to theaters in 2012, this time in 3D: Titanic.

Because of the success of Avatar — and now Alice in Wonderland — studios are scrambling to release as many big titles in 3D as possible. Thanks to computer technology, 3D effects can be added to films shot without the use of 3D-specific cameras like Cameron used for Avatar. This includes Warner Bros.’s upcoming Clash of the Titans, a film that was not shot in 3D, but is being converted to 3D over an eight-week period in hopes of capturing more attention (and higher ticket sales) at the box office.

While Cameron was critical of how little time some of these conversions were taking, he wasn’t opposed to the idea that old titles be converted — as long as the original director is the one who oversees the process.

From the interview:

“They’re converting Clash of the Titans in eight weeks. But I’m guessing six months to a year to do it right. We’re targeting spring of 2012 for the release (of a 3D version of Titanic), which is the 100 year anniversary of the sailing of the ship.”

Titanic, for its time, was actually a quite technically advanced film. Many of the interior and exterior shots were completely computer-generated, as was much of the water in the film. That offers up some better options when re-processing the film for 3D because artists are working with digital imagery — not to mention the improvements in visual effects and CGI that have taken place in the ensuing 13 years.

Cameron also discusses 3D television sets and plans for Avatar in Blu-ray and in 3D.

What do you think about technology retrofitting classic films into 3D — or 2.8D as Cameron calls it? Let us know!

Reviews: Blu

Tags: 3D, 3D TV, Film, james cameron, Movies, titanic

Facebook Was More Popular In The U.S. Than Google Last Week (GOOG)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:16:28 -0400

Facebook has notched another traffic victory over Google, according to Hitwise data.

Last week Facebook was the most popular site on the web. Facebook has done this on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th, according to Hitwise.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Twitter Announces @Anywhere Platform

Frederic Lardinois — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:15:00 -0400

During his SXSW keynote interview today, Twitter's Evan Williams announced the service's new @platform. While the keynote interview itself was rather forgettable (a large part of the audience left before it was over), the @platform will have wide-reaching consequences for Twitter and its ecosystem. This new platform will allow publishers to integrate Twitter deeper into their site and recreate the "open, engaging interactions" their readers expect from using Twitter "without sending them to Twitter.com."

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The new platform, for example, will allow users to identify and follow Twitter users on third-party sites without leaving the third-party site. Some of the sites that will soon use this new service include Amazon, Yahoo, Digg, Bing and the New York Times. This, according to Evan, will allow publishers to make sure that their audience is aware of their Twitter feeds, and allow users to follow a site's or columnist's feed without every having to leave the site. According to Williams, this will allow publishers to find more followers, and it will also allow Twitter to bring in more users to the site as well as make more non-Twitter users aware of the service. According to Williams, Twitter is launching this service because it wants to lower the barrier of using the service. Given that Twitter's growth has slowed down in recent months, it only makes sense for the company to try to bring the service to more mainstream users.

While many pundits expected Twitter to announce its ad platform or make an announcement about how the company plans to monetize the service (besides its partnerships with search companies like Google and Microsoft), Twitter did not offer any major insights into its plans today. When asked about the company's plans, Williams noted that Twitter is not going to go after "low-hanging fruit" and is more interested in creating a sustainable platform.

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Wait, Did Ev Williams Just Interview Umair Haque? Weird.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:01:42 -0400

When SXSW sets up its festival, you have to assume they want the best and most engaging keynotes possible. If the public reaction to Umair Haque's interview of Twitter co-founder Ev Williams is any indication, they failed. Badly.I wish I could take credit for the title here, but it is all Mike Monteiro, appropriately, by way of Twitter. Below, find a sampling of some of the other best tweets about the keynote. As someone who was in the audience, all seem pretty accurate.

9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:59:58 -0400

Social networking has finally become something valuable for brick-and-mortar businesses. Smartphones and location-based social networks allow users to interact, share, meet up, and recommend places based on their physical coordinates. This real-world connection to social media can mean more foot traffic and profits for business owners.

So-called “lo-so” networks like Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla enable any business with a physical location to not only communicate with customers online, but actually get more of them to walk in the door — and that’s exciting.

The question any brick-and-mortar business owner should be asking him or herself is no longer “Should I use lo-so networks?” It’s “How do I do it?” The following tips are essential to getting started.

1. Learn the Platforms

First of all, you need to understand how the technology works. Generally, people use lo-so apps on their phones to “check in” whenever they go places. Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) locate the users and determine what “venue” they might be at, giving them options to select a location or create a new listing. These “check ins” allow their friends to know where they are now, or where they frequently go. Some services allow users to leave location-based tips for friends to discover later, and several involve social competitions, or the ability to unlock digital badges, stickers, and prizes. Businesses can announce specials or promotions through these apps, so when users “check in,” they receive notifications of nearby deals.

Item one on your to-do list should be to become familiar with the prevailing platforms. Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Latitude are the most talked about in general, though others exist, and popularity varies by geography (e.g. Foursquare reigns supreme in New York City, and Loopt has a lot of clout in Silicon Valley). Other platforms to be aware of include Yelp and Facebook, which are just now dabbling in lo-so. Sign up for all of these, and download the apps to your phone if you can, so you can become familiar with how someone would use each one. Most of the networks have iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry apps, and all of them allow you to “check in” via desktop and mobile web browsers.

2. Determine Your Goals

Before you can optimize your business for lo-social networking, you need to step back and determine what you want to accomplish.

Are you hoping to increase foot traffic to your store?

Do you want to sell more of a particular item?

Do you want more patrons at certain times of day?

Do you want to promote a specific product?

Are you looking for new customer acquisition?

Repeat customers?

You may say, “I want all of those,” but to be effective, you need to set specific objectives. These will determine your approach to the entire process. Luckily, if you need to change things around to fit new objectives in the future, the cost of doing so is very small.

One goal that should be on every business’s list is to be easily findable on every network, which brings us to number three:

3. Establish Your Presence

Make sure that your business is listed on each network. Then make sure the address, phone, and details are correct and current. Don’t assume that users have added everything correctly. On some networks, once a venue is there, it’s stuck. Others let you edit. Don’t be afraid to contact the network itself to ask them for help if you can’t fix your venue listing. Gowalla’s Jonathan Carroll says, “We receive dozens of e-mails a day from businesses around the world asking for additions or tweaks to their Gowalla locations, and we’re happy to help out with them.”

It’s also a good idea to put up notices or stickers (on the door, order counter, or table centerpieces, for example) announcing “We’re on Foursquare” or “Find us on Yelp.” This will remind people to “check in” and spread the word about you.

4. Customize

Different networks have different options for customization, but it’s important that you do as much as you can to build out your listing. Add your website. Integrate with your other social networking accounts, like Twitter. Features are constantly being added to each network, but great customizations you can try right now include the following:

On Foursquare: Create to-do lists for users to explore around your area. And if possible, work with Foursquare to create a custom badge for your venue or event.

On Gowalla: Ask for a custom icon for your location, rather than the generic one for your category. Examples: Shake Shack, NYC, Austin Java, and Coop Ale Works.

5. Implement Compelling Promotions

Lo-social networks allow you to run promos to increase engagement and get people into your store. Foursquare’s Tristan Walker says, “Any type of in-store promotion you can conceive we want to make it so Foursquare can run it.” Many businesses offer specials like “check in 10 times and get a free appetizer” on all the major lo-so networks. Establish well-conceived promotions based on your goals, then evaluate the results. The biggest mistake you can make is to do this sloppily or half-heartedly.

Carroll cites Lift Cafe as a good example. “They offer 10% off every purchase when you check in on Gowalla, which they include in their description and also as a reminder in the success screen after check-in.”

“[What] we’ve seen across all channels again and again is that what works is a good local offer,” says Loopt CEO Sam Altman. Businesses with offers that cater to people “making that gametime decision” when they’re out and about do the best. “Offer value to the customer so it doesn’t feel like an ad,” he advises.

Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology for the Brooklyn Museum, talks about how the institution uses Foursquare to create a multi-faceted campaign and experience for museum goers.

“We knew that many people coming here wanted to know more about the local neighborhood, which is something Foursquare does well. We asked our staff for their opinion of the best stuff in the neighborhood … and left tips at all these venues for Foursquare users to find. Second, we added a promo for our mayor to reward the people who are consistently identifying themselves with us. Third, Foursquare has given us a badge which unlocks after three visits, and this helps reward our community for coming in the doors.

“All of these things together help create a total presence on the platform that works well for the Foursquare community, the Brooklyn Museum visitor, and the local merchants in our neighborhood.”"

Common promotions across various networks include the following:

Raffles (e.g. “Every person who checks in gets a chance to win an iPod.”)

Specials for the user who checks in most often. This is a staple of Foursquare promos for a lot of venues (e.g. “Top user/mayor gets the first drink free every time he/she comes in.”)

First check in specials (e.g. “Get 30% off your order when you check in for the first time.”)

Digital punch cards (e.g. “Check in 5 times, get a free coffee.”)

Tips for developing effective promotions:

Advertise particular incentives, rather than your business in general (“20% off between 2 and 4pm;” “Buy one burger, get one free;” etc.).

On platforms that allow you create your own banner ads (such as Loopt), include your address and opening hours in the ad itself, when possible.

Be creative. For example, Incase, the bag and protective case maker, recently ran a promo with Gowalla to put virtual versions of its products into the app to be collected and traded. Carroll remarks, “The result has been phenomenal: Thousands upon thousands of their virtual items have been distributed in Gowalla to an audience who could benefit from their products, but many of whom had not previously heard of Incase.”

6. Engage With Your Customers

It would be a mistake to use Twitter as a one-way corporate megaphone, never interacting with your audience. That’s a quick route to an audience of zero. One of the most effective uses of social media is personal engagement and relationship building with your audience. The same goes for lo-so networks.

7. Track Everything

Foursquare just released a slick analytics dashboard for venues to track their stats. Other networks have metrics you can view as well, and they’ll certainly be releasing better and better tools. From data you can study online to qualitative observations at your own store, it’s important to keep track of everything so you can learn what promotions work with your audience. Be aware, though, that your ROI may not be directly measurable, and aside from increased sales, you’re working for brand exposure and increased awareness of your business.

8. Be Prepared to Adapt

Location-based social network technology may be the newest and grooviest incarnation of social media, but it certainly won’t be the last. And in a year it won’t look exactly like it does today. Be prepared to adapt your methods when features change, as new tools emerge, and as you review your own promotional results. Again, keep your objectives in mind, and be ready to keep up with new technology.

9. Avoid Common Pitfalls

In talking with representatives from the major lo-so networks, several common mistakes came up. Here are a few things you should try to avoid:

Don’t leave fake reviews or tips. They’re easy to spot, and you’ll lose all on- and off-line credibility immediately when people catch on.

Don’t throw up poorly designed ads. “A badly designed banner ad performs so much worse than … a good one,” Altman says. “It’s an insane difference.”

Don’t forget to monitor activity. Carroll points out, “Chances are if someone has a gripe or praise with their check-in, it’s a real-time thing: The patron is probably still there … so the business has a chance to make the experience even better.”

We’d love to hear about your own lo-so experiences. Let us know how location-based services have benefited your business in the comments!

More location-based resources from Mashable:

- 10 Foursquare Apps You Can Use Right Now

- 6 Foursquare Apps Wed Love to See

- 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare

- Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown

- Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010

Reviews: Android, BlackBerry Rocks!, Brightkite, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Yelp, iPhone

Tags: brightkite, business, facebook, foursquare, google latitude, gowalla, List, location, location-based, loopt, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, small business, social media, social networks, twitter

An Amazing Magazine Stand Of The Future Demo

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:47:00 -0400

What will magazine stands look like when iPad apps replace print editions?

Check out this amazing demo from Cynergy's Todd Clare at SXW, via eMedia Vitals. We will be able to place a tablet computer on a special table like this one from Microsoft Surface, recognize your profile, and drag the magazines onto the device in real time.

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Forget Foursquare, Gowalla's CEO Is In A Fight To The Death With His Hair

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:44:00 -0400

If Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn't worried about Foursquare, it's because he doesn't have time to be. He's too busy fighting his hair.

Watch Josh Williams Vs. His Hair, as it went down on Bloomberg TV today:

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Details: Twitters New @Anywhere Platform

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:37:34 -0400

Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced at SXSW that his company is taking another step to integrate with the rest of the web with a new platform called @anywhere. Operators of third-party websites will be able to plug in @anywhere to integrate some basic Twitter functionality without requiring their users to navigate away from a page.

When you visit a website that supports @anywhere, you’ll be able to follow any Twitter account associated with that site without navigating away to the profile at Twitter.com. The Twitter blog suggests that the platform will let you follow a participating journalist from his or her byline. It also suggests that you’ll be able to tweet about a YouTube video without interrupting it.

More @anywhere features are planned; Twitter says the above-mentioned items are are “just the beginning.” Integrating with the rest of the web is a wise move. Facebook’s Facebook Connect platform is dominating right now, and while Twitter has a similar login platform, it’s lost its head start when it comes to openness and integration.

The person or organization behind a website can drop some JavaScript in the website to integrate with @anywhere, so there won’t be any arcane Application Programming Interface (API) to learn and implement. Initial partners will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo, and as mentioned above YouTube. Twitter hasn’t said when those sites will begin using @anywhere.

Future announcements regarding the platform will come from the @anywhere Twitter account you get one guess as to what the username is. Platform/API guru Ryan Sarver promised “lots more details” at the Chirp Twitter developer conference this April 14 and 15.

Reviews: Amazon.com, Bing, Chirp Blu, Digg, Facebook, Meebo, Twitter, Yahoo!, YouTube, eBay

Tags: at-anywhere, ev, evan williams, sxsw, sxsw-2010, trending, twitter

Twitter CEO Evan Williams to entrepreneurs: Think big, look outside the Valley

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:34:10 -0400

Towards the end of his keynote interview at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin today, Twitter co-founder and chief executive Evan Williams talked about the advice he gives to entrepreneurs. For one thing, he encourages them to find ideas that are really big and disruptive, not just potential moneymakers.

The test, Williams said, is that your product or service should be the end of a sentence that begins, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if …?” And that sentence shouldn’t be, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had a million dollars?”

Williams said he’s the kind of entrepreneur motivated by “creating things in the world that didn’t exist before,” but he acknowledged that there are others who are more motivated to make money. (And Twitter-haters might argue that if Williams had been a little more interested in money, the company might have found a business model by now.) So perhaps it’s best to think of this as “advice for entrepreneurs who want to be like Evan Williams.”

He also said he encourages entrepreneurs to not just think big, but also to think differently. Sometimes that can be hard if you’re in Silicon Valley — it’s a great area to build a technology company, but it’s easy to get locked into the Valley mindset, he said (though he didn’t offer many details about what that mindset entails).

“A lot of the most interesting companies come outside of Silicon Valley,” Williams said. Offering Chicago-based companies 37Signals and Threadless as examples, he said, “They’re not sucked into the thinking of Silicon Valley.”

Companies: Twitter

People: Evan Williams

Everything You Need To About Windows Phone 7 Applications (MSFT)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:30:00 -0400

Windows Phone 7 Series: It's a thing! And it looks pretty great, so far. Last month's announcement, though, left a lot of questions. Questions which are answered here, in Gizmodo's coverage of Microsoft MIX 2010 keynote.

How exactly will multitasking work? What about those incredible cross platform game demos? Whither WinMo 6.x, and its devs? (And what's with this "Classic" and "Starter Edition" business?) What happens to the Zune? Will we see more hardware? What about the mysterious Chassis 3? Why are developers already worried?

If you just want to see what the apps look like click through for a gallery →

New Features

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Join Charlie Rose, Ron Conway, Jack Dorsey And Lots Of Others At TechCrunch Disrupt

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:27:07 -0400

We are just starting to announce the first speakers at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City on May 24 - 26. TechCrunch Disrupt is a three-day, single-track conference and startup competition to immerse you in the debate about whats changing in media and technology right now, whats causing it and what we need to do about it to survive and thrive in real time. Join 2,000 or so of your closest friends to talk about what's most important in the collision of technology and media.Half of the event is a March Madness style startup competition. We're sorting through hundreds of applications to find the most interesting startups launching this Spring. You'll see live on stage demos, rapid fire Q&A sessions with expert judges from a variety of backgrounds (product, finance, team building, leadership and more) and highlights from behind the scenes mentoring sessions.The other half of the event will put leading experts from around the world on stage to talk about the stuff that matters most in technology and media. A few of the speakers and experts are listed below. Keep an eye on the Disrupt Blog and Speaker list for more updates.

Twitter Announces "@Anywhere" For Deeper Integration With Third Party Sites

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:27:00 -0400

Twitter CEO Ev Williams just announced @Anywhere, a program to allow deeper Twitter integration on third-party sites. Ev made the announcement during a keynote Q&A at SXSW.

@Anywhere will grant a wide range of sites access to data from Twitter feeds for use in a variety of applications. Ev demonstrated a feature called "Hovercards", which brings up Twitter info on a person when a user holds the cursor over that person's name in a block of text.

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Tiger Woods In Your Face! The Masters Will Be Broadcast In 3D

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:15:00 -0400

Ready to see Tiger Woods in 3D?

If he does return to the game, he'll be broadcast in all three dimensions online and on TV.

The Augusta National Golf Club just announced that the 2010 Masters Tournament will be produced and broadcast live in 3D for the first time.

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Carol Bartz Needs A Miracle (YAHOO)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:14:00 -0400

In the world outside Yahoo's office park headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, there is a general consensus that Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz's days at the top of the company are numbered.

See 8 reasons why >

They may number in the thousands -- corporations move slowly -- but they are numbered.

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Twitters Evan Williams: Openness is a survival strategy

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:01:10 -0400

During his keynote interview at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin today, Twitter chief executive Evan Williams talked about why Twitter has chosen to make itself open to search engines, third-party developers, and other services.

“Openness is basically a survival strategy,” Williams said. When you start a company, many of your assumptions are going to be completely wrong, so you need to figure out what you’re wrong about as quickly as possible. Williams said he tells new employees they should assume there are more smart people outside the company than inside (an idea he admits he borrowed from Sun co-founder Bill Joy). So if you want to find out what you’re doing wrong, you should be open to feedback from and collaboration with people outside.

Williams also noted that there are different kinds of openness. There’s the openness of a window, where you can basically see what’s going on inside, but that’s it. Then there’s the openness of an open door, where you can actually step inside. Twitter aspires to the latter kind of openness, he said.

Not that the Twitter team is always 100 percent in agreement on these issues. There was lots of internal debate over the company’s licensing deals to make tweets show up as real-time results in search engines like Google, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo, Williams said. There was concern that Twitter was giving away its value, especially since it didn’t have a solid business model yet. But Williams and his team finally decided to go ahead with the deals, he said, because they went back to the company’s original principles: “How do we create as much value for our users as possible? How do we increase the value of the network? … Tapping into the reach and the technology of these partners is a way to bring more value out of tweets.”

Williams also acknowledged that openness can have its disadvantages. For example, making Twitter open to third-party applications through APIs makes it easier for people to bring spam into Twitter, which is why the company is constantly sending cease-and-desist letters to spam application makers.

“If we were infinitely open, I think it would be a disservice to our users,” Williams said.

Companies: Twitter

People: Evan Williams

What's Left For Startups At SXSW?

Chris Cameron — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:46:20 -0400

It's Monday and that means that the Interactive portion of SXSW is drawing closer and closer to its close tomorrow after a weekend of great talks, panels, parties and overall hoopla. While some of the most fun parts of SXSW may be behind us, there are still a lot of great things to go see in Austin, especially for those in the startup and entrepreneurship communities. So if you're looking for some interesting panels to attend before you catch your flight home later this week, here's a run down of some of the remaining startup-related talks and events.

Sponsor

This afternoon, a keynote interview with Twitter's Evan Williams will surely provide any striving entrepreneur with some intriguing insights into his tactics for success. Williams will be joined in Exhibit Hall 1 by Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab at 2pm. Later on in the afternoon, author Clara Shih, whose book The Facebook Era was one of our Weekend Reading suggestions, will be signing copies of her book at the South by Bookstore. The signing starts at 3:20, so get their early and on time because 10 minutes later there is a trio of interesting panels to choose from.

At 3:30 in the Radisson Travis, Jason Oberfest of ngmoco and Eroc Eldon of Inside Network will be presenting on how online games can take advantage of social media. We've seen a lot of interesting developments in web-based gaming lately, especially with the success of Zynga on Facebook. New technologies are making in-browser games much more powerful than anything we've seen before, and the opportunities to tie social networking into the experience make the possibilities for startups in this genre very promising.

If gaming isn't your cup of tea, head on over to the Courtyard Rio Grande A to see Elizabeth Hallmark and Drew Scherz of Texas Comptroller speak on "Building Happy and High Performing Teams." This is similar to a topic discussed by David Russo in his book 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent, which we also profiled in our Weekend Reading series.

But stealing the 3:30 time-slot might be a discussion of the future of incubators with some startup super-stars. Naval Ravikant of Venture Hacks, David Cohen of TechStars and Paul Graham of Y Combinator will join a few others to discuss what they call the "Seed Combinator," but really startups and entrepreneurs could glean value from anything these guys chose to talk about, so don't miss it.

After those panels, pick up and walk over to the Hilton at 5pm for what should be a fascinating discussion about customer service in the world of today's social networks. This five-member panel including Jeremiah Owyang, CNET's Caroline McCarthy, and executives from Microsoft, HP and Comcast should shed some light on how customer support has evolved "in a 140 character world."

Tomorrow morning, as the Interactive portion closes out, entrepreneurs may want to stop by Ballroom A at 9:30 for a discussion on protyping web applications. Are wire-frames and mock-ups going the way of the Dodo? Darren Delave and Michael Leggett of Google think so, and will present on ways "make and present prototypes to improve all stages of the design and development cycle."

But the real issue every startup and entrepreneur wants to know about is how to get money from investors. At 3:30 tomorrow in Hilton A/B, don't miss legendary investor Reid Hoffman and Justin Fishner-Wolfson of Founders Fund present on "Getting Your Company Funded." The talk promises to debunk the myths and questions behind VC funding, term sheets, options, liquidation, "much much more."

And finally, a good way to close out the festivities is to check out day 2 of the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator competition at the Hilton. You can stop by and check out the companies which present throughout the day, but come back at 6pm to see which of the 12 finalists will be crowned this year's winners. And if you aren't in Austin, you can still watch for free online at the Accellerator homepage (granted you have Silverlight installed, of course).

Also, remember that everyone at SXSW is tweeting like crazy at all of these events and discussions, so use Twitter search to find out more information if you can't make it to each event. Each event's description on the SXSW homepage also includes the official hashtag for the event so you can easily see what people are saying about it on Twitter. If you have any other suggestions for startups and entrepreneurs at SXSW, let us know in the comments.

Photos by Flickr users toprankonlinemarketing, and magerleague.

Discuss

Twitter launches At Anywhere platform, integrates tweets, profiles across the web

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:16:17 -0400

Twitter CEO Ev Williams demonstrated a new platform today that will spread the microblogging network’s profiles, tweets and possibly advertising across the web. It’s taking the hovercards it launched on the site earlier this year (pictured right), which are little pop-ups that show extended information about a person, and distributing them across websites that link to Twitter profiles.

Speaking onstage at the South by Southwest conference, Williams said, “At Anywhere reduces friction. Some of the obvious things are, you can tweet from the column itself. The big thing is that you might want to follow the columnist.”Williams said it might result in more followers for a site and more conversation around a publisher’s content.

“The value we’re really focusing on today is increasing the signal-to-noise ratio and giving people really valuable stuff with as little effort as possible,” he said.

Williams said he runs the company by building relatively independent teams that are free to attack different parts of company’s strategy from mobile to internationalization to platform. He added that he doesn’t really code anymore andstressed that he considered Twitter an information network, rather than a social network.

“Your product should be able to finish this sentence: ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if — ?’” he said. “And it can’t be, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had $1 million?’”

He said he spends half his time focused on building the product and the other half focused on the company’s culture.

“How do we define the characteristics that we want? There’s a parallel between the characteristics of the company and the characteristics of its product,” he said “We try to be as open and transparent internally as we do with our product to the world.”

Umair Haque, who interviewed Williams onstage, pressed him on why he pursued this philosophy of being more open and giving away data and tweets.

“We don’t know the best use for this stuff. There’s a million different things to do. Why limit it?” he said. “There are real businesses to be built.” Williams pointed to vertical applications of Twitter like HootSuite and

Tags: Twitter

People: Ev Williams

Twitters New At Anywhere Platform Allows For Deeper Integration Into Third Party Sites

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:13:56 -0400

During his keynote at SXSW this afternoon (live blog here), Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced a new "At Anywhere" platform, which allows websites to more deeply integrate the service into their sites. The idea is to offer a more seamless experience to Twitter users navigating third party sites like the Huffington Post and the New York Times, giving them Twitter content without forcing them to jump off the page they're currently viewing. The details on the new platform are still scant, but this is Twitter's answer to Facebook Connect, which we reported on back in January.

Among the features:

When you browse a site that uses @anywhere, people and brands that have Twitter accounts will be highlighted with a hyperlink. Mousing over that hyperlink will show a small box (a "hovercard") containing their Twitter information, including their most recent tweet (in effect it means you don't have to click over to Twitter's homepage to see their Twitter profile)

SXSWi 2010: Q&A with Gowalla Co-founder/CEO Josh Williams Pt 1

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:12:54 -0400

In an effort to sort out the state of the "Location War" going on here at SXSW Interactive 2010, I have been lucky enough to chat with several people behind the scenes of these mobile location based services. It's funny to me calling the competition a "War" as everyone with whom I have spoken seems incredibly mellow and down-to-earth but there is a potential definitive moment going on here for that industry. I was able to catch up with Gowalla co-founder Josh Williams and talk a bit about the current state of Gowalla and their mobile app. Standby for more interviews with the some of the competition and a part 2 video of my conversation with Josh.

America's Second-Rate Broadband Is Dragging Us Down

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:12:00 -0400

Power. Clean water. The Interstate highway system. It’s easy to forget that the advantages of modern American life result from basic infrastructure investments made by earlier generations.

Tomorrow the FCC will release a national broadband strategy. The plan will set goals for expanding broadband to unserved and under-served areas, promote greater speeds, and drive consumer demand. It will harness this communications technology to urgent national priorities, such as jobs, education, health, energy, and security. In short, the plan will lay the groundwork for investing in America’s future.

Yes, the Internet was invented in the United States. Yes, we once led the world in broadband development. But now, networks in many countries, from Western Europe to East Asia, are faster and more advanced than our own. Long after we recover from this recession, this broadband gap will be a dead weight on American businesses and workers, unless we act now.

As with the space race in the 1960s, America needs a national effort by our scientists, engineers, companies, educational institutions and government agencies. Just like that great national adventure, we need near-term and long-term goals.

Broadband is an essential input to expanding business, education, and healthcare opportunities everywhere. As soon as possible, we need to bring Internet access to every community, from rural America to the inner cities.

But we also need even more ambitious objectives -- or “stretch goals” -- that test the limits of our ingenuity. When President John F. Kennedy summoned the nation to space exploration, the immediate goal was to send an astronaut in orbit around the earth. But JFK called for “putting a man on the moon” because he knew that dream would inspire Americans to literally reach for the stars.

The private sector has a big job to do, and needs to carry much of the investment. For our part, we plan to build and test an ultra-high-speed broadband network in at least one U.S. community. We are excited by the amount of support our proposed testbed has received from local communities and individuals.

But smart, tailored public policies are critical too. Let’s install broadband fiber as part of every federally-funded infrastructure project, from highways to mass transit. And let’s deploy broadband fiber to every library, school, community health center, and public housing facility in the U.S.

I support a national broadband strategy because ubiquitous broadband connectivity can catapult America into the next level of economic competitiveness, worker productivity, and educational opportunity. But as in the past, we will make this breakthrough by choice, not chance.

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LIVE: Twitter CEO Ev Williams Keynote

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:12:00 -0400

Live blogging from SXSW continues, with Twitter cofounder Ev Williams to take the stage shortly. Will he announce Twitter’s rumored ad plans, as expected? Stay tuned for the news.

Continue at Search Engine Land →

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Two Hours Till Twitter Finally Tells Us How It Plans To Make Money?

Netflix App Coming For Windows Phone 7, Allows Streaming Of Movies (NFLX, MSFT)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:06:00 -0400

Netflix will have an application for the Windows Phone 7 operating system that allows streaming.

The company showed off the app in Las Vegas where Microsoft is delivering a keynote address to developers about building applications for the Windows Phone 7 platform.

Read the rest of this story »

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Twitter CEO Evan Williams Speaks at SXSW [LIVE COVERAGE]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:58:30 -0400

This afternoon at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Twitter CEO Evan Williams is expected to end months of speculation by revealing his company’s plans for an advertising platform.

Williams — whose company pulled in an estimated $25 million revenue last year through search partnerships with Google and Microsoft — will be taking the stage momentarily (3pm ET) for an interview with Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab. We’ll be updating below with live coverage.

Live Coverage and Video

[via @waynesutton]

Hugh Forrest, event director for SXSW is talking on stage. Thanking sponsors, plugging Guy Kawasaki’s Twitter panel, and holding up a t-shirt he got from Williams 4 years ago. The room is jam packed (I got here 30 minutes early and am in the front row however

Williams and Haque have taken the stage!

Twitter’s @anywhere Platform

Williams announces a new platform for integrating Twitter features for websites. It lets user follow an account (like Mashable) directly from a third-party site. Sites using it now include eBay, Yahoo, and Digg. It’s called “@anywhere”. Here are the initial partners:

Williams says that for example, users can follow a columnist right from their website. This helps solve Twitter’s “discovery” problem of finding interesting people to follow.

Williams says this should help websites gain more followers and have more people who are your fans using Twitter and talking about your content. He wants to lower the barriers to adoption of Twitter.

Williams says he thinks the platform will help news spread faster on Twitter.

On Twitter’s Business Model

Williams says Twitter’s business model is going to take experimentation – notes that Google started out by selling search services.

Williams says Twitter is still mainly focused on creating the best experience for users and businesses.

On Microsoft and Google deals, Williams says that tapping into their reach and technology is a way to bring more value out of tweets. People creating the content get wider distribution and people searching get more detailed information.

Williams says that third-party developers have plugged many of Twitter’s holes – photo sharing, link shortening, etc. The next step he says is building interfaces for specific audiences — like CoTweet and HootSuite do for businesses.

Twitter has deals with 65 mobile carriers around the world for SMS.

Williams says “we only do win-win deals” – both for users and business partners. It’s one of the reasons they haven’t implemented many revenue generating pieces to Twitter yet.

Williams says that Twitter has created a new conversation between consumers and brands (obviously).

More Live Notes

Williams says Twitter’s “140 character vision” is ease of exchange of information and being a force for good and save people time instead of costing them time.

Williams says you can take advantage of Twitter without sharing your own content. He answers the question what is Twitter by calling it an “information network” — i.e. – people who just read accounts from people and brands they are interested in as opposed to actually tweeting.

Twitter’s focused on improving the signal to noise ratio and if you’re a publisher, getting your content out to the people who care.

Williams is discussing Twitter’s structure – lots of autonomous teams who are free to experiment.

Williams says he spends about half his time thinking about product, and the other half thinking about company culture and how to scale it as Twitter grows. He wants the company try and be as open and transparent as possible both internally and externally.

Williams notes that users have defined many of Twitter’s features – like retweets and @replies. He says a core part of Twitter’s philosophy is being open to the idea of being wrong.

Williams says that Twitter sends cease and desist letters every day to malicious apps – like spammers and follower schemes.

Williams says the company has a “pretty wide definition” of what a user is — there’s a pretty broad variety of how people use Twitter, and as people consume information on Twitter, they’re more likely to get involved.

Williams says that people being able to share anything on the Internet continues to change the world.

Williams says his goal is not to get people to spend more time on Twitter (and perhaps less … sounds very Google-like)

Williams just hinted that they’ll get back to talking about business model stuff (ahem, the ad platform?!?) later in this conversation.

We’re an hour into the keynote — checking in on Twitter, it sounds like lots of people have bailed out of the room, but I can’t quite tell how many because I’m in the front. It’s admittedly starting to drag …

Williams advice for entrepreneurs: “create something you want to exist in the world.” He also notes that a lot of the most interesting companies come from outside Silicon Valley (it’s hard to think differently there).

Keynote over … no ad platform announcement. Signing off!

[img credits: Victor Hernandez / CNN]

Reviews: Digg, Google, HootSuite, Mashable, Twitter, cotweet

Tags: evan williams, sxsw, trending, twitter

Ev Williams: Twitters First Principle, Be A Force For Good

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:57:03 -0400

We're here at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas where Twitter co-founder Evan Williams doing a keynote Q&A with Umair Haque. Williams may use the time to talk a bit about Twitter's upcoming ad platform. Update: It's actually an "At Platform" called At Anywhere -- more here.Interestingly enough, Twitter saw its first burst of popularity three years ago at this very conference.Below find my live notes (paraphrased):

First Look: Seesmics Upcoming Windows Phone 7 Twitter App [PICS]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:42:04 -0400

Seesmic became the first to reveal a Twitter client for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system at MIX today.

It’s just one of several initial app partners for Microsoft’s smartphone platform, including Foursquare, Netflix and the Associated Press.

The company just announced a Silverlight-based plug-in platform and SDK at MIX, too, and Seesmic for Windows Phone will support that. So, as you can see below, Bing Maps integration is included, and more creative ideas from third-parties will be possible, too.

Seesmic has already released apps for BlackBerry and Google Android smartphones, but not for Apple’s iPhone. The Windows Phone version appears basic in terms of features, with the exception of the Silverlight plug-in support. However, it does look gorgeous, and it fits in well with Windows Phone 7’s style and aesthetics.

Reviews: Android, BlackBerry Rocks!, Foursquare, Google, Seesmic, iPhone

Tags: App, Bing Maps, microsoft, seesmic, twitter, windows phone 7, windowsmobile

Hitwise says Facebook Most Popular U.S. Site

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:31:31 -0400

New data released from analytics service Hitwise today names Facebook the largest website in the U.S. with 7.07% of all U.S. visits. Google is second at 7.03%. Yahoo Mail is third with 3.8% and Yahoo is fourth at 3.67% (if you combined both Yahoo properties, and I'm not sure why they don't, Yahoo would be first). YouTube (a Google property) is fifst with 2.14%.This is the first time Hitwise has named Facebook the top site in the U.S. Comscore still ranks Google the top site by reach at 81% of the U.S. population. Facebook, at 53%, is still behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sites in the U.S., according to the most recent Comscore data from February 2010.

Windows Phone 7: New Details and App Partners Revealed

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:30:02 -0400

Microsoft has just announced an avalanche of new details surrounding its Windows Phone 7 Series due to launch this year, including that the phone will support multi-touch and that Pandora, Foursquare, Seesmic, Netflix and the AP are among its development partners.

The new information, revealed during Microsoft’s presentation at Microsoft’s MIX10 conference in Las Vegas, focuses on the tools developers will have at their disposal when creating apps for Microsoft’s marketplace. Most of what will be available has become standard on smartphones due to the iPhone and Google’s Android OS: accelerometer, GPS, push notifications, hardware-accelerated video, camera/mic support, Internet streaming capabilities and multi-touch. The last one is interesting because Google only recently added multi-touch to Android.

As you might expect, Windows Phone 7 will run Silverlight, Microsoft’s rival to Adobe Flash, and feature Silverlight features for building games and applications. The company also said that developers of Windows 7 Phone apps can download a tool package for app development, including Visual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone, XNA Game Studio 4.0 and the Windows Phone 7 Emulator.

The most important part of this announcement may be the development partners already on board; Pandora, Netflix, Foursquare, the Associated Press, Shazam and Seesmic will all have applications on the Windows Phone 7 Series marketplace and are working with the company to build apps for it. It will need the support of these developers if it’s to have any chance of competing with the iPhone or Android.

In the end, the success or failure of Windows Phone 7 depends on the user experience and developer adoption. Without an interface that rivals Apple or Google’s mobile platforms, Microsoft will fail. The same is true if it cannot court developers and get them to make great apps. Today’s announcements show that Microsoft is serious about making Windows Phone 7 a contender in the mobile app space.

Reviews: Android, Foursquare, Google, Pandora, Seesmic, Shazam, Windows

Tags: foursquare, microsoft, Mobile 2.0, pandora, seesmic, shazam, sling, windows phone 7, windows phone 7 series

TubeMogul Tries Its Hand At Being A Video Ad Network

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:29:11 -0400

Video analytics firm TubeMogul is launching a video ad network. The company's pitch to advertisers: "Our data allows us to know what videos are likeliest to be watched," says CEO Brett Wilson.

The ads will be standalone ads on social networks like Facebook games and apps. It will also work with top ranked comScore sites.

Read the rest of this story »

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Look Up Your Favorite Movie Scenes On AnyClip, Just Launched Into Public Beta

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:27:00 -0400

AnyClip, a movie database that lets you search for scenes by actors, lines of dialogue, themes, and other keywords, launched into public beta, the company announced at SXSW today.

The site maintains thousands of pieces of metadata on each movie in its database, to make searching as easy as possible.

Read the rest of this story »

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Seesmic Announces Silverlight Desktop Platform with Plugins

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:17:32 -0400

Seesmic demonstrated a new desktop client for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn today. Since it’s based on Microsoft’s cross-platform Silverlight software, it works on both Windows and Mac computers. Seesmic has also opened the software up to third-party plug-in development.

Seesmic is currenly best known for Microsoft .NET-based Seesmic for Windows, which many Twitter users consider one of the best Twitter clients for that operating system. It also offers a multi-platform client based on Adobe Air called Seesmic Desktop.

The company’s partnership with Microsoft has been carried on with Seesmic Desktop’s integration with Silverlight. Thanks to Silverlight’s development tools, the new desktop platform can bring in plug-ins made by just about anyone. For example, the software can inject Bing Maps into a Tweet when it knows the tweet’s location which it often will thanks to a recent update to Twitter’s web interface. We’ve included a picture of the Bing Maps integration above.

Seesmic hasn’t said exactly when this stuff will be available, but it sounds like it will be soon. Here are a couple of other screenshots of the new Silverlight-integrated Seesmic Desktop Platform.

A Software Development Kit (SDK) going live at http://platform.seesmic.com/ very soon.

Reviews: Seesmic, Seesmic Desktop, Twitter, Windows, adobe AIR

Tags: facebook, linkedin, microsoft, plugins, SDK, seesmic, seesmic desktop, Silverlight, software, twitter

DEMO Spring 2010: spotlight on enterprise tech

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:12:57 -0400

DEMO Spring 2010 is the premier launchpad event for innovative technology, and will take place March 21-23 at the JW Marriott in Palm Desert. With the event less than a week away, were unveiling information about the key themes and panelists featured in each of the seven DEMO Tech Segments.

Each vertical launch segment will feature product demonstrations, pitches by early-stage entrepreneurs, as well as a panel discussion addressing specific funding challenges and investment opportunities. Matt Marshall, Editor in Chief of VentureBeat and Executive Producer of DEMO will lead the panel discussions with key members of the DEMO ecosystem including past demonstrators, VCs, service providers and corporate business development/acquisitions professionals.

In this post today, we’re spotlighting enterprise technology.For the investors targeting large-scale enterprise applications, the enterprise technologies segment will expose new advances for supporting corporate data, infrastructure and productivity with less cost and more control.

Panelists:

Gordon Ritter, founder and general partner,Emergence Capital PartnersKeng Lim, chairman and CEO, NextLabsJohn Taschek, vice president, strategy, Salesforce.comMark Sugarman, managing partner, MHS Capital

For a look at the DEMO Spring 2010 Conference agenda, click here.

Register for DEMO, March 21-23, JW Marriott in Palm Desert, CA from the VentureBeat site and save $1000 on your 2-day conference registration fee (includes all demonstrator launch presentations, access to the DEMO pavilion, meals and social functions).

Dear AT&T, Whatever Youre Doing AT SXSW, Do It In San Francisco

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:11:55 -0400

We're in the midst of full-on location war is raging this year at SXSW in Austin, Texas this year. But actually, someone has already won: AT&T.Yes, despite my concerns, I'm happy to report that the network has been incredibly stable over the past several days. In fact, it's the best I've ever seen AT&T's network perform anywhere. Over the past three days I haven't dropped one call, haven't missed one voicemail, haven't been missed any text messages, and the data is flowing freely, allowing my iPhone to actually work.

Microsoft Employees Leave The Windows Phone 7 TeamTo Make Windows Phone 7 Apps

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:10:38 -0400

All naysaying aside, people are pretty excited about Windows Phone 7. Our readers are excited for it. I'd be outright lying if I said I wasn't excited about it, too. Know who else is excited? The Windows Phone 7 team -- but perhaps not for the reasons you'd expect.With a few years of work finally coming to a head, some of the folks on the Windows Phone 7 team are taking a step back, looking at the fruits of their labor... and leaving. Not because they're ashamed, and not because they're being poached by the competition -- but because instead of making Windows Phone 7, they want to make things for Windows Phone 7.

Ask Nicholas Carlson Anything!

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:10:00 -0400

Once per week, we address reader questions and feedback on video.

Tuesday, I will answer your questions in a video segment, which we'll post at about 11 a.m. ET. My expertise covers technology, online networking sites, up-and-coming startups, and online leaders – AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and Google.

Read the rest of this story »

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Seesmic Launches App For Windows Phone; Rolls Out New Silverlight-Powered Desktop Client

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:58:14 -0400

Startup Seesmic has perfected the art of developing compelling Twitter clients on a variety of platforms. Seesmic offers a web client, an Adobe Air-powered desktop client, an Android app, a BlackBerry app, a brand friendly Twitter client and a native Windows desktop client. At developer conference MIX today, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur is announcing a new Silverlight-powered development platform and Seesmic for the Windows Phone. The new desktop platform from Seesmic is built based off of Silverlight, which is a refreshing change from the buggy Adobe Air platform. The design itself is similar in look and feel to the Windows client, and includes functionality for integrating your Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin accounts. You can also personalize your background of the app. And the new platform works on both Macs and PCs.

Apple App Store Has Twice as Many Apps as Facebook [UPDATED]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:36:05 -0400

Correction: Information within Flurry’s report inaccurately stated that Apple’s app store has more than twice the number of applications as the Facebook platform. The Flurry report meant to say that Apple had more than twice the number of apps as Facebook at its 18 month mark than Facebook did during its 18 month mark (November 2008)

Based on the updated report, we have struck out incorrect sections of this article. We apologize for the error.

—

A study by mobile application analytics company Flurry reveals that Apple’s App Store now has more than twice the number of applications as the Facebook Platform, despite Facebook’s much larger market of users.

Flurry estimates that as of its eighteenth month this January, the App Store for iPhone, iPod touch and (shortly) iPad devices has 140,000 applications, while the Facebook Platform only reached 60,000 apps in its first 18 months. The discrepancy might exist because the App Store provides a clearer path to revenue and return on investment than Facebook’s until-recently ad-supported application platform.

Regardless, the difference is surprising because Facebook has 400 million users, while the iPhone OS used by App Store applications has significantly fewer.

iPad Spurs Increased Developer Activity

The report revealed that developer activity for App Store software has increased 185% since Apple announced its iPad device. In general, Flurry’s report voices tremendous expectations for the iPad; we’ll see if consumers buy the device in large enough numbers to justify the development surge.

Where Did iPhone Developers Come From?

Flurry also did some research to find out where iPhone developers got started. Did they start with iPhone apps, or did they serve up something else beforehand, and if so, what what was it?

It turns out that the iPhone is still a viable place for startups with no established brands or customers for now. This might change as companies with the resources to market their apps continue to enter the market. Upstarts probably won’t have the resources to compete for attention.

The majority of iPhone app developers come from other backgrounds; the graphs below show which ones. But around one fifth of developers are native to the iPhone OS and the Apple App Store.

Tags: apple, apple app store, application platform, apps, developers, development, facebook, facebook platform, iphone, iPod Touch, online games, video games

The Davos (Or Is It Arrington?) Curse People I Interviewed Are Getting Fired

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:31:33 -0400

The list of people I interviewed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year is starting to look like more like a hit list than a VIP list. Two of them have been relieved of their current positions - MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and now Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. If I were Jeremy Allaire, Max Levchin, Sheryl Sandberg or Evan Williams, I'd watch my back. They may be coming for you next.

Gowalla's Ad Pitch: We Can Move Crowds To Your Local Business

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:31:00 -0400

When asked on Bloomberg TV to explain how Gowalla will make money, CEO Josh Williams basically said (we're paraphrasing here):

You kiddin' me? Our software drives people to new restaurants and bars; those businesses would be nuts not to advertise with us. We can move crowds!

Watch:

Read the rest of this story »

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Get 7 Million Songs In Your Pocket: MOG Unveils Mobile App

Mike Melanson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:31:00 -0400

Calling itself an "all you can eat, on demand, whenever you want it" music service, MOG gives its users access to "just about every artist, album and song ever made" for $5 a month - certainly not a deal to scoff at.

Today, at the South By South West festival in Austin, the company has announced the release of a mobile version of its application.

Sponsor

The company first launched its $5, all-you-can-hear service last fall, announcing deals with Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI. MOG All Access is a browser-based service that will offer more than 5 million on-demand tracks that, unlike Pandora or other Internet-based radio stations, you can pick and choose from on demand. There is no limit on skipping around songs and if you want to hear a specific song, then you can hear that song.

"You can see the queue, you can jump to anywhere in the queue, when a song comes on the library, you can save it," said David Hyman, CEO of MOG, at today's unveiling. "When you listen to Bob Marley radio, it's not Bob Marley inspired radio. You get Bob Marley 24/7."

Today's launch brings this sort of on-demand music delivery to your smartphone. MOG will be launching for Android and iPhone early in the second quarter of 2010. Users will get full access to 7 million tracks on demand, the ability to download music to the phone, MOG radio, 64 ACC+ audio quality with higher quality available by download, for $10 a month.

The demo of the mobile app for Android showed a responsive, full-featured application that allows users to browse through artist discographies, with the ability to add entire albums to the playlist and voice search functionality.

Looking at the iPhone app, we saw a search based app that gives users the ability to play by album, song, playlist or artist radio. An interesting service we've only seen with MOG was the slider, which allows the user to give a variable on how they would like MOG radio to work, whether focusing solely on the chosen artist, on similar artists, or somewhere in between. The user can also switch over to look at the album a particular track comes from, play that album and even chose other songs from that album.

The app is not yet available for download on the iPhone and Hyman said that similar services have not had a problem so far. He guaranteed that there would be no problem for the Android, but couldn't say the same for iPhone.

There is a bit of buzz in the crowd here at SXSW that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek will be announcing the similar music service's arrival on U.S. shores when he speaks tomorrow at the keynote speech. We also spoke with Michelle Fields, a marketer with Napster.com, who said that a Napster mobile application was also on the way. Napster offers nearly 9 million songs to its users.

"We have a very strong mobile strategy and a mobile application will be unveiled soon," said Fields.

While we long ago swore off CDs and moved over to the likes of Last.fm and Pandora, this sort of music portability might actually bring us back into the land of the paid consumer. What do you say? Will you shell out 10 clams a month to carry around more music than you've probably ever owned in your pocket?

Discuss

Google Latitude API coming in the next few months

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:30:53 -0400

Steven Lee, a senior product manager for Google who works on the company’s location products, said the search giant will release an application programming interface for its Latitude service — which lets you see your friends’ locations on a map — in the next few months.

Speaking on a panel at the SXSW conference in Austin today, he said the company will have a developer preview soon.

“We hope it will support and foster all sorts of applications,” he said. “Privacy will be very important to this as well. The user will choose for every application, whether they want developers to have access to that data.”

Since Google launched Latitude a year ago, developers have been looking for an API to be released. Other competitors in the space like Foursquare and Gowalla recently launched application programming interfaces, and more are expected from other location-based social networks over the next two months. Loopt CEO Sam Altman also said onstage that an API is forthcoming from his company.

“One of the APIs will be straightforward,” Google’s Lee explained. “It will be OAuth based and require permission per application. It will be relatively straightforward in terms of access.”

Lee defended the persistent location-sharing model that Latitude uses against the “check-in” use case that companies like Gowalla and Foursquare promote. He pointed to all sorts of interesting applications that could be built on the back of constant location awareness. Imagine an app that turns on the heat when it sees that you are driving home, he suggested.

Tags: latitude

Companies: Google

People: Steven Lee

Apple's Mac Business Solid: Should Beat Street Estimates (AAPL)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:30:00 -0400

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster put out a bullish note on Apple today after analyzing the NPD data on Macs and iPods.

In short, he expects the Mac business to beat the street, and iPods to meet expectations.

Read the rest of this story »

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Mobile Ad Network Mobclix Releases iPad SDK

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:29:55 -0400

Facing competition from recently acquired AdMob (Google) and Quattro Wireless (Apple), mobile ad network Mobclix has been steadily working to strengthen its products and offerings. The startup just acquired iPhone app sales analytics software Heartbeat and announced a deal to offer Nielsens ad targeting data into its ad exchange to enhance ad targeting. Today, Mobclix is officially launching one of the first SDKs for iPad advertising. Apple's new tablet device, which will be delivered to consumers in a few weeks, poses a tremendous opportunity for advertising. The size of the tablet not only allows for larger ad sixes but ads can also be more engaging and media rich, with the possibility of incorporating video and other interactive features. And these means more revenue for advertisers and developers.

RMG buys Pharmacy TV in deeper move into in-store ads

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:26:17 -0400

RMG Networks, which is putting ads into digital displays at retail stores and other locations, announced it has acquired Pharmacy TV for an undisclosed price.

Pharmacy TV runs video ads on TVs at pharmacies while customers wait for their turn at the counter. That’s a good match for the main business of San Francisco-based RMG, which puts ads into digital signs at places such as coffee shops, shopping malls, fitness clubs, airlines and gas stations.

RMG has been building an “out of home” marketing business to chase down consumers who are increasingly resistant to TV advertising. RMG says it can reach 25 million viewers a month via 60,000 screens across the country. The company recently secured a deal to post the New York Times on its screens.

RMG plans to accelerate the deployment of Pharmacy TV in stores throughout the year. The network is currently being deployed at select ShopRite grocery stores. RMG’s backers include National CineMedia, DAG Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.

Companies: Pharmacy TV, RMG Networks

YAHOO STUNNED: Top Ad Exec Quits For Demand Media (YHOO, MSFT)

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:10:00 -0400

Yahoo's top ad sales exec Joanne Bradford, VP of U.S. revenue and market development, is quitting the company to become Demand Media's chief revenue officer, Kara Swisher reports.

In a tweet, Kara implies that Joanne was not fired, writing "Yahoo had no idea."

Read the rest of this story »

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MySpaces New Tech Strategy, and Who Its Hiring to Implement It

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:00:19 -0400

Ever since Owen Van Natta stepped down as CEO of MySpace last month, there has been a lot of speculation surrounding the future of the social networking site. Can it function with two co-presidents? Can it turn things around and restart its growth? Can it remake and re-imagine itself for today’s social web?

We know one thing: The company is building and implementing a new plan. As it focuses on becoming “pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences,” it’s also looking to re-establish itself as a technology company that is ahead of the game in terms of innovation and talent.

To that end, MySpace is shifting its technical focus into smaller, more entrepreneurial teams and embracing a data-centric approach to building its platform and its organization. We had a chance to chat with MySpace CTO Alex Maghen about what to expect in the coming months.

Can MySpace Return to Tech Prominence?

In my first Social Analyst column, I argued that MySpace had become more of a content company than a technology company. After Facebook surpassed it as the world’s largest social network, the website floundered and the company slashed 30% of its staff.

It’s been a rough road since, but now the company’s finally trying to rebuild, starting with its technology and engineering talent. Mr. Maghen, the former CTO of MySpace Music before his promotion, told me that it wants to become a technology leader once again. To that end, MySpace is breaking the structure of the organization into smaller, more entrepreneurial teams that operate “with a higher degree of independence.” He believes that a single, unified product can and should come from multiple, smaller teams and technology platforms.

The goals Alex and the MySpace leadership have for its technology platform seem straightforward: to become more data-centric and to attract top-tier talent back to the social network. Here’s some more of what he told me:

“The focus is to put a new stress on bringing in the kind of developers that flourish in a startup environment and giving them a platform to work on that allows them to continue to develop with that kind of looser and more agile type of approach, with the tremendous scale we bring to the table.”

To that end, MySpace is looking to hire engineers with great knowledge of Internet development. More specifically, it’s looking for “hardcore data architects” and “experts in data development.”

If MySpace is to truly rebound, it has to be seen as a technology company as well as a content company. In order to do that, you need the kind of top-level talent that Facebook, Twitter and Google have. The company knows that it has been slower than its competitors, which is why the new overarching strategy for the technology group is “speed to market.”

As a proponent of the “Iterate Fast and Release Often” philosophy to engineering and entrepreneurship, I’m of the belief that the company’s new focus on speed and data is not only logical, but the best shot it has to returning to prominence. That’s not easy task, though, and the odds are stacked against MySpace.

It Starts at the Top

Today, MySpace is going to announce that it has hired Arvind Puri as its vice president of data platform to help lead MySpace’s new technology efforts. Mr. Puri was formerly the CTO of Buzznet/Buzzmedia, and before that worked on technology at the Los Angeles Times, Yahoo and Overture. He will be responsible for leading MySpace’s new data initiatives and helping transform that information into useful and actionable insights.

MySpace is also announcing a second hire: Tony Adam, who it snatched up from startup BillShrink to become its senior manager of online marketing. While at BillShrink, he was the director of search marketing.

Both will play a big role in the future of MySpace. The company is working on building a new artist website, a new movie experience, reputation badges, an overhauled user dashboard and even MySpace trending topics by summer 2010. If the company’s to succeed in launching all of these initiatives, it will have to be fast, agile and able to attract talent.

These changes are a step in the right direction, but it remains to be seen if they will stick and, if they do, whether or not it will result in a renaissance for MySpace.

Reviews: Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter

Tags: Arvind Puri, billshrink, myspace, tech, Tony Adam

iPad Orders Slowing Down, More Than 150,000 Sold So Far [ESTIMATE]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:44:53 -0400

Apple’s iPad has recently stopped being a myth and started being something you can actually buy, which means it’s possible to guesstimate how many iPads are being pre-ordered.

A blogger called Deagol (his real name is Daniel Tello) is something of an expert on the subject. By monitoring order numbers submitted at Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board, he managed to get an idea of how many iPads have been ordered so far, and how orders have been slowing down over time.

Check out one of his graphs, embedded below. If it’s close to reality, iPad pre-orders started with a bang, reaching well over 100,000 in the first 10 hours, but slowing down significantly on the second and third day.

Of course, declining orders may be due to the simple fact that the second and third day of iPad sales were Saturday and Sunday. Even if you take the weekend into account, though, Deagol’s numbers indicate far slower pre-orders in the future.

Check out Deagol’s lengthy analysis over at his blog, and tell us what you think: Will iPad’s pre-orders pick up again after the weekend or is the iPad rush behind us?

Tags: apple, ipad

Mashables Weekly Guide to Social Media & Web Events

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:43:49 -0400

It’s a brand new week, which means it’s time for Mashables guide to upcoming social media and web events, parties, and conferences. For more upcoming event listings, check out Mashable’s Events section.

Is your event not on this list? Contact us at least one month before your event and lets establish a media partnership.

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

March 15-16, 2010, London, UK: At Social Media World Forum, learn from social networks, brands, advertisers and analysts. Hear from leading social networks on their strategy, revenue models and how they are approaching the future. Worldwide case studies from global brands and corporations on their use of social media. Examine the current market conditions, future forecasts and predictions from leading analysts. Mention you are a Mashable reader to receive 15% discount.

March 17, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Join SF New Tech, the Bay Area’s largest and longest running monthly tech event, to get an early look at of some of the hottest new tech around. Famous for its sold out events where executives (and the occasional hacker or two) take to the stage to strut their stuff, SF New Tech is *the* place where early adaptors, developers, influnencers, venture capitalists, journalists, bloggers, and regular every-day folks converge to see the latest and greatest technology. Visit sfnewtech.com for details.

March 19, 2010, London, UK: Justmeans Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement Conference will bring together the top minds in sustainability, marketing, innovation and technology. This executive forum will explore how technology can enable sustainable business by involving stakeholders in the value creation process and will showcase examples of success and failure in this rapidly evolving market. Use this link for a 10% registration discount.

March 22-23, 2010, Paris, France: At Marketing 2.0 Conference, learn from brands’ social media initiatives, advertisers, researchers and analyst. Hear from leading people in the Social Media business on their strategy, revenue models and how they are approaching the upcoming trends in the Social Mediasphere. Worldwide case studies from global brands and corporations on their use of social media. Examine the current market conditions, future forecasts and predictions from leading researchers. The socialmash2010 discount code gives you 200 off.

March 22-23 & 25-26, 2010, Hong Kong & Singapore: Join us at the Social Media & PR conference. This comprehensive two-day event sees PR practitioners from leading global brands and agencies come together to share about the best practices, pitfalls to avoid, case studies, how-tos, measurement and ethics of social media in PR. See social media’s relevance to both B2B & B2C, discuss how new & traditional PR avenues can be integrated. Register today. Save 10% when you enter ‘Mashable‘ under ‘How did you know about this event’.

March 22-25, 2010, Dallas, TX: Attend the Advanced Learning Institutes 17th Forum on Social Media for Government: How To Engage Your Employees And Citizens By Using The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Drive Communication Results, to learn how to capture the power of social media in your organization, along with helpful tools, tips and techniques to get started. Hear practical advice, firsthand, from leading government agencies and organizations such as: Transportation Security Administration; NASA; Microsoft U.S. Public Sector, CDC; GovLoop; Southwest Airlines; National Institutes of Health; U.S. Army Reserve; City of Sugar Land, TX; Missouri River Regional Library; City of Reno, NV; Texas Parks & Wildlife Department; Deloitte Services, LP; GolinHarris; 2ndSix; & Panetta Communications. Mention Mashable when registering to save $200.

March 22-26, New York, NY: Go beyond search at the Search Engine Strategies. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more. SAVE 15% with code MHNY15. Program will focus on cutting edge strategies, tips, and tactics that will be driving search in 2010. Hear from the leading voices in search and digital like Avinash Kaushik, David Meerman Scott, Tim Ash, Ray Comstock and more.

March 23, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Swagapalooza is an experiment in viral media. On March 23rd, the worlds most-followed bloggers, tweeters, and digital influencers will gather to judge five-minute auditions from the creators of the latest, greatest, and most unexpected new products. Are you one of the worlds top bloggers or tweeters? If so you deserve to be begged for your attention and your following. Your taste and discernment make you the perfect judge of these marketers who will come to cajole, beg, and bribe you with more free stuff than you can imagine Tickets are free for those who qualify.

March 23, 2010, Sacramento, CA: Northern California Social Media Society Launch Party. Join NCSMS in celebrating their launch. Celebrate with cocktails, appetizers and door prizes; learn about the Society and network with other individuals and businesses. The NCSMS provides an opportunity for their members to collaborate with other individuals and advocates as well as continue to grow social media marketing skills and smarts. Whether you want to learn or lead, this is a great opportunity to be part of an organization which is dedicated to the advancement of social media. The event is free to those who register.

March 23-24, 2010, Berlin, Germany: Learn, discuss and explore the challenges and commercial opportunities that exist within the mobile internet ecosystem and make the most of best-practice perspectives over a two day period offering a programme packed with case studies, roundtable discussions, industry snapshots, masterclasses and fishbowl sessions. Significant discount for Mobile Operators, Online/Mobile Communities, and Content providers! Go to iir-mobileinternet.com/mashable for more information.

March 24, 2010, New York, NY: Social Reputation Management: Protecting and Strengthening Your Brand Across the Social Web is a conference that will share the best case studies on how communicators and marketers listen to conversations, monitor and comprehend what is being said, and engage through the social web. The case studies will be followed by moderated interactive roundtables. Use promo code MASH for a discounted rate of $155.

March 24, 2010, Rutherford, NJ: Learn about how you would grow your business, talk to your customers, interact and engage. Social Media will help your business grow, financially and in relation to your customers. Topics include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogging, etc. This workshop is geared for small businesses that want to grow their fanbase and reach potential customers and make your relationships better with by using the social web. Click over to socialbiz324.eventbrite.com to purchase tickets to the event and use the code mashable to save 50%.

March 24-25, 2010, San Francisco, CA: EyeforTravels Social Media Strategies for Travel conference goes beyond the what is social media? debates (that were so 2008!) and examines the strategic importance of social media to travel brands. The 2 day conference will share leading case studies, hits, tips and advice from top travel companies including JetBlue, Hilton, Virgin America and more. Use the discount MASHABLE to save $100 on the registration fee!

March 25, 2010, Santa Monica, CA: Join us for more rock solid networking with tech geeks, VCs, entrepreneurs and good folks just like you. Schmoozd is an exclusive social mixer bringing together professionals in marketing, advertising, technology, social media and startups. The event is designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, relationship building and deal making. For more information, please visit www.schmoozd.com. Mashable readers get 50% off when registering via this link.

March 25, 2010, Toronto, ON: Join Nick La, creator of the popular blog Web Designer Wall, owner of N.Design Studio, IconDock, and Best Web Gallery for a one-day immersion into WordPress, the world’s most popular publishing platform. If you want to learn how to create your own WordPress themes, understand how to use template tags and conditional tags to format and display the data you want, or how to use WordPress as a content management system, Nick will take you from WordPress Zero to Hero in 7 hours flat.

March 25-26 2010, Atlanta, GA: REtechSouth: The only event in the Southeast that ties cutting edge social media concepts and practices, plus tips and tactics on existing technologies, to the unique challenges of the current real estate market. Its worth attending just to absorb all the expertise that will be in the room, as real estates best and brightest direct their attention towards your needs. Presented by Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. Save $29 off registration by using the code Mashable.

March 29, 2010, Portland OR: The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. One day, 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more. As well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code mashable for 15% off.

March 30, 2010, London, UK: The upcoming Hit Me! Social Media and Search event is designed for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to find out the latest practical business advice and information about Social Media and Search. Freshbusinessthinking.com has partnered with Microsoft to deliver this power-packed one day event featuring experts and leading practitioners from the world of social media and search. Stats published by Nielsen show that social media usage has increased by 82% in the last year. The challenge for organisations of all sizes is how to use social media to drive business. Over 1500 delegates have attended our one-day events and the average rating is 8.5 out of 10 the next one is shaping up to be the best ever with a host of experts on hand to give you the information and advice you need to grow your business online. Mashable readers: get a discount entering promotional code MASHABLE.

March 30-April 1, 2010, San Jose, CA: Become Location Enabled at Where 2.0. Now in its sixth year, Where 2.0 is one of the world’s foremost events dedicated to exploring the emerging technologies in the geospatial industry. At Where 2.0, we expose the tools pushing the boundaries of the location frontier. Join us and meet the people behind the mashups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial. Find out what’s viable now, what’s lurking just below the radar and how to gain a competitive edge. Register now and save 15% at en.oreilly.com/where2010. Use code whr10mash.

April 5, 2010, New York, NY: You need to be a social media specialist. Today’s marketplace demands it. Content, regardless of medium or platform, is regularly created, curated, commented upon and shared by consumers. If you’re not strategizing to maximize the social component, you’re missing prime opportunities. Register for the IAB Social Media Marketplace to gain insights from Federated Medias John Battelle, MediaLinks Wenda Harris Millard, Del Montes Doug Chavez, Deep Focuss Ian Schafer, GEs Andrew Markowitz and more. Use code mashable to save $100.

April 7, 2010, Cincinnati, OH: BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media features 8 great case studies on the best social media programs at large corporations. AT&T, Dell, Duke Energy, General Mills, Hilton, Procter & Gamble, Rogers Communications, and Tyson Foods share case studies in corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal. From GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council. Get $39 off registration by using the code ILoveMashable.

April 7, 2010, New York, NY: Attend the Social Media Advertising Consortiums April NYC Salon. Join SMAC members for a lively discussion on how brands are organized around social media. A panel of top brands including IBM and PepsiCo, and agencies will share insights, look at best practices, campaign successes and discuss whats next in measurement and research. Discussion followed by networking, wine & light hors d’oeuvres. The cost is free for SMAC members and $45 for non-members. Mention Mashable when registering to save 10%. Space is limited so register early.

April 7-8, 2010, New York, NY: Strengthen your business with mobile marketing, apps, video, and content at Think Mobile, a conference focused on mobile strategy, marketing, and mobile apps. Learn how to get your brand in front of the right customers, how to handle mobile content, and how to make money in mobile. The full day dedicated to mobile apps will cover building an app team, designing user interfaces, marketing your app, and targeting development for specific platforms. Speakers represent AdMob, Pandora, Nielsen, Bravo, PCMag.com, and more. Register with promo code TMMASH and save 20%!

April 7-9, 2010 Sydney, Australia: ConnectNow is a three day event focusing on the intersection of social media, emerging technologies and enterprise. The first two days is conference, where you’ll learn from international specialists how to leverage off new trends in marketing innovation such as augmented reality, location based services, social search, the real-time web, mobile’s growing dominance and the importance of ’social capital’. Day three is workshop day specifically for non-profits, charities, Government and community groups. Attend ConnectNow and leave equipped with actionable strategies to implement to your business. Register online and email info@connectnow.net.au quoting: Mashablemates to get 10% discount!

April 8-10, 2010, Atlanta, GA: The 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference will bring together more than 1,000 nonprofit leaders, IT innovators, communications gurus, fundraising superstars and nonprofit staffers from all over. You’ll learn the latest trends, practical how-tos, and IT solutions that can optimize your organization’s use of technology and help you meet your mission to create more social good in the world — and you’ll have a good time, to boot. Select “Mashable” from the “How did you hear?” field to receive an $100 discount.

April 9, 2010, London, UK: Natural SEO, a thupr event, aims to resolve some of the myths around SEO. The event brings together people who blog (for themselves or on behalf of others) with tools designed to help them, and experts prepared to share their wisdom. There are discussion streams and the chance to try out some of the software on site in a relaxed, conversational environment. The event is free, but limited to 100 places.

April 12-15, 2010, Santa Clara, CA: The 6th annual MySQL Conference & Expo, presented by OReilly Media, brings over 2,000 open source and database enthusiasts together to harness the power of MySQL and celebrate the huge MySQL ecosystem. The O’Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo is a new event that builds on the tradition of past MySQL conferences (previous events were co-presented with MySQL AB and with Sun). This inclusive, innovative event will showcase the full spectrum of the MySQL ecosystem, from global corporations and diverse service vendors to start-ups and grassroots projects. Our growing lineup of speakers, program committee members, and sponsors represent a wide array of some of the most influential companies and projects in the MySQL community. Register now and save an additional 15% at: en.oreilly.com/mysql2010. Use discount code mys10msh.

April 12-15, 2010, Washington, DC: Attend the Advanced Learning Institutes Forum on Social Media for Recruiting in Government & Defense: Using Web 2.0 Technologies To Attract, Retain, And Engage Top Talent To Become An Employer Of Choice, to learn how to incorporate the power of social media into your organization’s recruiting strategy, along with helpful tools, practical tips and techniques to get started. Hear practical advice, firsthand, from leading government agencies and organizations such as the: Internal Revenue Service; Library of Congress; Booz Allen Hamilton; Sodexo, Inc.; U.S. Air Force; Peace Corps; Arbita, Inc.; Panetta Communications; CollegeRecruiter.com; Bold Interactive; Campbell-Ewald; Brazen Careerist & CampusGov. Mention Mashable when registering to save $200.

April 12-16, 2010, New York, NY: Attend New York Entrepreneur Week (NYEW), a non-profit movement formed around a single belief: entrepreneurs change the world. The New York Entrepreneur Week movement gives you the opportunity to actively engage the foremost entrepreneurs, investors and dealmakers both in the State and from around the world. Now is the time for entrepreneurs who have the will and drive to prove they can achieve anything, to stand up and come together in New York State for another groundbreaking NYEW event. Receive 75% off with code: Mashable 2010.

April 16-17, 2010, Royal Oak, MI: FutureMidwest, the regions largest two-day technology and knowledge conference, is aimed at helping professionals successfully add digital strategies to their communications programs. Technology and online tools have dramatically changed the way we do business. FutureMidwest will highlight the effect this transition has had on companies. The conference will feature presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are redefining business in the digital age. For a 50% discount, e-mail your name to hello AT FutureMidwest DOT com with the subject line Its Happening Mashable. Then go to the Web site and register as a student.

April 16-18, 2010 Montreal, Quebec, Canada: The iPhone Boot Camp offers a three day workshop on iPhone and iPad Development, covering basic to advanced features such as web services, database, core location and animation, audio and camera and augmented reality. The workshops are limited to fifteen developers and is a full 24 hours of training. The iPhone Boot Camp is a well established certificate training program that has trained over 200 iPhone developers in dozens of cities since 2008. Our instructors are all developers with several apps in the store and experienced trainers using proven course material. Most developers are able to develop an app for sale in the app store after completing the training. The course is recommended for software developers that have a basic understanding of object oriented programming. A 10% discount off the discounted early bird rate – already a $400 saving – is offered at the workshop registration page for Mashable readers using the discount code mashable.

April 17, 2010, New York, NY: Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven gamechanging technologists, and challenge them to develop something new –be it an application, social media, artwork, or whatever they imagine– over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day, public event at the New Museum. Participants: Tauba Auerbach, Ayah Bdeir, Cao Fei Jeff Hammerbacher, David Karp, Aaron Koblin, Andrew Kortina, Hilary Mason, Matt Mullenweg, Monica Narula, Marc Andre Robinson, Evan Roth, Josh Schachter, and Ryan Trecartin. Use registration code mash to get $100 off.

April 19, 2010, St. Louis MO: The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. One day, 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code mashable for 15% off.

April 19-20, 2010, Washington DC: The annual Politics Online Conference is a decade old tradition where techies come together with elected officials, campaign consultants, hill staff, lobbyists, advocacy professionals, non-profits and more to talk about how technology is, and can be used, in politics. Over the course of two days we will have three keynotes, 28 breakout sessions, and two happy hours. Most importantly we will be giving away eight $1,000 prizes as part of the new Brains On Fire awards. Use discount code mashable to reduce the rate to $450.

April 20-23, 2010, San Mateo, CA: At NewComm Forum 2010, dont miss the premier conference for unlocking the power of the social web for business. Speakers include a whos who of social media experts and practitioners from leading companies. Five comprehensive tracks include: Online Communications & Communities, Social CRM, Markets are Conversations, Understanding the New Media Landscape, and NewComm Essentials. Early Bird discounts through March 12th Use discount code NCF2010MASH to save an additional $100 register now seats are limited!

April 20-23, 2010, Bangalore, India: As one the longest running independent developer conferences in India, Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India’s software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. At GIDS participate in hundreds of practical sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, inspirational keynotes, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of latest projects and products activities, and engage with 80 speakers from around the world and over 3000 IT professionals. Save 50% when using code GIDS10MPR0200 to register at developersummit.com/registeronline

April 21, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Join SF New Tech, the Bay Area’s largest and longest running monthly tech event, to get an early look at of some of the hottest new tech around. Famous for its sold out events where executives (and the occasional hacker or two) take to the stage to strut their stuff, SF New Tech is *the* place where early adaptors, developers, influnencers, venture capitalists, journalists, bloggers, and regular every-day folks converge to see the latest and greatest technology. Visit sfnewtech.com for details.

April 21-23, 2010, Atlanta, GA: The 30th Annual Medical Communications Conference is a three day conference that focuses on improving the communication skills of medical professionals. Attendees will receive one on one media training from seasoned journalists, participate in hands on sessions that utilize the latest Web 2.0 applications, meet agents in publishing and television and receive case study driven examples of how to be a medical expert in all media platforms. CME will be provided for both MDs and RNs. Register now and receive $200 off as a Mashable reader.

April 2223, 2010, Los Angeles, CA: If youre like most marketers, your intention to react with quickness and quality outpaces your ability. Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2010 connects you with analysts, peers, and industry leaders whose expertise will help you establish and embrace adaptive marketing practices. Call 888-343-6786 and save 20% off the regular rate with VIP code MFXMSH. Discount applies to new registrations only and cannot be combined with other offers.

April 23-25, 2010 Toronto, Ontario, Canada: The iPhone Boot Camp offers a three day workshop on iPhone and iPad Development, covering basic to advanced features such as web services, database, core location and animation, augmented reality, audio and the camera. The iPhone Boot Camp is a well established certificate training program that has trained over 200 iPhone developers in dozens of cities since 2008. The workshop is limited to fifteen developers and is a full 24 hours of training taught by experienced developers and trainers, using proven course materials. Most developers are able to develop an app for sale in the app store after completing the training. The course is recommended for software programmers that have a basic understanding of object oriented programming. A 10% discount off the discounted early-bird rate – already a $400 savings – is offered to Mashable readers on the workshop registration page using the discount code mashable.

April 25-27, 2010, Toronto, ON: Now in its 9th year, FITC Toronto is 3 full days and nights of events, plus one day of optional pre-festival workshops. With some of the most unique and engaging presenters from around the globe, FITC Toronto is an information blitz of over 70 presentations, demonstrations, and panel discussions covering the Creative, Technical, and Business aspects of Flash and digital media. Sandwiched between our legendary FITC parties, abundant networking opportunities, and opped off with the FITC Award Show, it’s three days and nights that will leave you inspired, energized and awed. Buy your 10% discount ticket today using the code: mashable

April 26, 2010, San Francisco, CA: The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving money ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Ben Parr from Mashable, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Entering the discount code Mashable will get you 10% off. Look forward to (hopefully) seeing you there…

April 26-27, 2010, St. Louis, MO: Join us for the Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media Marketing Bootcamp. This event provides the practical knowledge and insights required to establish objectives and strategies for your market, properly select the social media platforms to engage guests and monitor and measure the results of these efforts for a greater ROI. This event is presented by RestaurantWorx Consulting and Inside Hospitality. Use the Code “MASHABLE” (all caps) when registering and receive VIP pricing on “Day 1″ or “Day 1 & 2 Attendance” tickets. See complete event details on the event website at RestaurantSocialMedia.com

April 26-28, Berlin, Germany: Embedded Mobile & M2M. Services conference is a great chance to compare approaches to building a profitable Embedded Mobile and M2M business. The opportunities of the Embedded Mobile and M2M market are clear to see. This event will help you to realise them. Visit the website today and book your place at this exciting event. Receive a 10% discount by quoting I2AENMASH when registering. View our website at embeddedm2m.net/mashable

April 28-30, 2010, San Jose, CA: At NSDI ‘10, meet with leading researchers to explore the design principles of large-scale networked and distributed systems. This year’s 3-day technical program includes 29 technical papers with topics including cloud services, Web browsers and servers, datacenter and wireless networks, malware, and more. NSDI ‘10 will also feature a poster session showcasing early research in progress. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to meet with premier researchers in the computer networking, distributed systems, and operating systems communities. Save an additional $100 by using the discount code NSDIMASH10 upon registration.

April 29-30, 2010, Lawrence KS: Social media is much more than a fad – it’s changing the way the world communicates. The communities in northeast Kansas are at the forefront of this movement and have made the region a hub for innovative technologies and social media use. Because of this, The World Company of Lawrence KS, is hosting a brand new social media event: The Free State Social. The Free State Social will highlight the best in social media from our area and put local innovations and ideas on a national – even global stage. Our purpose is to educate attendees about the current state of social media, present opportunities for its use and talk about where the industry is headed. The Free State Social will be held on April 29-30, 2010 at the new Oread hotel in Lawrence, Kan. Keynote speakers include Jeremiah Owyang, Ellyn Angellotti, Shawna Coronado, Sarah Evans, Gowalla co-founder Scott Raymond, and Chris Brogan, co-author of the New York Times best-seller Trust Agents. Enter MASHABLE when checking out for a $20 discount on each ticket.

April 30May 2, 2010, Mountain View, CA: The Wisdom 2.0 Conference brings together staff from technology companies such as Twitter and Google, with Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and others to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology age. Speakers include Greg Pass, VP of Engineering at Twitter; Bradley Horowitz, VP of Products at Google; Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook; Ben Parr of Mashable; Loic Le Meur of Seesmic; and many others. Use the discount code Mashable here for special discount.

May 3, 2010, Boston, MA: Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies is the FIRST social media event that focuses on real-life business impact. Not just for entertainment value, hype or buzz, but real-world examples of driving revenue, cutting costs, and energizing conversations around your brand. What can you expect from this event that you wont find anywhere else? Targeted advice for business managers including Market Researchers, Innovators, Brand Managers, Customer Experience Strategists and Marketing Enthusiasts seeking practical, real-life business examples they can translate into their own organization to monetize this powerful medium. Save 15% when using code SOCIAL10MASH at iirusa.com/socialmedia.

May 3-4, 2010, Tampa, FL: Search & Social has announced the second annual Search Marketing Conference filled with distinguished speakers, hyper-networking opportunities and a valuable educational forum. The 2010 Search and Social Spring Summit will be held at the Doubletree Guest Suites in an air-conditioned outdoor complex with a waterfront view. This two-day conference is a premier forum that will bring a search marketing community who make up of traditional marketers looking to expand to internet marketing, employees sent by companies for further training on search marketing tactics, and experienced search marketing professionals. For 15% off ticket price, use code: mashable.

May 4-5, 2010, Boston, MA: Drive sales and make social media work for you at MarketingProfs B2B Forum! Youll learn the ins-and-outs of social media as part of your overall B2B marketing mix from integration and engagement to measurement. Get 1-on-1 access to the best and brightest B2B marketing stars who will share best practices and FREE advice! Plus, our loyal attendees say our events are ridiculously fun, interactive and the kicker is we have the best Freebies in the biz! (no keychains hereFREE industry research reports & membershipsstuff to help you really drive sales in 2010!) Register today with code MASH to save up to $200!

May 6-7, 2010, San Francisco, CA: The Social Gaming Summit focuses on the intersection of games and the social web. The event will focus on helping social games developers build, monetize, and grow their social games. We’re bringing together the leaders in free-to-play games, social networking, and payments infrastructure for a full day of panels and talks. Speakers represent Gowalla, Five Minutes, Inc., LOLapps, RockYou, Booyah!, Inc., GameHouse Studios and more. Register with promo code SGSMASH and save 20%!

May 11-12, 2010, Toronto, ON: Join us for Social Media Risks & Rewards. The social media revolution is happening now, and quickly gathering steam. No business can afford to be left behind and no business can afford to be unaware of the increased legal risks that a Company is exposed to. Learn about implementing and improving social media strategies, protecting your brand, return on investment, legal implications and much more. PLUSa special address from Kevin Flynn, member of the blogging team for Obama for America. Use promo code 10495MASH to receive 15% off!

May 13, 2010, London, UK: The International Search Summit Innovations will focus on some of the most recent trends, tools and techniques in digital marketing including video, mobile and social networking and offer delegates insight and advice on how to effectively use them in international online campaigns. A range of expert speakers will discuss the latest international opportunities in these areas and offer practical tips for integrating them into an organisations overall marketing strategy. The Summit will be held at The Barbican Centre in London, and is a must for any marketer targeting multiple markets and/or languages online. Book now with coupon code MASH1305 to receive 20% discount.

May 13, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Vator, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, is holding its second Vator Splash competition to find 10 promising early-stage startups to present at the Vator Splash event. Enter the competition today and join other onstage presenters, such as Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, gWallet CEO Gurbaksh Chahal, August Capital VC Howard Hartenbaum, Founders Fund VC Dave McClure, Lightspeed VC Jeremy Liew and Mayfield VC Raj Kapoor. Buy your 25% discount ticket here using the code: VatorMashable

May 13-15, 2010, Milwaukee, WI: unGeeked Elite is a Nationwide Marketing and Branding Event. Featuring eight social media gurus and mavens such as Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Sally Hogshead, Olivier Blanchard and more. unGEEKING is the widespread adoption of trends, strategies, and tools that allow us to enhance and embrace internal and external marketing campaigns, enhance customer service and develop better PR campaigns. Throughout the three days this nationally-focused event participants will learn about positioning your internal and external brand; managing inbound and outbound marketing efforts; facilitating online customer relationships; building strategic public relations campaigns; and monitoring social trends among clients and customers. Mashable readers get an exclusive 25% off the standard pricing with the special code: unGEEKEDMASH

May 14-17, 2010, Chicago, IL: The 2010 NARM Music Business Convention is an annual event with two music-focused programs: 1. The Music Business Crash Course (May 14-15) is perfect for entrepreneurs, musicians, managers and labels. This session explores social media, marketing and sales opportunities in the evolving digital music world. 2. The Annual NARM Convention (May 15-17) brings top industry pros together to meet, share innovations, hear great live music — and discover whats next in music-related digital, physical, mobile, social networking and gaming initiatives. Use discount code mash25 to receive 25% off the non-member rate for the convention.

May 17, 2010, San Francisco, CA: The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together around 700+ visionaries in the music/technology space, the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.Entering the discount code Mashable will get you 10% off. Look forward to (hopefully) seeing you there…

May 17-19, 2010, Charlotte, NC: Search Exchange is a 3-day action packed internet marketing conference offering insights into social media marketing, search engine optimization, online reputation management, and pay per click advertising. Learn and network with industry professionals and business owners from around the world. Mashable readers save 10% using code mash10 during registration.

May 17-19, 2010, Munich, Germany: a4uexpo heads to Germany for a two day Conference and expo. Over 30 presentations and panel debates on how to embrace the Affiliate Marketing sector, to include how media owners, agencies and advertisers can utilise Social Media platforms within the channel. Topics also include SEO, SEM, Blogging, Best Practice, Video, Mobile and API feeds. The conference includes access to 3 networking parties and promises to attract the very best entrepreneurs and affiliate marketing specialists from across Europe. Mashable readers can enjoy a 10% discount on registration with the code MASH10.

May 18-19, 2010, Santa Clara, CA: The Social Media Strategies Conference is the premier event for CMOs, Social Media Strategist, Managers, Marketers, Search Marketers, Online Community Managers, Corporate Communications, PR, Marketing, Advertising, and Recruiting Professionals. This year the conference will focus on how organizations are and can leverage Social Media to achieve their business goals. Hear from the experts about this cutting-edge space, how it impacts your business, and how you can leverage it. This conference will feature workshops, interactive sessions, panel discussions, and keynotes from thought leaders. Don’t miss it! To save $100 use the promotion code: mashable

May 19-20, 2010, San Francisco, CA: Gilbane Conference San Francisco 2010 is focused on Content, Collaboration and Customers. Today web and enterprise content management permeate every aspect of an organization. Internal websites, whether in the form of intranets, blogs, or portals and provide efficient ways to collaborate & share knowledge. Customer & internal-facing applications share requirements that call for a number of enterprise content, publishing and infrastructure technologies including multi-lingual, social media, search, and integration software. Our conference is focused on what you should expect from these technologies. Mashable readers get to save an additional $200 – just use discount code MARSH when registering!

May 19-20, 2010, Hong Kong: Mobile Social Networking Asia. Breaking the Barriers of Social Networking in Mobile The Next Generation of MSN. The event that will bring the social network giants in mobile, mobile operators, application developers, telecommunication analysts and consultants, broadcasters, social media players, and start-ups in the field of Mobile Social Networking in one venue that will uncover and discover the trends in the region and the international scene. Mark your calendars on the 19 20 of May 2010 and join us in Eaton Hotel, Hong Kong for the most exciting and interesting Mobile Social Networking event of the year. Some companies onboard the conference: Friendster, Aircel, Bangalink, Plus Eight Star, GrupoDelaware, Zipano Technologies, Waze, Xuqa.com, Virgin Mobile, Maxis, Blogworks, Net Biscuits, Smart Telecoms, Infinita, Aljazeera Satellite Network, Exicon, Citycell, Dialog Telecom, Grameenphone, AdMob. Mention NeoedgeMashable when registering to save 25% discount on the delegate fee.

May 2223, 2010 Los Angeles, CA: The You Conference presents a unique opportunity, to learn personal branding, social media, the art of the hustle, self promotion and create a flood of customers. Gary Vaynerchuk (Crush It!), Dave Lakhani (How To Sell When Nobody’s Buying), Peter Shankman (Can We Do That?!), and Geri Druckman will provide an interactive format enabling each attendee to learn the tools & techniques to infiltrate markets, make social media work for you and be successful. Use promo-code: Mashable for a $50 discount.

May 24-26, 2010, Chicago, IL: If you want to learn how to create a Twitter account or Facebook Fan page, then School of WOM is not for you. This conference will equip you with the knowledge you need to ensure no consumer gets left behind. The curriculum will focus on the power of how great customer service leads to customer recommendations resulting in driving sales, building brands, fostering community, sparking conversations, and influencing a companys culture. School of WOM will ensure that your brand becomes talkable across all consumer touch points. Visit womma.org/schoolofwom and save $200 and receive the early bird rate by using the code: MashableRocks

May 25, 2010, Philadelphia, PA: SocialMediaPlus is a 1 day Social Media and Web 2.0 business conference for business leaders throughout the Mid-Atlantic area. SocialMediaPlus focuses on 4 types of business professionals that most need to understand the effect that Social Media is having on many businesses across the area. Four specific business Tracks include: 1) Executive Track; 2) Marketing and Sales Track; 3) IT Track; 4) Human Resources Track. It’s like 4 conferences in one. Business owners, Executives, Vice Presidents, Directors and Managers from all 4 business units will learn proven strategies and tactics for utilizing Social Media and the technology that drives it. Attendees will learn from some of the industry’s best and brightest minds and hear from business owners and professionals who have succeeded in implementing programs and campaigns built around Social Media and web 2.0 technology. Use promo code MASH15 for a 15% discount.

May 25-27, 2010, The Sage Gateshead, UK: Thinking Digital attracts more than 30 of the worlds most innovative, creative, insightful and/or accomplished people to come to The Sage Gateshead, United Kingdom annually in May and talk about their work, inspirations, insights and ideas. Our venue and speakers thereby attract a wonderfully eclectic mix of people from around Northern England, Europe and the world. Mashable readers save 25% using code tdc_mashable here.

May 27-28, 2010, Greenville, NC: The Shift Conference is a free, two-night event for businesses to learn how to effectively use social media for cultural and economic influence. Bringing together speakers who are ‘in the trenches” { no big names here! }, businesses who are using social media on an everyday basis, and a few other surprises, attendees will receive practical information that they can use for immediate real-world application. Please visit CityShift.org for more information.

May 28-29, 2010, Dallas, TX: The Big Design Conference is an intense day of learning within the scope of Strategy, Social Media, User Experience, and Code Development. Experts from across the country will gather to present theories, research, experiences, and best practices to students, professionals, and executives looking to stay on the bleeding edge. Speakers include Jared Spool (founder, User Interface Engineering), Bill Scott (Netflix/author of Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions), Russ Unger (principal, UserGlue), Ryan Merket (founder, Ping.fm), Chris Bernard (UX Evangelist, Microsoft), and many more (full list at http://bigdesign10.com/speakers/). Mashable readers receive 10% off conference registration by using the code MASHABLE during the checkout process.

June 3, 2010, New York, NY: Hatch Match Columbia 2010: A great investor and industry event for one-on-one meetings with people you want to meet and have great conversations that stimulate action. This yearly event draws crowds of 400+ with 30+ investors including Union Square Ventures, Bessemer Ventures, Greenhill, Zelkova, NYC Seed, Metamorphic Ventures, and more. Additional experts are made available in the areas of mobile, digital, advertising, legal, etc for you to access in the main room. For more information and sign up go to: hatchmatch2010.eventbrite.com to meet one-on-one with NYC investors. Mashable readers can receive 25% off registration with promo code MASH10.

June 4-6, 2010, Hutchinson, KS: Small Business Social Media Summit A live, rub elbows, shake hands and sit down across a table from other small business owners event. Some of the most respected social media, internet based marketers and small business peers have come together to share their proven strategies. They will give you real life, no hype and the nitty-gritty details you need to know how to take advantage of the benefits social media has to offer any small business. This is your chance to develop a plan and take what you learn home with you. Register now and save at: smallbizsocialmediasummit.com. Special pricing of $180 for Mashable readers is available here.

June 8-9, 2010, Seattle, WA: Search Marketing Expo SMX Advanced Seattle is the only search marketing conference designed exclusively for experienced internet marketers. In-depth sessions offered on SEO, paid search, social media and more. Participate in hour-long keynote conversation with Google Senior Software Engineer Matt Cutts. Join the most accomplished search marketers in the world attend SMX Advanced Seattle. Register before March 21 to get pre-agenda pricing, plus use discount code smx100mashable and youll pay only $1095. SMX Advanced has sold out 3 years running – register today!

June 9, 2010, Mountain View, CA: The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community professionals – managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors – to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners. Get $20 off by registering with discount code mashable.

June 11-20, 2010, Washington, DC: Digital Capital Week (#DCWEEK) is a 10 day festival in Washington DC focused on technology, innovation and all things digital in our nations capital. Modeled after Internet Week NY, Social Media Week, FotoWeek DC, Fringe Festival, etc. — DCWEEK will consist of a series of distributed events produced and hosted by individuals, organizations and community groups. Technologists, Artists, Entrepreneurs, Communicators, Govies, and social capitalists of all kinds will participate in panels, workshops, projects and parties. Register at dcweek.eventbrite.com – general admission is FREE.

June 15-16, 2010, Chicago, IL: Building on the success of the 2009 event, The 2nd Annual Health Care New Media Marketing conference will feature presentations from healthcare executives that implemented Web 2.0 strategies and developed quality metrics for evaluating the success of new media campaigns. Over the course of two days, attendees will have the opportunity to learn from thought leaders from major hospitals, healthcare institutions, and social media outlets. Through a series of case studies and forums, attendees will walk away with the tools needed to ultimately reach consumers through new media in an accurate and appropriate. Discount code: MASHABLE get $50 off.

June 24-25, 2010, New Orleans, LA: At The Customer Centric Solutions Expo well discuss how health plans should re-assess their customer service practices to ensure they implement “new” service models that meet the needs of their members. As health plans implement strategies to transform their business into customer centric organizations, essential to their success will be new customer service models supporting marketing, communications and benefit design strategies. Remain competitive in this new marketplace, register today to SAVE $200 on the current registration rate, mention PROMO CODE: XCX344 to qualify (not valid for govt rate).

June 29-30, 2010, London, UK: The 2nd annual Cloud Computing and Enterprise 2.0 World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the future development and integration of cloud and enterprise 2.0 services and products. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud computing and enterprise social media industry. The 2010 show will include a free-to-attend exhibition with scenario based workshop area and key service providers demonstrating their products.

July 1, 2010, London, UK: Brand Republics Achieving Maximum Value From Your Social Media Strategy conference. Learn which social media strategies have yielded proven results, how to build brand awareness, deal with negative PR, gain senior buy-in, measure and monitor your success and integrate your social media campaign with traditional marketing and PR. Roundtable discussions, case studies and presentations from social media experts including: BT, Photobox, Speedo, BSkyB, Facebook, Lastminute.com, Labour Party, Amnesty International, Mirror Group, TripAdvisor, Fatface, Space.NK, SeaFrance and many more. Register online quoting MASHABLE50 and receive an extra 50 off the early booking discount at www.socialmediastrategyevent.com.

August 13, 2010, Nashville, TN: At Big South Social Media Summit, come listen to some of the most forward-thinking business giants from companies like Southwest, SAP, Comcast, Dominos as well as social media loving celebrities who will speak directly on how they drive ROI through social media. Speakers will share real-world success stories, pit falls, and case studies to demonstrate the true value of social media. This summit will allow business leaders to finally understand how social media can propel their business and how to produce real results. More than the mechanics, this is a relatable summit that will open eyes to the power of social media in business. Get 15% off the ticket price by using the vacomash discount code.

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

Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell tickets to their events. Make your event a success on Eventbrite.

Reviews: Australia, Facebook, Friendster, Google, Gowalla, Mashable, Mobile social networking, Pandora, Ping, Seesmic, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, society, video

Tags: conferences, Events, networking

Two Hours Till Twitter Finally Tells Us How It Plans To Make Money?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:35:00 -0400

Twitter CEO Ev Williams will answer questions from Harvard Business School's Umair Haque during the 3 P.M. EST keynote at SXSW today.

Speculation has it that Ev will use the opportunity to finally announce how Twitter plans to make money.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

Live Blog: MOG Is Bringing Its Impressive Music Service To iPhone And Android

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:30:54 -0400

I'm here in Austin, Texas, where MOG CEO David Hyman is introducing the service's new mobile functionality. This is a major step for MOG, and may be an inflection point in the success of the service. Up until now, users have been restricted to using MOG's streaming music service on their computers. That's fine for casual listening at work, but as we've seen with the success of the mobile versions of Pandora, users want mobile. And that's what MOG is unveiling today. Read below for my notes.Hyman kicked off the talk with some background information. MOG Music Network, the editorial-based site hosted at MOG.com reaches 16 million unique visitors a month. In December, the company launched MOG ALL ACCESS, its streaming music service that costs $5/month for all-you-can-eat streaming music. The company is getting 17% conversion from its 3 day free trial (which is high). MOG, Hyman says, is a music service people will actually pay for. But the key will be portability.MOG's mobile applications for Android and iPhone will launch in Q2, featuring on-demand streams, downloads, MOG Radio, your library and playlists, High Quality audio, and a $10/month price tag.

MOG launches mobile apps with unlimited downloads to your phone

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:30:52 -0400

Music streaming service MOG unveiled its mobile strategy today, laying out Android and iPhone apps that will let users get unlimited song downloads to their phones for $10 a month.

Subscribers will be able to get on-demand streams, radio and high-quality audio at 320 kbps for $10 per month. The unlimited downloads go to a local cache, so users can listen to music even when they’re out of network coverage or a WiFi range. (The downloads expire if you unsubscribe.)

In the Android app, you can search for songs or artists either by typing in their names or calling them out with voice search. There’s seamless integration between the website and mobile apps, so users can access playlists they’ve made on the web site from their phone.

The $10 price point makes it a bit cheaper than Rhapsody, which costs $15. Spotify costs roughly $15 if you convert its rates from euros and pounds, but it has yet to launch in the U.S. MOG will launch apps for both platforms in the second quarter of this year.

The site, which hosts 7 million songs and pulls in about 7,000 blog posts about music a week, is now attracting 16 million unique visitors a month. It’s also boasting a 17 percent conversion rate to paid subscriptions from the free demo period. The web-only version is $5 a month.

MOG combines a number of different listening modes. You can search for songs, you can listen to what your friends are listening to a la Last.fm and you can build radio stations around a given artist or genre like Pandora.

“We’re giving you a lot more than what you can get for free,” said David Hyman, the company’s chief executive. He added that he wasn’t concerned that Apple wouldn’t approve the new app. “To date, they’ve approved all other music subscription apps. I can tell you for a fact that Android is not a problem.”

MOG recently raised $9.5 million in venture funding from Menlo Ventures and Balderton Capital to expand abroad and secure distribution deals with hardware manufacturers.

Tags: mog, music, music subcription

Companies: mog

People: David Hyman

Groupon Directors Establish $100 Million Fund To Invest In The Midwest

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:29:14 -0400

Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, two of Chicagos best-known tech entrepreneurs, plan to invest as much as $10 million annually in early-stage technology companies through a new fund dubbed Lightbank. The goal is to provide early-stage startups with seed financing, ranging from 100k to $1 million and fund companies with up to $10 million on an annual basis for the next 10 years. In addition to investing capital, Lightbank intends to take an active role in guiding and nurturing companies through all stages of growth.

Prepare for an iPad App Explosion: Developer Activity Up 185%

Sarah Perez — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:24:28 -0400

Recent data from mobile analytics firm Flurry shows iPhone OS developer activity has increased by 185% since Apple announced their upcoming slate computing device known as the iPad earlier this year. By measuring new application starts within the Flurry community, the firm was able to determine significant increases in developer activity, including the largest spike ever in their recorded history during the month of January after the announcement occurred. The growth continued in February and now the company reports that a large proportion of the new applications they are seeing are custom version of existing applications tailored specifically for use on the iPad.

Sponsor

When Apple began taking pre-orders for the iPad on Friday, March 12th, the Apple.com website was updated with new information about the device. One of the most significant reveals was that iPad applications would soon have their own dedicated section within the iTunes App Store. The website text reads:

Browse a section of the store that features apps designed specifically for iPad. You'll find hundreds that make the most of its large display, responsive performance, and Multi-Touch interface.

Although current iPhone applications will work on the new Apple device without modifications, developers who want to take advantage of the larger screen could use the updated iPhone SDK (software development kit) to modify their apps in order to release custom iPad-only versions. Now it appears that those who chose to do so will be rewarded for their efforts by having their apps made more visible via this new section of the iTunes Store. Considering that the number of iPhone apps now in existence is somewhere near 140,000, being able to achieve this increased visibility will allow developers "the opportunity to establish an early presence on this new device and drive more downloads," says Flurry.

Last week, we took a look at some of the iPad applications we're looking forward to, including things like comic books, magazines and games, but there's clearly a lot of others we haven't even anticipated yet. We're only days away from knowing what those will be: Apple's iPad will be available for sale starting April 3rd, and along with its launch, the new iPad App Store will go live as well.

Discuss

Vittana Applies The Kiva Model To Help Finance Education In Developing Countries

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:15:32 -0400

The microfinance model has proved to be a valuable way to raise funds for entrepreneurs all over the country, as exemplified by the success of Kiva. Seattle-based Vittana is taking a similar approach to helping fund education in developing countries by allowing you to lend directly to students in the developing world. The idea is to bring student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microlending. Today, the site is existing its beta period. Vittana partners with microfinance organizations located in developing countries to donate to students in need of funding. Loans for students range from $200 to $1,500, are then funded by individual lenders, via $25 donations or more, on the Vittana website. One hundred percent of the loans are given to the student. Launched in beta last May, the Vittana community has made over $110,000 in loans to nearly 200 students around the world, who are now getting their degrees. Thus far, Vittana has programs in Mongolia, Nicaragua, Paraguay Peru and Vietnam and plans to expand to India and countries in Africa soon. And Vittana students have had a 97 percent repayment rate.

Ning CEO Gina Bianchini Stepping Down

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:14:12 -0400

Gina Bianchini, the well-known co-founder and CEO of Ning, is stepping down from her role as chief executive after more than five years at the helm. She will be replaced by Jason Rosenthal, the current COO of the company.

While Ning may not be a household name on the level of Facebook or Twitter, it’s very likely you’re a member of one of the millions of social networks created by users of the Ning platform. Ning has grown to more than 20 million visitors, according to comScore.

The announcement was made by Ning Co-Founder Marc Andreessen. You might remember him as the co-founder of Netscape, the web browser that was integral to the rise of the world wide web. He will remain as chairman of Ning.

According to Boomtown, Gina Bianchini will be moving to Mr. Andreessen’s new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, as an executive in residence (EIR).

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: business, Gina Bianchini, marc andreessen, ning

Ning CEO Bianchini steps down to become EIR at Andreessen Horowitz

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:54:45 -0400

Ning CEO and co-founderGina Bianchini is leaving the build-your-own-social-network startup to become an executive-in-residence atAndreessen Horowitz, the new venture firm from her co-founder and Netscape creatorMarc Andreessen.

Chief operating officerJason Rosenthal steps up to take her role. Bianchini co-founded the company more than five years ago as a way to let organizations build their own custom social networks and it now hosts about 2.3 million networks.

Andreessen announced the move in a blog post today:

My fellow co-founder and Ning CEO Gina Bianchini has decided to step downafter five and a half years of hard and terrific work. I support herwholeheartedly in her decision. Gina is handing the CEO duties over to JasonRosenthal, who has been our Chief Operating Officer (COO) and head of businessoperations for the last year and a half. Nothing else is changing I remainChairman, the current management team remains exactly the same, and the Ning
service continues unchanged.

Id like to celebrate this moment by enthusiastically congratulating Gina onan amazing series of accomplishments in her time as CEO. Ning today is one ofthe worlds top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 millionuser-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users, and isfar and away the market leading social platform for interests and passions.

Ning Networks span every area of human endeavor, from the arts to business,politics to social activism, and every other field you can think of. Over5,000 new Ning Networks are created every day, and were adding a million newregistered users every 12 days. This is all the result of Ginas incrediblededication, as well as the phenomenal team she has built, since we firststarted the company.

I am also delighted to mention that Gina is becoming an Executive In Residence(EIR) at my new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz my venturecapital partner Ben Horowitz and I are looking forward to being able tobenefit from her insight and wisdom even more than before.

Gina says: Now that we have built Ning to its current position in the market,I am ready to hand the reins over to Jason and the team to continue to executeon our vision and strategy. As a founder and large shareholder, Ill continueto do everything I can to support and cheer on Ning in my new role!

Let me also give you a thumbnail sketch of Jason Rosenthal, our new CEO. Jasonhas been a friend and colleague of mine for 15 years we first workedtogether at Netscape, where Jason took on a sequence of crucial managementroles from the very early days until we sold the company to America Online in1998. Jason then became the first person my co-founders and I brought onboardwhen we founded Loudcloud in 1999 our internal nickname for him wascritical hire. Jason and I then worked together there for nearly 10 years,until we sold that company (renamed Opsware) to Hewlett-Packard in 2007.

Since that time, Jason has been immersed in Ning as a senior executive, headof business operations, and COO. Jason is a highly talented executive,manager, and leader, and I cant think of anyone better to succeed myco-founder Gina as CEO.

Jason says: Through Ginas vision, leadership, and passion, she has taken thecompany from inception to our position today as the largest social platformfor interests and passions. Its been my privilege to work with her for thelast 18 months and I look forward to expanding on the outstanding foundationshe has put in place.

Thank you very much for your time and attention, and well see you on Ning!

Tags: entrepreneur in residence, Social networks

Companies: Andreessen Horowitz, Ning

People: Gina Bianchini

The Fully Sick Rapper: Viral Vids Are the Remedy [INTERVIEW]

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:41:28 -0400

What would you do if you found out that you had an extremely contagious disease that required you to remain in quarantine for several months? If you’re like most people, you would probably cry and cry and cry… and then curl up in the corner and commence eating your hair.

But if you were Christiaan Van Vuuren (a.k.a. The Fully Sick Rapper), you would make a series of kick-ass viral rap videos that would launch you into the firmament of Internet stardom.

If you’re an avid fan of the viral video space, you’ve probably seen Van Vuuren’s vids by now — among them a trio of parody rap songs that deal with being stuck in quarantine after catching a bad case of Tuberculosis.

The concept might sound rather after-school-special-esque — or, frankly, lame — to the uninitiated, but Van Vuuren’s amateur videos are a hell of a lot more entertaining than a lot of the schlock that professional comedians churn out. Why? Because they’re coming from a very real place.

After seeing Van Vuuren’s raps popping up all over the Internet, Mashable sat down for an interview (via Skype) with the 27-year-old Aussie, direct from his hospital room in Sydney. (We’ve embedded the video portion below for those who aren’t fans of big blocks of text.)

Getting Down with the Sickness

Up until December of this past year, Christiaan Van Vuuren had a proper nine-to-five job in media sales that required him to pull a suit jacket over his tattooed arms and have lunches with clients and the like.

During one of these lunches, however, Van Vuuren started coughing up blood. Soon after, he found himself in the hospital, where the doctor told him that he had a hole in his lung, which Van Vuuren describes as roughly the size of an Aussie 50 cent coin. The diagnosis? Tuberculosis — a disease he likely contracted four years ago during time spent in South Africa. The affliction lay dormant until a recent trip to South America.

Van Vuuren was admitted to the hospital at the start of December, and at the time he thought he would only be there for roughly two weeks. Still, the seclusion took its toll. “I was itching to get out, banging on the walls,” he says. “That was when I made that first rap song, ‘I’m Not Sick, But I’m Sick Sick.’”

He wrote the rap and recorded it using Garage Band. “At the start, it was just to make mates laugh,” he explains, but after friends convinced him to make a video for the song and upload it to YouTube, a local radio station covered the story, as well as Australian morning program Today. At that point, the video had around 10,000 hits. “I was a bit embarrassed that that many people had seen me without my shirt on and in the shower,” Van Vuuren says.

Going Viral

Van Vuuren was let out of the hospital around the first of the year, but after his condition worsened, he found himself back in quarantine, where he made his second video, “Life in Quarantine.” This time, the video spread to the States, where it was picked up by sites like College Humor. Currently, it has garnered more than a quarter of a million hits in less than a month.

The popularity of the video came as a shock to the former punk rocker (Van Vuuren has a musical background, but he admits that he hasn’t messed around with instruments in any real capacity for five years.) He’d never even used Garage Band or iMovie before. “It’s unreal, it’s giving me something to do. I feel like I’ve got a nine-to-five job now,” he says.

And that feeling of purpose had been a boon to the media man-turned-rapper. “I’ve taken my focus off of when I’m going to get out of here and when I’m going to be healthy,” he explains. “I try to apply [my energy] more to what I can do while I’m in here to have not wasted the time. I think the worst thing would be — and I think it’s made me feel the worst when I’ve been in here — is the whole world will keep on spinning out there and I’m here in this room doing nothing.”

One look at Van Vuuren’s YouTube channel shows that he’s done a lot more than wallow: there’s his parody raps as well as a couple of other joke songs about his ukulele and hopeless crush on Today host Leila McKinnon, as well as his own take on MTV’s Cribs and a sketch about a hospital-bound Storm Trooper. Van Vuuren also plans to start making webisodes about his time in quarantine.

Getting Social

In addition to being a video-editing virgin, Van Vuuren also says he’s “as green as they come” when it comes to social media. “In the industry that I work in, in media, I’ve gone to these courses before where they’re talking about the power of social media,” he recalls. “And they’re like, ‘All right, let me demonstrate something: Who of you hasn’t got a Facebook?’ And I look around realize I’m the only person in the whole room of about 140 people who has their arm up.”

That all changed after coming down with TB. Now, Van Vuuren has a Facebook page with close to 6,000 fans, as well as a newly launched Twitter account with a burgeoning list of followers.

And, surprisingly, the trolls seem to be keeping their distance. “I don’t know whether everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, it’s so cute that he did that and he’s sick and he’s in a hospital, let’s watch that!’ And then as soon as I’m not sick anymore people are going to go, ‘Uhhh, you weren’t really that funny,’” Van Vuuren says with a laugh.

Either way, he thrives off of the support this community gives him, members of which send photoshopped images of the viral star in various exotic locals and photos of themselves replicating moments from his videos. Van Vuuren also gets more than his share of marriage proposals from fawning female fans.

“I’m sure that’s what God helped us make the Internet for or why the Internet is here,” Van Vuuren says (referring to his supporting fans, not the marriage proposals — per se). “It’s for things like that. Because when you’re so lonely and in such a place on your own, you can be around so many people or be supported by so many people.”

The Fully Sick Rapper

Tags: Christiaan Van Vuuren, facebook, music, social media, the fully sick rapper, twitter, viral video

Gina Bianchini Replaced As Ning CEO By COO Jason Rosenthal

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:32:36 -0400

Ning CEO Gina Bianchini is being replaced as the CEO of Ning by COO Jason Rosenthal. Bianchini founded the DIY network of social networks with Marc Andreessen. But after five and half years at the helm, she is ready to try something new. She will transition to an entrepreneur in residence role at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm started by Andreessen.In a blog post, Andreessen (who remains chairman of Ning) notes:

Battery Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Mobile Computing

Sarah Perez — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:17:47 -0400

Researchers at Stanford University have just made a major breakthrough that may impact the technology industry for years to come: they've built a better battery. The project, an attempt to use lithium-sulfur in place of the lithium-ion technology that is used in batteries today, has been in development since 2007. Recently, the scientists' efforts were rewarded when they created a battery that lasts four times as long as its lithium-ion counterparts while also having the benefit of being "significantly safer" than today's batteries which occasionally explode after short-circuiting.

Although still a ways off from commercial viability (and availability), the lithium-sulfur batteries promise advances like 80% more capacity, 10 times the power density and, theoretically, the ability to last four times as long as modern batteries.

Sponsor

The new battery technology represents the final step in our quest for always-on connectivity to the mobile web. We already have Wi-Fi hotspots, 3G and 4G networks for Internet everywhere and a host of mobile gadgets from netbooks to iPads and mobile phones to notebook computers. But what we haven't had yet is a way to keep our gadgets powered up for more than a day or so without a charge. That may be soon about to change.

An Always-On Mobile Web

With these sorts of improvements, lithium-sulfur batteries could lead the way in the next phase of the mobile revolution. They could allow us to fully enjoy the web from anywhere in the world, without having to worry about dying batteries, access to power outlets or having to carry around battery replacements when planning long-lasting mobile computing sessions.

Far more than just a convenience, better battery technology would impact how our mobile devices are designed and how they behave. For example, Apple currently imposes numerous restrictions on members of their mobile device lineup for the sake of battery performance. On Apple iPhones, iPod Touches and the forthcoming iPad, applications aren't permitted to run in the background and Adobe Flash technology has been banned altogether, supposedly for its CPU usage which rapidly drains battery juice. Other mobile smartphone makers, while not necessarily as restrictive as Apple, still have to weigh the benefits of providing these same types of features with the performance hit their gadgets will take if they do so. And as anyone who regularly fires up their smartphone web browser knows, too much Internet surfing during the day means a phone that dies out before nightfall.

Another example of the technology's potential impact: e-Readers. Today, if you want to pack your Kindle or Nook device to take with you on vacation, you still have to go through the thought process: how long will I be gone? Will my battery last? Should I pack the cord? Now imagine that you could just throw your e-Reader into your bag without a second thought, just as if you were packing the paperback novel or newspaper these sorts of gadgets aim to replace. Would that encourage more people to make the switch from the analog formats to digital?

The Impacts of Better Batteries

What if, in the future, concerns like these were no longer a worry? What if phones, netbooks, e-Readers and other mobile devices could be used for days on end without the need for a charge? That would radically impact the way we think about and use our mobile devices.

There are a million other use cases that could benefit from this technology change, too, including sensor networks, computing from remote areas, faster news dissemination from areas impacted by disasters (either natural or man-made) where power outages have occurred, gadgets for hikers, campers and other explorers who spend weeks away from civilization and, therefore, away from electricity, mobile location-based services that run in the background on smartphones and other personal mobile gadgets and - OK, we'll admit it - the ability to Twitter all day long without a recharge.

For the nitty gritty technical details about this new battery technology, MIT's Technology Review explains everything from the cathodes to the conductivity as well as the challenges still ahead for this breakthrough technology. Most notably, the scientists still need to figure out how to maintain capacity. After five discharge/recharge cycles, the batteries lost one-third of their initial storage capacity and after 40 to 50 cycles, they ceased to function altogether. However, if the researchers can overcome that final hurdle and a few others, the new technology could one day become commercially viable. It's too soon to know if that will actually occur, but as gadget lovers ourselves, we're hopeful.

Discuss

Microsoft, aQuantive Veterans Set Out To Build Intelligent Ad Serving Platform

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:16:21 -0400

A trio of entrepreneurs who led online advertising technology company Accipiter to an acquisition by aQuantive - which was in turn acquired by Microsoft for $6 billion in May 2007 - have returned to startup life after serving a variety of roles in advertising and sales at the Redmond software behemoth. Jeff Wood, Guy Taylor and Ryan Treichler are today announced their new company, aiMatch, as well as the limited availability for "early adopters" of its online ad technology platform. In addition, the threesome said they have also convinced former Head of Publisher Solutions EMEA for Microsoft Advertising Steve Perks to join the club.

Tim Bray Throws His Hat Into The Android Ring Because He Hates The iPhone

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:05:56 -0400

As Apple goes on the offensive against Android, it risks alienating more and more developers. Today, another prominent developer chose the opposing side. Tim Bray, the well-known software architect and blogger, is joining Google to help rally even more developers around the Android mobile operating system. Bray is the co-inventor of the XML Web standard, and most recently worked at Sun Microsystems. In a blog post, he explains that he is drawn to Google in part because he hates the iPhone, or at least its closed and controlling environment from a developer's perspective.

Facebook To Open First Offices in Asia

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:03:13 -0400

Over at the official Facebook Blog, the company has announced that it will open new offices in Hyderabad, India. This announcement comes just days after Facebook confirmed that it will also be setting up shop in Austin, Texas. Both the India and Austin offices will be hiring online sales and operations staff.

With more than 400 million users, Facebook has experienced serious growth over the last few years. Having more offices will mean that the company can better support its customers.

The Hyderabad office — Facebook’s first in Asia — is an important development. The company blog states that 70% of the people using Facebook come from outside the U.S. Having an international presence and support system is therefore crucial in continuing to expand and connect.

The new offices join Facebook’s main headquarters in Palo Alto, as well as the office in Dublin, Ireland. The social networking site also has offices in Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC, as well as in Milan; Paris; Stockholm; Sydney and Toronto.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: austin, facebook, india

The Lab Vs. The Real World: Product Testing Is Hard

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:18 -0400

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple months, you know that Toyota has had problems with sudden acceleration of some of its vehicles. Apparently, the root cause of the problem is still unknown, which is a little troubling to the average consumer. Toyota claims to be doing everything they can to investigate, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Now everyone and their brother are suddenly product design engineers and have the gall to tell Toyota what to do and how to do it.Witness this opinion piece in the LA Times by David M. Cummings entitled "Haven't found that software glitch, Toyota? Keep trying". Mr. Cummings worked on the Mars Pathfinder project for NASA, so he has some credibility to his name when it comes to software design and product testing. But his opinion piece seems to completely miss the point of the PR nightmare that Toyota is dealing with.

Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source

Mike Melanson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:10:00 -0400

Most any journalism professor, upon mention of Wikipedia, will immediately launch into a rant about how the massively collaborative online encyclopedia can't be trusted. It can, you see, be edited and altered by absolutely anyone at any moment.

But how much less trustworthy is the site for breaking news than the plethora of blogs and other online news sources?

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Even Moka Pantages, the communications officer for the WikiMedia Foundation, said she agreed with this sentiment when she spoke this morning at the South By South West festival in Austin, at a panel entitled "Process Journalism: Getting It First, While Getting It Right". Here's the thing - we have to say that everything she said before answering this question seems to say otherwise.

Update: We got a chance to sit and chat with Moka Pantages today and she took a moment to clarify that she was specifically referring to students using and quoting Wikipedia in research papers. We apologize for any misrepresentation of her stance. Here is her clarification:

I absolutely believe Wikipedia is a good, trustworthy source for contextual news and information and should be used by everyone, including students, as a resource. When I was asked during the panel whether or not Wikipedia should be accepted as a source for college papers, it was my opinion that, just like any other encyclopedia, I don't think it should be cited as a reference source. However, I do think it's a great starting point for students to start their research and begin to understand the topic or issue they are writing about.

Tackling Real-Time Content

The panel featured journalists from the New York Times, SeattlePI.com, Journerdism.com and Gizmodo and a common theme was that user-created content - whether tweets, YouTube videos, or otherwise - could and should be used in breaking news coverage. The panelists all agreed that this content should be verified in some way and should be presented to the audience with a high degree of transparency.

Each panelist spoke about a specific case study - the New York Times' coverage of last summer's protests in Iran, for example - and discussed how they gathered crowd-sourced information and attempted to verify its authenticity. Robert Mackey, the reporter for the New York Times, gave examples of translating chants heard in YouTube videos and matching up street signs that flashed on screen with Google Maps. Once he was sure of its validity, he said, he would add it to the coverage.

"When you're sitting in an office in New York and you're trying to confirm that something was shot in Tehran that day was actually shot in Tehran that day, you're not going to be able to verify that," he said. "The idea is that it's a conversation on the web about this event."

The Newsroom Moves Online

Monica Guzman, a reporter for SeattlePI.com, spoke similarly about her website's breaking coverage of a shooting and the subsequent day-long man hunt. SeattlePI, formerly a print publication, has existed solely online for nearly a year now. Most of the breaking information that day, she said, came from Twitter.

"The media collaborated with itself and it was one big swirling newsroom on Twitter," said Guzman. "We ended up using tweets as starting points. And Twitter did end up breaking a bunch of stuff."

While SeattlePI was able to send reporters out and verify some of the information in person, how was the rest of it verified? "Common sense," she answered.

The Seattle Times, she said, had more than 500 people collaborating on Google Wave to gather information on the same story.

Wikipedia Takes On The Mumbai Terror Attacks

Then came Pantages' turn to discuss how the Wikipedia community addressed the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. While it is said, as we started out with, that Wikipedia just shouldn't be trusted, the case we heard for its coverage of a breaking news situation far surpassed what you might often see on your average blog or even traditional newspaper.

One particular user, Kensplanets, was a driving force behind the coverage, using breaking news from IBN.com as a source. In cases such as this one, the crowdsourcing aspect not only allows multiple points of view, but also allows aggregation from multiple points in a number of different languages and locations.

"It's not just U.S.-centric information," Pantages explained, "You have the New York Times, Reuters, Times of India - they're all there."

According to Pantages, by the end of the first day of the Wikipedia article's life, it had been edited more than 360 times, by 70 different editors referring to 28 separate sources from news outlets around the web. While this could seem like a situation rife for misdirection and misinformation, the constant discussion swirling around the creation of an article, Pantages explained, is "really similar to what you would think should be in a newsroom." Nonetheless, we still disparage Wikipedia as an untrusted source of news.

Wikipedia As News Aggregator

Just like other news aggregation services, Wikipedia takes many sources and puts them in to a central location, but with the added benefit of human curation instead of algorithmic collection.

"There's no real-time reporting going on in Wikipedia, it's real-time aggregation," Pantages said.

So the very first level of information vetting, which happens at the reporting level, has already taken place by the time it reaches the site. Then the hundreds or thousands of editors continue to scrutinize the information, discussing edits and potential changes in the back channels. The news we read in our daily newspapers, on the other hand, is curated by only a small number of people. Surely, there is the question of qualification, but many of Wikipedia's contributors and editors are, themselves, professionals.

In contrast, we often accept news from other blogs as immediately trustworthy, while a Wikipedia article such as this one, which is transparent in its creation, its sourcing and its transmutation over time, we dismiss as flawed from conception. Today, the 2008 Mumbai Attacks article sits at more nearly 43,000 words with over 150 different sources cited and 1,245 unique editors.

While Pantages argues that "Wikipedia should not be a source, it should be a starting off point," we would have to argue the same for news media in general. In this crowd-sourced news environment we've entered, blindly consuming news and content, from any source, is an ill-advised path to follow.

With that said, if we are willing to take crowd-sourced content - whether tweets, Facebook updates, blogs, videos or whatever else - as valid sources for information about our world, then a collection of these same media as carefully poured over and curated as found in a Wikipedia article should be even more trusted, not less, than those bits on their own.

Traditional media get bits of breaking news wrong all the time, but we accept that as part of the game. To vilify Wikipedia for the same errors sets unequal standards and besides, you'll likely never see the same level of transparency in traditional media about where it went wrong. With Wikipedia, it's all laid bare for the world to see.

Discuss

Fandango Begins Rolling Out Mobile Tickets That Let Moviegoers Go Paperless

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:07:35 -0400

Waiting in line for movie tickets is still the worst part of going to the movies (unless you are going to see The Bounty Hunter). With so many mobile phone movie apps, it's easy to find what's playing at nearby theaters and even purchase tickets right from your mobile phone, but then you still have to get a paper ticket from the dispenser or the ticket agent. But your ticket could easily be delivered to your mobile phone via a 2D barcode.Today, Fandango is launching a mobile ticket program in eight cities which lets moviegoers finally go paperless. Your ticket is delivered to your mobile phone via an SMS or MMS message linked to a 2D barcode, which the ticket-takers can scan. Movie theaters need to equip their attendees with special scanners, which is why it is only available in a few markets. (MovieTickets.com is testing a similar program).

Sentiment search engine RankSpeed puts spotlight on products

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:16 -0400

RankSpeed, an early player in searching Twitter and blog content for how people feel about subjects, relaunched itself today as a place where you can learn about products based on sentiment.

For example, you can search for ‘Facebook apps’ and the word ‘excellent’ and see which products are mentioned the most with that word. RankSpeed will show the percentage of users who have talked about the app and used words like ‘useful’ or ‘terrible’ along with it, in time periods ranging from one month to all time. If the company helps drive sales of products, RankSpeed could earn affiliate fees for referring customers to sites like Amazon.com.

Several companies are trying to make sense of the opinions expressed en masse through status updates on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, but we have yet to see a breakout hit. RankSpeed is promising, but it also illustrates some of sentiment analysis’ current limits. For example, if you search for ‘Facebook apps’ and ‘excellent,’ group buying company LivingSocial comes up in fifth place. But if you search for ‘Facebook apps’ and ‘terrible,’ the company comes up in second place. Many products elicit deeply divided reactions, like Twitter for example, and RankSpeed isn’t good at accommodating that. It also doesn’t replace the experience of researching a product thoroughly; if I was going to spend $1,000 or more on a product, I would read many in-depth reviews and I would ask friends. RankSpeed might be an accessory to this process, but it wouldn’t be the ultimate tool I would use.

Tags: sentiment analysis

Companies: rankspeed

Sponsor Post: The Greatest Camera of Our Time? It's in Your Phone

RWW Sponsor — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: We offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write posts and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

We were walking the streets of San Francisco and happened to witness a street band in the process of setting up shop. On the cue, almost all the observers around the band fished out their cellphones and started snapping pictures and video. Which lead us to ask this question: Which is the greatest camera?

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A renowned photographer pointed out to us during Macworld Expo that the greatest camera is not the one that gives you the best quality picture or the best resolution. The greatest camera is the camera in your hand. Going by that, I guess it makes the mobile camera the greatest camera of our time.

Mobile photography has really blossomed in the past few years with almost every cellphone worth its merit having a camera built into it. We now have cellphone camera capturing with up to 12.0 megapixels. We have citizen journalists providing breaking news of the Indian Ocean earthquake through phone footage.

Let's step back a little. There are 110 or more million cellphones with camera on them. Add the dimension of them connecting to social networking sites, and that really makes things interesting.

But there is a raging debate as to whether the cell phone camera can really be called a "camera". Maybe it depends on individual choices. However, from personal experience we have observed that people are passionate about photography from whichever source it comes from.

The sheer volume of photos taken using cellphone cameras makes mobile photography a serious affair. (For instance, our iPhone app Camera Plus has been downloaded 5 million times.) Consequently,the ecosystem around mobile photography is also blossoming.

The range of photography applications in the iPhone App Store is the testimony to how serious mobile photography is. The apps have covered all aspects of photography from the actual capture of the picture to editing, managing and sharing them all within the phone itself.

No Limits for Mobile

Surprisingly, the limitation of the phone hardware here is not stopping the application developers to dream any less than the digital camera manufacturers. If anything, they're dreaming bigger. You can use multi-shot to snap photos, adjust anything from brightness, sharpness of a photo, and add funny effects to them. With most of the cameras having GPS, users can also geotag their photos with just a click. It does not stop here. You can also instantly share your photos on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and other social media platforms all from the phone itself!

And things have also started moving on the video side. Did you know you can not only capture video using a mobile but also add effects like black and white, sepia from within the phone itself? And of course, you can share your videos on YouTube.

Now just step back and wonder whether you can do all the above from within a digital camera, and you realize that mobile photography might not be that primitive at all. To put things in another perspective, you can liken the use of a cellphone camera to the use of a Swiss army knife. This was the theme around which we built our photography application Camera Plus Pro. Both Mobile Geeks and Kodak have some tips on learning how to use all the tools in the knife.

With all the mobiles around, we can now reduce the disappointment of the sentence - "I wish I had a camera right now."

Discuss

LoKasts Proximity Based Mobile App Takes Content Sharing To A New Level

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:27:50 -0400

Between the geolocation wars of Facebook and Twitter and the flux of geolocation-based social networks and mobile apps that have been hitting the market recently, the competition is tough. Today, mobile networking startup NearVerse, is launching a free iPhone app, called LoKast, which allows people to share media between iPhones at super-fast speeds. The kicker: the app connects people in its network based on proximity. LoKast, which is actually short for local-casting," allows you to set up a profile that will list all of your photos, selected contacts, videos, web links and music on your mobile phone. You can select which content you'd like to include to the public and which content you'd like to keep private. When a LoKast user is in proximity (300 feet) of other LoKast users, the app will automatically discover other users nearby and allow the user to view and download their content. For example, you can see the iTunes library of any user who is in close proximity to you. You can choose to download a 30-second clip of any song to your own profile and can also follow the link to the iTunes store to purchase the music (LoKast collects an affiliate fee for this, of course). Similarly, you can download photos, videos and even contacts from other users into your profile. You'll also soon be able to share apps on your phone with other users.

LoKast launches a disposable social network for sharing media from your iPhone

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:54 -0400

There are a number of companies at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin offering their own way of sharing your location with friends. LoKast, an app from a company called NearVerse, is launching a mobile app with a compelling spin on that idea — instead of sharing your location with people elsewhere, you share media with people in the same location.

In other words, when you open the LoKast app, you get a list of anyone else who also has LoKast open in your proximity (about 300 feet). When you click on their profile, you can see and download any content they’ve uploaded for sharing, including contacts, photos, songs, videos, and links. For example, if you’re at a conference, you might share the contact information of yourself and business partners, so anyone else at the conference knows how to reach you. Or if you’re at a concert, you could bring a favorite playlist, which all the other concert attendees would be able to view. And users could tailor the content they’re sharing to the occasion.

Co-founder Boris Bogatin describes LoKast as a way to link our online and physical activities.

“We’re doing all this internet stuff, we do internet or we do physical, but we don’t do both,” Bogatin said. “But the physical stuff is so powerful and rich.”

Philadelphia-based NearVerse has paid particular attention to the music side of the app. In most cases, you’re not sharing complete songs, but rather short clips and a link to purchase the song on iTunes. But musicians can also create accounts on LoKast where they make their songs available for free download. So if a band threw a promotional concert, they wouldn’t have to give out demo CDs. Instead they just ask everyone to download the songs from their LoKast portal. Then when all those fans wgo to other events, they could offer those songs as free downloads to other people, allowing the music to spread.

As part of its launch, NearVerse is announcing partnerships with music distribution companies The Orchard, IODA and Monalis 360. The model extends to promotional movie clips, which is why NearVerse is also partnering with Magnolia Pictures.

Beyond making money from music purchases, Bogatin said he sees LoKast as a platform for sharing content in other apps, though he didn’t offer many details. He added that LoKast will be adding app-sharing soon, which also provides revenue opportunities.

One of the big challenges with this kind of media-sharing app is speed. If it takes minutes to download a song or contact information, no one’s going to use it. But when the NearVerse team gave me a demo at South by Southwest (where there are lots of iPhone users competing for network bandwidth), the app seemed very responsive, with updates reflected immediately between phones and most (not all) downloads taking only seconds. You can download LoKast from the App Store here.

NearVerse has raised venture funding, but it hasn’t announced the details yet.

Tags: LoKast

Companies: NearVerse

People: Boris Bogatin

Diamonds Are Forever, and So Are Diamond iPads

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:49:57 -0400

If the choice between a 3G vs. Wi-Fi-only iPad has been keeping you up at night, how about a third solution that makes the price difference pale in comparison: a diamond-encrusted iPad.

According to the company that sells it, Mervis, the “diamond-studded iPad features 11.43 carats of diamonds, hand-set in a micro-pave styling. The diamonds are graded G/H in color and VS2/SI1 in clarity.” Let’s just sum it up with the word “expensive.”

Honestly, we have no idea how well these things are selling, but every time a new gadget appears, a gold/diamond version pops up somewhere really soon, so there’s obviously a market for it. If you’re interested, you probably don’t have to ask about the price, but here it is just for completeness’ sake: $19,999.

Yes, you can buy 40 Wi-Fi iPads for that money. So what’s it gonna be: one diamond iPad or a wall of iPads in your room?

Tags: diamonds, ipad

First Dot-com Celebrates 25th Birthday

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:01:48 -0400

Exactly 25 years ago, computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc, registered the first .com web domain ever: symbolics.com. By today’s design standards, and considering how websites looked back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it’s quite decent, although a bit short on content.

However, its content and even the (now defunct) company that registered it are far less important than the boom it ignited: In 1997, one million .com web domains were registered, and in 2000 the .com bubble peaked, resulting in an inevitable meltdown.

And while the .com crash proved that a well-chosen name isn’t enough for a successful company, .coms still play a very important part of our online lives. Despite many other top-level domains available, .com is still the most coveted TLD — the one that many people still associate with the world wide web in general. Right now, about 668,000 .com sites are registered every month; quite a jump from the six web domains registered in 1985, don’t you think?

Tags: dotcom, internet, trending, web

Song Downloads Coming to Next Version of Rhapsody

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:19:46 -0400

Real Networks Rhapsody To Go subscription includes a mobile app that lets you stream music (it has some nine million tracks in its library) directly from your iPhone, for a $14.99 monthly fee.

It was once thought that Apple would never allow such an app, but now Rhapsody prepares to take it one step further, announcing song downloads for offline listening for the next version of Rhapsody for iPhone.

The app is still pending approval from Apple, but according to Rhapsody it should be available in a couple of days. Furthermore, an Android version of Rhapsody is coming out of beta and into the Android Market soon.

Check out a video preview of the new offline listening feature from Rhapsody below.

Reviews: Android, Android Market, Rhapsody

Tags: apple, iphone, music downloads, music streaming, rhapsody

iPad Battery Replacement? Forget That, You Get a New iPad for $99

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:43:24 -0400

Here’s an interesting tidbit from Apple’s iPad FAQ: If your iPad’s battery goes dead, Apple will simply send you a completely new iPad and charge you 99 bucks (plus $6.95 for shipping) for the service.

You alone are responsible for backing up your data on the old iPad, however, and it won’t work if the dead battery is the result of an accident of some sort or unauthorized service.

From the iPad’s FAQ:

What is iPad Battery Replacement Service?

If your iPad requires service due to the battery’s diminished ability to hold an electrical charge, Apple will replace your iPad for a service fee.

Note: Your iPad is not eligible for Battery Replacement Service if the product has been damaged, for example, as result of an accident, liquid contact, disassembly, unauthorized service or unauthorized modifications, or if the product is not operating correctly as a result of a component failure. Please review Apple’s Repair Terms and Conditions for further details.

How much does it cost?

The service costs $99, plus $6.95 shipping. The total cost is $105.95 per unit.

All fees are in U.S. dollars and are subject to local tax.

At first glance, it looks like a good deal. However, not everyone will be pleased to dish out $105.95 (what the full price for international customers will be remains to be seen) just because their iPad’s battery is dead — new iPad be damned. How does this sound to you? Please tell us what you think in the comments.

Tags: apple, battery, ipad

AnyClip opens its quote database for movie buffs

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:00:48 -0400

Many of you have probably had a moment where you wanted to quote a favorite line from a movie, but couldn’t quite get the wording right. A site called AnyClip can help.

The New York City startup first launched at the TechCrunch50 conference last fall, promising to help users search for and watch their favorite movie moments. We called AnyClip our favorite company of the show, but some of the judges were concerned that the team might have trouble making needed deals with the movie studios to show the clips. That turned out to be a real problem — co-founder and chief executive Aaron Cohen said he’s still hoping to build up AnyClips’ video library, but the negotiations are taking too long. So instead of launching a site of clips with metadata (quotes and tags), it’s launching a version of its site that focuses on the data itself. The site goes live today at 5 am Pacific.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a favorite line from The Big Lebowski (perhaps the most quoted movie among my acquaintances). In a few hours you’ll be able to go to AnyClip and search for The Big Lebowski and see a list of major scenes and the lines in them. Or you could just type in the quote, and AnyClip will bring up related dialogue. Then, if you’re looking at a scene that you really like, you can also click on a tag and see scenes that have the same tag. And if that scene spurs you to think, “Boy, I really want to watch that movie again,” AnyClip has links for buying or renting the movie from retailers like iTunes. (Naturally, it takes a cut from those deals).

I didn’t really need much convincing, but to demonstrate that this is something many people will want to use, co-founder and executive vice president of product and technology Nate Westheimer showed me the Google search for a number of movies. In almost every case, the top suggested search from Google was for quotes — if you type in “The Big Lebowski,” for example, the top suggested search is “The Big Lebowski quotes.”

The company says its database currently includes up to 5,000 quotes and tags from 2,000 of the top-growing films, and it plans to add another 3,000 by the end of the next quarter. It has army of workers chipping in to build those quotes and tags, though it’s exploring more crowdsourcing options.

Cohen said he definitely wants to build out that video database, since so many of the most indelible moments from films are visual, rather than verbal. It doesn’t do a whole lot of good to have a bunch of tags for the spectacular opening battle scene from Gladiator if you can’t watch the scene itself. AnyClip said it should have 1,000 embeddable clips by the end of the year.

Also, as a cool promotional project, AnyClip is inviting users to share their favorite movie moments at the AnyClip Moment project.

Companies: Anyclip

People: Aaron Cohen, Nate Westheimer

RateItAll helps businesses build their own Foursquare

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:40:02 -0400

RateItAll, the review site that has described itself as a “distributed Yelp for everything,” is going mobile. But it’s not just by releasing an iPhone app of its own — RateItAll wants to help companies build their own location check-in services.

There are a number of different companies that may want to build their own customized version of Foursquare, said chief executive Lawrence Coburn. A conference might want to encourage attendees to share their location with each other. A hotel might want guests to share which attractions they’re visiting. Those companies could take the basic template created by RateItAll and customize it with their own look. For example, RateItAll has already announced built apps for soccer website Footbalistic, where users can check in wherever they’re watching a game, and with the Online Marketing Summit.

To show off what RateItAll can do, the company has released an application called DoubleDutch (App Store link). It includes location check-ins, friending, stickers rewarding different types of user activity, and integration with Facebook and Twitter. Companies can add their own logos, stickers, and venue information, and they also get a tab within the application where they can add whatever they want.

RateItAll will charge a one-time setup fee for the apps, then make revenue sharing deals for advertising.

This move may seem like a big shift for a review website, but Coburn said the apps take advantage of the company’s database, so that they’re populated with locations and reviews. That should give RateItAll an advantage against other build-your-own-location-app services like Socialight. The apps also help build that database, since there’s an option to rate and review and location when you check-in.

The San Francisco company is announcing its service at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, where tons of other location-based services are also making news. RateItAll may be the only one of the bunch that’s trying to sell its product to companies, not consumers, but I was curious if there’s still some risk that the consumer apps might take off, gobbling the audience for RateItall– if everyone’s on Foursquare, who needs to check in on a South by Southwest app? Coburn acknowledged that he isn’t totally sure where the industry is going, but he noted that the success of Facebook hasn’t stopped build-your-own-social-network service Ning.

RateItAll’s audience has grown to 1.4 million unique monthly visitors, and it “just missed profitability” for the last few quarters, Coburn said. It has raised $1.4 million in funding.

Companies: RateItAll

People: Lawrence Coburn

Funny Or Die Outtake Reunites SNLs George W. and Bush Sr. [VIDEO]

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:01:56 -0400

An extended outtake sequence from director Ron Howard’s “Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion” featuring Will Ferrell as George W. Bush and Dana Carvey as George Bush Sr. is making the rounds on the Internet. The original clip has attracted almost three million views.

This new outtake clip is an extended conversation (two minutes and 35 seconds compared to just a few seconds in the original version) with Ferrell and Carvey riffing off of one another in their roles. Some father and son issues start to bubble up (pardon the pun) and things get a little weird.

Funny or Die produced and distributed the Ron Howard-directed “Presidential Reunion” skit, which brought together two decades of Saturday Night Live presidents Ferrell as George W. Bush, Carvey as Bush Sr., Fred Armisen as Barack Obama, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Dan Akroyd as Jimmy Carter, Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford and surprisingly, Jim Carrey as Ronald Reagan. It also features Maya Rudolph as a weight-lifting Michelle Obama.

The video directed viewers’ attention to financial aid reform organization Main Street Brigade. We’ve embedded the new Carvey and Ferrell outtake below, along with the original video and two other outtake videos.

Bush Sr. vs. Bush Jr.

Funny Or Die’s Presidential Reunion

Behind the Scenes

Dana Carvey Dream Sequence

Tags: celebrities, comedy, dana carvey, funny or die, george bush sr., george w. bush, Political, politics, saturday night live, sketch, snl, viral videos, web series, will ferrell