Curated Stories August 2, 2010

Facebook said late Friday that it is adding 160,000 square feet to the 147,000 square-foot data center it’s currently building in Prineville, Ore. Being able to make such on-the-fly changes is part of why Fac…

If I had access to a secret stash of iPhone knockoffs — a phone that worked identically to the real iPhone, but was a bootleg made of inauthentic parts — how much could I charge? Could I sell them for $10 l…

As much as democracy and the right to a fair trial, so too is connectivity and access to the Internet.

The news item titled, Finland makes 1Mb broadband access a legal right, from Cnet was published on October…

Nellie Akalp is the CEO Co-Founder of CorpNet, her second incorporation filing service company based on the simple philosophy of truth in business and her strong passion to assist small business owners and ent…

If you want to build an important company, then at some point you have to scale. People in startup land often talk about the magic of how few people built the original Google or the original Facebook, but toda…

FROM the politics of language to the language of politics, this is interesting: J.D. Foster of the Heritage Institution has dubbed David Stockman, a former budget director under Ronald Reagan, one of the “tax c…

Bootstrapping your startup has a number of advantages. Rather than focusing on raising capital, you can spend your time generating revenue. Bootstrapping encourages you to be flexible, allowing you to change…

iOS is becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise. It’s sometimes been a bumpy road, but according to Forrester iOS has reached a level of security that should be acceptable to most enterprises. Forrester…

I’m not personally traumatized by the news that the version of Android 2.2 that Verizon’s original Droid gets won’t let the phone tether to a laptop or serve as a hotspot–I have a Verizon MiFi–but it�…

A few weeks ago, we unveiled Facebook ad techniques to leverage the endorsements of your fans– to share their likes with their friends. And we demonstrated that the CTR on an ad showing your friends liking i…

by Joseph Paduda
Some physicians and physician groups are quite upset about insurers’ recent moves to offer employer customers tight, small networks of providers based on quality and cost c…

If you choose to read any of the extensive literature in your local bookstores or online that address team effectiveness, it will almost always center on the simple fact that trust is the most important element…

As recent Nielsen ratings show, we are spending more and more of our online time on social networks, and much of that time is spent playing games. Few services, then, can demonstrate the need for flexibility a…

I’m a little afraid to think about how often I hit the “XX new tweets” area to refresh my Twitter stream on Twitter.com. Hundreds of times a day? Maybe more? It’s almost as if I’m an animal in some fe…

Google recently announced new measures to help developers fight piracy of Android applications.
It’s a good thing, because David Peroutka, director at Android game developer Hexage, says piracy of his apps is t…

Last month, Forrester Research’s Augie Ray published a report on The ROI of Social Media Marketing that I’ve recently had a chance to take a highlighter to: there are a lot of sensible nuggets in the docume…

(This is the last of a five-part series about SEO for hyperlocal blogs/web sites.)
You may have a terrific local blog — and I hope you do! — but no matter how good it is, you’re making a mistake if you th…

The Wall Street Journal reported that overall medical use fell as patients had fewer doctor office visits, lab testing, and maintenance medications possibly due to the recession or as a result of consumer-drive…

If you use Gmail for business and haven’t tried out browser plug-in Rapportive, your work life online is not yet complete. The small company behind the must-have software said this weekend that it has raised $…

Apple is a company that spawns both rabid fans and haters.
But there’s no denying that it’s been enormously successful, and it just keeps on winning.
Part of that success, as we’ve said before, comes from the f…

A few weeks ago, Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com confided in me that he was leaving DIYThemes, and splitting paths from the embattled Thesis theme and lead developer Chris Pearson. He agreed to do an interview w…

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.Maintaining a constant social media…

Need to find a typeface for your next design masterpiece? Follow this intricate—but brilliant—flowchart by Julian Hansen and you will never go wrong. And i…

UPDATED: ATT customers looking for a high-end smartphone not made by Apple now have a worthy alternative in the new ATT Captivate, a $199 handset running atop Google Android. This thin and light device is fast,…

Last night I had an enjoyable conversation with Scott Monty of Ford, Jeff Hayzlett (formerly CMO Kodak), Mike Monello from Campfire and our host Bob Knorpp of the famous BeanCast about a variety of topics inclu…

The only way to avoid hearing criticism is to be deaf or dead.
The only way to avoid being criticized is to never have been alive.
As history books have shown, even the dead can’t escape criticism. So, thos…

This is followup data from the Altimeter Report: The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing, you should read this first.
Thanks to your help, Altimeter Group’s latest research on Facebook Marketing Be…

Anyone else out there remember iPhone marketing exec Bob Borchers? Well, he’s left Apple now and has just jumped aboard the mobile payments bandwagon.Pretty clear we’re looking at some fast-paced developments…

Trust depends on openness, respect and humanity. Yet we often resist taking that approach in our professional lives, even though we know it would be absurd to do anything else in our personal lives.

Suppose…

The Hotlist is going mobile. The service, a trend-tracker that connects users with upcoming events in the area and across their social networks, is now available as an iPhone application.

Although location-ba…

Conductor co-founder and CEO Seth Besmertnik tells us that companies still aren’t receiving significant search traffic from Bing or Yahoo. As the two come together, however, Besmertnik thinks it would make se…

I’ve long been interested in storytelling in presentations and have followed the SlideShare presentation contests (especially the Tell a Story incarnation), as well as storytelling-in-presentation gurus like…

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AAPL Up Strong Shares of AAPL are up strong as the market pushes forward on encouraging corporate results, inc…

While many are anticipating an official Facebook iPad application, a new application for the iPad is pretty close to what you’d imagine an official Facebook iPad app to look like. The Friendly Facebook brows…

We’ve talked a lot about how QR codes are poised to take off in the mainstream and now ATT is jumping on the bandwagon with a new set of tools for Android and BlackBerry phones.The company has just announced…

The average American spends almost a third of their time on the Internet playing games and using social networks, according to a new survey by Nielsen. Social networking sites and services take up the largest c…

If you’re trying to make money online, sooner or later you have to face it. Conversion. That intimidating topic: how to get more buyers from the same amount of traffic.
The only reason conve…

Chip MacGregor worked as an author, editor, and publisher before starting his literary agency. In answering a question at his blog, he provides down-to-earth a…

When Google launched Wave last year, it was immediately obvious that it would be useful for collaboration. What was less obvious, however, was whether it would be a good choice for enterprise-level collaboratio…

AdMeld, a New York City based ad inventory optimizer, just closed on a $15 million round of venture funding, in the latest sign that the real-time bidding (RTB) market for display advertising is on fire.
Last m…

Someone in the newsroom this morning asked, “hey, what’s MT mean on Twitter.” That got us thinking it might be useful to compile a list of common Twitter abbreviations.
Here is what we’ve come up with so far. I…

The Wall Street Journal’s privacy series (call it “Cookiegate”) continues with a fascinating look at Internet Explorer 8. According to reporter Nick Wingfield, IE’s designers initially wanted anti-third…

Hoping to cash in further on Ning’s shuttering of its free version, competitor Grou.ps is upping the ante with the launch of “WinWin”, a referral program directly targeting so-called Ning exiles.

The service c…

This series is supported by Gist, an online service that helps you build stronger relationships. By connecting your inbox to the web, you get business-critical information about key people and companies. See ho…

Managing social media content and conversations can be difficult and time consuming. You’ve got a company blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube and Picasa accounts for multimedia, perh…

Apple’s antenna lab was the most sophisticated I have ever seen…

Trends can be useful to ensure that you are ahead of the competition and maintain your competitive edge. The pace of the change in social online networks and how they effect our lives is imposing changes whethe…

Over the last few months, other media outlets have caught wind of Tumblr, which is free to use.`
New York Times, August 2, 2010 — Since Tumblr is currying favor among a young crowd, it could prove valuable…

After Microsoft killed Kin, stories swirled attributing its mismanagement to warring fiefdoms inside the company. A WSJ report suggests that a similar conflict…

Sales of Google Android phones in the U.S. are rising so quickly, the devices have outsold Apple handsets for the first time on record. New smartphone subscribers choosing Google phones accounted for 27 percent…

In the sidebar of your Facebook profile, below information about you and your friends, you can place widgets (a.k.a. boxes). These typically pull in information from a third party web service – for example Twit…

Flipping channels on Saturday night with my husband we came across a reality show called, “If You Really Knew Me” on MTV.” I was immediately interested and somewhat saddened by a group of high school st…

3.2 million people in the UK fall for mass marketed scams ever year – around one person in every fifteen. Swindles cost the public £3.5 billion every year.
The OFT conducted a report to investigate those w…

Life is a series of comings and goings, moving on, letting go, graduating, commencing, marrying, separating. If we’re not in the act of moving on, we’re thinking about the last time we did, or planning on the n…

The ed-tech startup LearnBoost has become the first gradebook and lesson plan software to fully integrate the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards, and their relationship with the Obama…

Editor’s note: We offer our 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…

Social networking now eats up twice as much of our online time as any other activity. According to new stats from Nielsen, sites like Facebook and Twitter now account for 22.7% of time spent on the web; the ne…

If you’re a student, you’re probably using an online calendar to keep track of your homework assignments, projects and plenty of other things that are a part of your schedule in school. Tests also go hand in…

Landing Pages Are Your Secret Conversion WeaponThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
There lots of ways to attract visitors to your web site, but the true measure of success is always conversion. When it comes…

Building a mobile app may be all the rage right now, but it’s still a
potential marketing misfire. You should always take time to consider
exactly why you are investing in an app and how useful it will be for…

Before my book came out, I was managing my own public relations department (Me Inc.). I would read articles by journalists that covered marketing, careers, and technology, and respond to them….

These days any conversation about CRM probably leads to the mentioning of social CRM. Throughout the past two years, there has been much healthy debate about what social CRM is, how it’s being deployed throug…

James Citron is CEO and Co-Founder of Mogreet, the worldʼs first mobile video marketing platform. The digital entrepreneur has more than a decade of experience in the mobile industry with a proven track record…

Starting today, airplane passengers who check in to Foursquare via Gogo’s Inflight Internet service will be greeted with a nice surprise — the “Mile High Badge.”The “Mile High Badge” is nothing more…

Thanks to a few online success stories brought about by dedicated customer service individuals, companies are starting to see the wisdom of putting the human back into customer service. That means offering cu…

Email, we love to hate it, yet we hate to love it. For better or for worse, we are tethered to our inbox and continue to send messages and respond to those individuals and organizations to which we’re tied o…

New times demand new words, because the old words don’t help us see the world differently.Along the way, I’ve invented a few, and it occurs to me that sometimes I use them as if you know what I’m talking about….

The Snuggie. Can any marginally-useful product peddled on late night TV ever match its success? The infomercial for the blanket with sleeves known as the Snuggie has got to be one of the most ridiculed pieces o…

Another good batch of articles below. In particular, check out the Talk About Local piece (by Nicky Getgood) on using platforms other than WordPress to create a hyperlocal blog/site. That’s a topic I’m part…

A funny thing happened on the weekend. I attended a small meet up for a podcast published by the Lifestyle PodNetwork and as is usual at such events, people were tweeting, checking in on Foursquare, and other…

In a lot of my presentations and research, I’ve talked about social proof, and I’ve hypothesized that it has an effect on social and viral behavior online, but I had never actually proven it. So a few weeks…

I’ve spoken to four different investors over the last two weeks trying to get at least a small piece of an angel financing round being quietly pitched by Delicous founder Joshua Schachter. He’s raising just…

Many a post has come before this one on the special adventure that is pitching TechCrunch. And while most of our writers have their own preferences (Please don’t call my cell before 7 a.m. PDT unless you’r…

This part Friday at our Social Currency CrunchUp I was joined on stage by Tristan Walker (director of business development at Foursquare), Kara Nortman (Senior Vice President of Publishing at CityGrid Media),…

How will Twitter make money? It’s a question as old as time itself. Well, at least as old as Twitter itself. This weekend, film critic (and excellent Twitterer) Roger Ebert revisited the most obvious way Twi…

When Twitter first strolled into the world of commerce with EarlyBird. I yawned. Two-for-one tickets to the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice?” Pass. A 32″ Vizio HDTV from Target for $349.99? Oh boy! Except now i…

Maria Ogneva is the Director of Social Media at Attensity, a social media engagement and voice-of-customer platform that helps the social enterprise serve and collaborate with the social customer. You can follo…

I often hear authors complain about how “frontlist driven” the book publishing business has become. Frontlist is the term used to describe new book releases—those in the last twelve months or even the cur…

John Lounsbury submits:MSN Money and The Wall Street Journal have combined to produce an article detailing some of the problems that exist for those with college loans debt. Among the situations cited is a 41-…

Episode #213 of Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters…

Just a quickie – we’ve recently been using a fab free service called Social Mention that not only offers real time search for the places your name or brand is appearing, but also analyses…

Google will make some important changes to their legal terms and agreements with agencies next year. It will force extra transparency and it is a good thing.
Let’s speculate who they’re going after…I can get…

John Straw is CEO of InfluenceFinder, which has launched a tool which enables search marketers to analyse backlink data and build a list of influential websites which are providing valuable links.
InfluenceFi…

You’ve accepted a new copywriting project.
You’ve cashed your big fat retainer check, filed the contract, set the deadline, assured your client that you’ll write a winner, and you’re sitting at your des…

Contactless payments made using your phone are hardly a new idea in themselves, but when three of the big four US carriers decide to unite behind it, the time might have come to start paying closer attention….

Ever had a day when you felt off, when you weren’t accomplishing what you needed to accomplish, or worse, felt as though you didn’t have the ability or capability to accomplish?
Those days can be the toughe…

The crux behind game mechanics is the feeling that you’ve accomplished something; “Whether you’re clicking on a plot of land or a musical note, that is an accomplishment” says Social Gaming Network…

Having a company blog is often touted as an key part of an SEO and PR strategy. And as someone who spends her day reading author, investor, entrepreneur, and company blogs, and then turning around and writing…

Possibly the oldest human worldview is fear of strangers. And right next to that is anger as a byproduct of fear.If a candidate wants to gain attention and possibly votes, then, it makes short-term sense to sti…