Curated Stories Feb. 18, 2010

It took Leo Tolstoy six years to craft the 460,000-word War and Peace. A cheap copywriting service could churn out as many words for your website for just $9,200 (at 2 cents a word) over the course of a few we…

Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.Companies on the social web are increasingly trying to create better rela…

Web Strategy Summary
Facebook to now offer Paypal as an additional way to buy advertisements and virtual currency for social games (press release). This paves a way for Facebook to reach global advertisers w…

Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home — According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops i…

Since its launch two weeks ago, Google’s new Buzz service has generated a flurry of privacy concerns — concerns that have caused considerable anxiety and outrage in at least one high-profile case, and led…

When I wrote yesterday’s post Food, Inc.: I will never look at dinner the same way again I intended to point out some tools you can use to make informed decisions about what you eat and the companies that ar…

Part of what ails the public relations profession is its insistence on measuring its success by clip counting (counting the number of articles or mentions), with audience impressions or reach (how ma…

If you get robbed after posting your whereabouts online, blame your own stupidity and hope your looter is caught, because you will not get very far by suing pleaserobme.com.
Asked whether the site could be liab…

We know that Apple’s CEO is no fan of Flash, the Web animation software. But it sounds like Steve Jobs really unleashed on the Adobe system to try and convince the Wall Street Journal to ditch it for the iPad….

Is a unique visitor really unique? If other people browsing online are anything like Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson–who accesses the web from seven different browsers and multiple devices every day–chance…

If youre a retailer, and youre not managing your own online sales, you should stop and think: Whats stopping me? These days, there isnt much. Sure, plenty of third-party sites – think eBay or Etsy – exist t…

How does Apple do it? Can anyone else do it? Can you?

MediaPost Publications, February 17, 2010 — The Always On Brand (AOB) is a concept that I use to describe how your brand should operate in todays ever-connected world. The AOB is a brand that is actively…

Google
January 2010: 65.4%
December 2009: 65.7%
Change: -0.3
January 2009: 63.0%
Change: +2.4
Yahoo
January 2010: 17.0%
December 2009: 17.3%
Change: -0.3
January 2009: 21.0%
Change: -4.0
Bing
January 2010: 11…

Critical business systems modernize slowly. If it isn’t broken, it’s rarely fixed.

Lets look at another idea of what to do in your first week of blogging. Related to our previous post in this series which focused upon writing compelling content – is a task that I think can be a very useful…

A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. And what are they doing there? Educating themselves, conducting business, managing finances…

What does Google’s Pagerank, the scientific citation index and the taxonomy of plants, animals and insects have in common with LEGO bricks? They are all systems. A post over at the MIT Technology review exami…

Google News has just open-sourced its code to create what it calls Living Stories. What this really is, I think, is Google’s attempt to take editors to school on content presentation in our new world.
The ar…

The social Web is a pretty wide open space, which can make keeping your program on course a challenge. If you’re thinking of launching a social media program, there are a few fundamental questions you sho…

A Guest Post by Brenda Harris

We live in a social world, one that has not only completely redefined terms in the English language, but also invented new ones to fit the changing face of communication. “F…

Android: Google’s Listen was already a pretty handy podcast client, except that managing your feeds was a pain. With its latest release, Listen now lets you manage your subscriptions from Google Reader, and add…

It may seem obvious, and perhaps it’s also a bit self-serving, but TomTom co-founder and CEO Harold Goddijn says it isn’t the hardware that fuels the explosion in global positioning, or even the ubiquitous…

David Chism: “A Less Complicated CRM Program: Highrise.”

Highrise is a less complicated CRM, contact manager program. Most CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) have a lot of gadgets and functionality. I’v…

There is one area within the “Local Search Sphere” that brings a wide amount of debate when it comes to ranking impacts, importance, and ethical dilemmas. That area is reviews. Dah dah daahhhhhh. ß Scary…

Google suggest can be both helpful and fun. It may save your time and give you an idea what other people are looking for when searching for similar words as you are.
Last week I discovered one fun web applicati…

If you’re going to spend your career dealing in text — the currency of most online communication — you might be interested in upping your ability to express yourself, specifically your written communicati…

Read the rest of this story »See Also:Is Yahoo’s Right Media Re-Branding Wiping Out Your Business?IPOs Are Up!CHART OF THE DAY: Online Ad Rates Picking Up

More than 74,000 PCs at nearly 2,500 organizations around the globe were compromised over the past year and a half in a botnet infestation…

Michael Shulman submits: Thursday morning the jobless claims number came out and was significantly higher than expected – 473,000. Well, unexpected for some. Anyone who walks down Main Street and does not eat…

This all started with a Linked In discussion http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswersdiscussionID=13905943gid=1877517commentID=12015063trk=view_disc about the appropriate metric for online…

Every two years my firm, The RBL Group, partners with Hewitt to conduct a study on the Top Companies for Leaders. It highlights those companies that have gone beyond the basics of grooming strong leaders and ha…

It took me awhile but I have become a big evangelist for Facebook. Its now my primary source of information. I suspect, from looking at the data, that this is true for millions – although I bet most dont even…

Websites are almost like business cards, everyone has one and they aren’t afraid to hand out the URL at every available opportunity. But unlike business cards, websites need ongoing attention and …

Today, I wanted to share a story with you.
One of my developer friends has a reasonably successful web start-up, especially for a new site. An unnamed company that sells internet marketing software (bundled w…

When Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, reviewed True/Slant–an online news organization started nine months ago by Lew Dvorkin, former AOL editor-in-chief—he said:

“It is clear what you are getting—ed…

According to a recent editorial from Emergency Medicine News, emergency residency programs are doing a poor job preparing their emergency residents for the real world.
The authors note that a typical, large urb…

Here’s the million-dollar question: “What is the secret to a successful website?” I’m not foolish enough to suggest a single answer. But in more than a decade of working on client websites, I’ve noti…

Content consumers — the people who seek information but don’t create or curate it — are getting a raw deal.

Why? Because static articles don’t capture the kinetic energy newsworthy topics generate. Real-time…

Yikes. Is it really that long since my last post here? Funny how 5 years ago you would be lambasted for “not getting it” if you didn’t post at least once every day, yet now look at us.

However, I…

Last year I noticed articles and videos appearing online and on Social Media such as YouTube about the Ford Fiesta. So I decided to dig a little deeper to find out about what Ford were doing in Social Media to…

Andrew Rices new instruction book promises the secret of the perfect swing.

San Francisco-based PM Press were kind enough to send me a couple of their lovely little “Outspoken Authors” chapbooks, including The Lucky Strike, a volume by and about the science fiction great Kim Stanley R…

Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
Broad New Hacking Attack Detected — Global Offensive Snagged Corporate, Personal Data at nearly 2,500 Companies; Operation Is Still Running — Hackers in Europ…

With the global economy still on shaky ground and the auto industry taking a huge hit, I found it refreshing to find an automotive company thriving, and doing business in a completely new way. Local Motors is a…

For the first time, banks can look pretty deeply into your private life by looking at your Facebook or other social media page and they may even consider …

Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University recently conducted a national survey of reporters and editors to gauge their usage of social media sources when researching stories.
This is a topic I�…

It seems that the UK’s political parties have a lot to learn about email marketing, with all making some basic errors in their campaigns.
As demonstrated by Barack Obama, email can be a powerful tool in polit…

What happens when you start a group on Facebook and two weeks later,
you have over 180,000 members? If you’re 21 year-old Tiffany Philippou,
the creator of the hit Facebook group Secret London, you do the
entre…

Of all the amazing new technologies that are opening up possibilities to communicate and connect in the digital space, video is the one that holds the most promise. Who doesn’t remember the holographic memory…

Isn’t email wonderful?
I’m serious. Everyone complains about email now, but many copywriters just starting out now don’t remember the good old days when there was no email. I remember having to actually p…

A fake Hitler brought down conservatives’ efforts to gather online signatures for the Mount Vernon Statement. Is the Internet too free?

My first thought yesterday upon hearing the Tiger press conference news was that he’s trying to upstate the Match Play Championships to get back at Accenture for dropping him. I wasn’t the only one with tha…

In 1925, Francis Peabody famously said “The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.” A new book by Norman Makous, MD, a cardiologist who has practiced for 60 years, is a cogent remin…

My good buddy Robert Biswas-Diener, AKA the Indiana Jones of Positive Psychology, tells this story in an article on cnn.com, that fits in perfectly with my post from yesterday about the rules of productivity of…

Greg Mankiw recently said a VAT may be the best of a bunch of bad alternatives. I propose to rather than head further down the spectrum of regressiveness, we move the opposite direction by ending that which is…

This is just bizarre. As NBC continues its screwed up process of broadcasting the Olympics by delaying the actual telecast of important events until prime time, apparently a bunch of folks are pissed off that…

Yesterday I asked the question: does China really feel threatened by U.S. social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube? As usual, I got an education in the comments to the post. While it’s true t…

I don’t know too many normal people who find it easy to confront others. I sure don’t. I always go through an internal debate in my own head. Surely, this isn’t that big of a deal. Maybe I should just let…

Special effects comes in different flavors whether it be the original mind-blowing Matrix or the incredible claymation type movies. These six videos are from a new company called Mothership and if they are any…

Brilliant logic, reasoning, and research outlining BBC’s mobile strategy – http://bit.ly/b4DOke

It’s come a long way from the Sears and Roebuck mail order catalog. Yet, the new API might bring wrench and dishwasher company Sears the closest it’s been to its origins in decades. Developers can now searc…

As part of black history month, this Kitchen Table Talks video points out an exceptional audio collection that Hachette audio sent me, Martin Luther King: The Essential Box Set: The Landmark Speeches and Sermon…

For many marketers, considering mobile marketing year after year is the same story. The year starts off with lots of hype about it finally being the “year of mobile marketing” … and after a month o…

Clint Boulton / Google Watch:
How Google Is Becoming a Startup Incubator — Name a Web company that can have its employees leave, create new products, and then the company buys them out when they realize…

If you enjoy the content and conversation here at Social Media Rockstar, I invite you to subscribe to my new blog about online reputation.
Why am I going to the effort of publishing a whole new blog?
Because I…

“If you build it, he will come.” – Field of DreamsIf only this were true for any kind of online community. However, waiting for new members to show up and engage at your site will only rarely succeed….

Avoid the hassle of lugging your bags to the airport, getting slapped with over-limit fees, and fighting with the airlines to be reimbursed in the case of loss or theft by shipping your bags ahead.Photo by clif…

The recent launch Google Buzz brought to light one of the most common problems with participating in many social networks: duplication of posts. Whether you’re using social networks as an individual or on beh…

As we first reported on Friday, Microsoft is adding some social hooks into Outlook 2010. Outlook will gain the ability to pull in profile information, photos, and update streams from LinkedIn, Facebook, and M…

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.Web forms can be a great asset on…

A small software company in Seattle believes it can breathe some new life into the way charts and graphs are presented on the Web. Tableau Software has released a free version of their visualization package, w…

Microsoft is telling some of its biggest fans to stay off Twitter for the next few days.
That’s because right now Microsoft is holding its annual MVP Summit — a gathering of over 1,000 people who are, accordin…

We spend so much time and energy talking about the next big thing, the killer app or technology that’s going to help us be successful in achieving our goals. We talk strategies, toolsets, and ROI. We want to…

Wow. Doesn’t the NY Times have some of the world’s most famous and accomplished economists writing for them at times? You would think that, at some point, as they tried to figure out business model ideas, they…

Facebook has added new privacy options to give users more control over their Facebook applications and websites using Facebook Connect. The new changes follow December’s controversial privacy overhaul.In an…