Curated Stories July 14, 2010

The SEC filing for Foursquare’s $20 million Series B round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, just hit the wire.
From the filing, we learn:

The total offering is actually $19,999,996. (The other $4 must have gone to…

Foursquare, freshly flush with cash, is in the process of altering its service. They realize that the check-in model can only go so far, and they have to build utility on top of it. Part of that is changing th…

When Zappos released its API, there was a strange restriction: no mobile applications. While sometimes lawyers write terms that aren’t formally enforced, Zappos made it clear on its API mailing list that it w…

Shopkick, a startup that’s focused on bridging the real world shopping experience with mobile, just closed a rather large $15 million round of funding from Greylock Partners. Partner Reid Hoffman, who is also…

It’s interesting that Twitter took such a long time coming to the table with monetization plans. Because now it seems like the company is just coming up with as many strategies as possible to see what sticks….

Evernote has a simple business model. The information organization company has a free product that a majority of its users employ. A small percentage pay $5 a month to access premium features. It’s basic freemi…

When I was young I utterly worshipped Midnight Oil.
They were a highly political, environmentally-conscious Australian band who wrote an 80s hit, Beds Are Burning, but who had done a lot of other records they a…

“It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that.“
That was Microsoft COO Kevin Turner during his keynote speech at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington…

How do you get your users to interact with each other? That’s a question Envolve, a new Facebook-like chat feature for websites, is trying to solve. While we have seen a number of similar services in the past,…

I’ve written before about my relationship with Foursquare, and I’m sure I will again. I’ve tweeted my complaint that the “friend” mechanism is poorly instrumented (in various ways), and I should note that this…

British scientists claim they’ve solved one of life’s great mysteries, saying the proof is in a protein found in chickens’ ovaries, used to form an eggshell.

Last year, I spoke of the need to synchronize Social Media and Customer Service channels. The topic continues to come up. Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group took up the issue a few months later. And Pete…

If Apple is going to make another run at the living room — its first attempt, the Apple TV, is a dud — then its best strategy may be with a gaming-focused gadget.
That would thrust Apple into further competit…

Last year, I looked into the way companies are using Enhanced Facebook Pages as a way to beef up the branding and interactivity available with Facebook’s default Page settings. On my company blog, I explored…

Keyword Eye is a keyword suggestion tool which visualizes search volume and competitiveness by size and color.
Using results from the Google search based keyword tool it can accept two inputs:

Keyword – this w…

“According to an extensive 2009 study conducted by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, most Americans, no matter what their age, spend at least eight and a half hours a day looking at a televis…

Engaging. Compelling. Fun. Viral. All terms you don’t think of when you think of B2B marketing, right? Well, think again. Or better yet, read on to learn how Cisco is making content fun…and even funny…and n…

Today at a special event in San Francisco, Evernote CEO Phil Libin unveiled Trunk, a new showcase of products, services, and hardware devices that have integrated Evernote. The idea is to help users enchance t…

I’ve tried to avoid the topic of Consumer Reports’ “not recommending” the iPhone 4 because, frankly, it became apparent instantly to me that most news coverage of what Consumer Reports actually did was…

“My sense is there’s a new generation of guys who will be coming home with newspapers on their iPads every night, and we want Women’s Wear [Daily] to be a part of that.” — Conde’s new Fairchild Fashion G…

Okay, the iPhone 4 death grip fiasco has official hit a new level now that it’s a late night punch line. There’s no turning back after both Letterman here in the states and Top Gear across the pond have bot…

Ed Dale:

Here’s the thing, out the front of my home there is a vortex of
Next G misery — every time I pull my car in front of my house
for the past five years, Blackberry, Nokia, First three iPhones…

The current issue of Sports Illustrated for the iPad makes a substantial break from the latest paper magazine, reports observe. Whereas the latter’s cover story deals with NBA player LeBron James, the iPad edi…

According to MacRumors, Apple is looking to make some minor changes to their Genius Bar. The focus will be on an active queue management, employee multitasking, and performing more overnight repa…

This series is supported by IGLOO, a leader in helping organizations improve business processes, increase employee productivity and enhance stakeholder engagement inside and outside the organization using socia…

Facebook now has 150 million mobile users and plans to migrate all features found on PCs to phone platforms.

UPDATED. As Google has infiltrated many of our online activities — mail, calendaring, search history, blogging and even YouTube viewing — it asks us to use a single Google Account. But finally, the company…

Your success with online video boils down to one thing — quality.
But there’s a lot more to the quality of an online video than visual clarity.
In fact, there are five crucial qualities when it comes to market…

Remember PleaseRobMe? The social experiment (now shuttered) formerly displayed real-time updates from Foursquare users who publicly broadcasted their current location via Twitter. In aggregate, the site’s found…

Last week we grabbed coffee with SAI Startup 2010 finalist Marissa Evans, CEO and Founder of GoTryItOn.com.
GoTryItOn.com is a crowd-sourced fashion and shopping advice site, where users can upload pictures of…

Jeremy Richardson heads up Business Development at Mixpanel, Inc. a real-time analytics service that helps companies understand how users behave with web applications.For a while, a big limitation of online opt…

The latest data and charts from ChangeWave research suggest that smartphone sales are set to explode — thanks to a finally-recovering economy — and that Apple and HTC are the two smartphone brands in highest…

Social currency—everybody wants it. It is not about being popular or smart or beautiful (although those things help). It is about influence, and power, and money. On the Internet, social currency takes on…

The Old Spice guy just took his YouTube campaign to a whole new level by proposing to a woman on behalf of one of his Twitter followers. The fan tweeted within hours that she’d agreed to marry him. Yesterday…

If you want your web marketing efforts to be as successful as possible in overseas markets, you need to think about properly localising your websites for the regions you are targeting. There are several issu…

Let’s face it, not everyone has access or resources to employ the premium search engine marketing tools such as Hitwise and Omniture. However, the same type of results can be achieved using tools available…

We have that handy “Search Queries” link in Google Webmaster Tools that is supposed to show for which keywords our website does well on Google. Besides, the tools shows “Average position” for each keywo…

Dave Brazzle of the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palatine, IL explains how the church and school uses Highrise and Backpack.

I am an Elder (lay leadership) at Immanuel Lutheran Church And School, located here i…

Is the iPhone 4 Apple’s Windows Vista? Yes–according to…Microsoft’s COO.

Prior to the July 4th Holiday, reports that Twitter would soon launch a dedicated stream for special and promotions hit the web. Today, Twitter announced that the @earlybird account takes flight and Disney goe…

[Update: EEE! Old Spice Man read our post and sent me a personalized video of my own. Check it out on YouTube or see the embedded video below.]
The stars, they align.
Yesterday we chatted about the lack of rem…

Video games are a big waste of time. We all know it, but for some reason you still end up playing them for hours at a time. Why? Well, it’s because the elements within games, such as a scoreboard and action…

If you want to get the most out of your Verizon FiOS (fiber to the home) Internet connection, here are your top two tiers:

I have the one on the left, and that’s what I’m paying for it. The service is rock…

Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed by some element of your online business?
Image by Stephan Poff
I’ve felt that way many times, both in the early days and even now. For me it usually comes when I’m…

With Microsoft and Salesforce.com locked in market and legal combat, the “open-source” (see update below) SugarCRM is quietly building its own empire. The company has landed over 6,000 customers with its focus…

Drafts of my new book on power (and the HBR article drawn from it) provoke strong reactions. One reason is that I show little concern for any aspect of organizational effectiveness. In stark contrast to virtual…

Google’s “Send-To-Car” feature lets users send destinations from Google Maps directly to their vehicles. This feature previously worked with BMW and Audi vehicles, and now Google has extended its partner…

For web workers, frequent flyer programs and other rewards programs can be a useful way to stretch tight travel budgets. During my recent cross-country trip, I was able to stay in several hotels at no cost, usi…

You’ve probably heard the saying “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” It’s a reminder that we can never know what it’s like to be that person: perhaps they’re struggl…

Karl Smith submits:

In a lot ways it makes sense. Big problems should have big causes. The social and political context that we live in should be far more important than a few simple equations. And, certain…

Mobile searches account for an estimated 10% of Google queries, says Citi analyst Mark Mahaney in a research note released earlier this week. The report, which examined the new comScore search market data, main…

Below: QA with Dan Clifford, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of AnswerLab. This is part of our “Bootstrapped, Profitable, Proud” series which profiles companies that have $1MM+ in revenues, didn’t take V…

Ever wonder why conversion rates are so low?
A “good” sales page will usually convert between 1 and 5 percent of its readers. Those numbers vary wildly depending on about a zillion factors…

My friend Mike Balzano shot me a note this morning that I had to check out what Old Spice was doing on its Twitter account.

Then, thirty minutes and about 20 videos later, I started writing this post. �…

There has been a lot of talk about Twitter’s potential as a medium for customer service over the years, but there has also been a lot of skepticism because of Twitter’s limitations. Beyond the fact that tweets…

Verizon Business has created a service to store patient medical records online in a manner accessible to patients, physicians and insurers. The Verizon Health Information Exchange takes a doctor’s records, st…

After researching what pandas do all day, I was struck by how panda-like we are when we use the Internet. More »

Per usual, it seems as if this deal has happened in the dark of the night, but thankfully for the curious among us, its a bit difficult to disguise a caravan of humans escaping Québec and fleeing to Cupertino…

I liked Srinivas Kandikonda’s article in Technology News about the need for a social media strategy and although he is writing about media organizations, the lessons apply equally to any b…

Here we are just past the halfway mark in 2010 and we’ve tapped into the stream of future marketing planning with our readers for 2011 with a poll. Our question? What 3 online marketing channels tactics will…

75 percent of journalists find well-targeted news releases with high-quality content useful, according to a new survey of 750 journalists conducted by Oriella PR Network, an alliance of 15 PR…

There are certain things you should consider when setting up your Twitter account. As you can see from the graphic above, those are: Username, avatar, bio, link, and background.USERNAMEWhen I set up my Twit…

Perhaps the biggest threat to Google is that people who want to find things (to buy) on the Internet will stop using search and start using apps from Apple’s app store.
Why use Google to search for a local move…

The post-relational document database CouchDB reached its milestone 1.0 release today. Couchio, the corporate sponsor of the free open-source project, boasts that speeds in the new release are up 300% over ver…

alex was the first of a few of you to send over the story of how author Marta Acosta posted her “young adult vampire novel” online for free at Scribd, where it became a top download with tons of great reviews…..

The new version of Digg has changed the playing field for two of its biggest constituents: power users and publishers. We discuss this with a long-time Digg power user.
The latest version of social news site Di…

Fresh off the heels of announcing the acquisition of Android Twitter client Twidroyd and popurls, Twitter search and advertising platform operator TweetUp has signed up several new distribution partners.
TweetU…

Residents who buy real estate in these growing cities see their incomes go the furthest.

Over the past few months in this monitoring series we have been looking at specific situations where B2B companies would benefit from using a social media monitoring solution, rather than relying on just Googl…

Part Two of Three
In the book Engage!, I use music as a metaphor for the business approach necessary to execute socialized programs flawlessly. I suggest that today, many organizations approach new media with…

[Faking mathematical agility in a job interview - 3:41]

When Harry and I met, I had just started blogging. I knew him as the marketing headhunter from the career column in the Wall Street Journal’s the C…

Social media continues its inexorable march into the mainstream web world and figures released by Nielsen Wire in June provide very interesting reading.

Social Media Networks and Blogs consume nearly 25% of…

There is a a saying in the offline world of real estate that there are three things that are critical when considering buying property and they are position, position, position!!
In the online digital univer…

The humble blog has developed from small beginnings to become a multi-media rich social media technology platform for personal branding, corporate thought leadership, an outlet for people’s hobbies,passions…

The news from Microsoft this week about its private cloud initiative points to an undeniable trend. The concept of the private cloud is here to stay.

This sticks in the craw of many a cloud computing veteran…

Everyone knows that Apple is an extremely secretive company. Some would say to a fault. But it seems to have served them well over the years. That’s why it’s not surprising at all to see that none of Apple…

There was this place. Lenny’s Nosh Bar. Depending on your age when you found it, it was where you hung out in college, high school, or after college. One of its habitués, talking it over on a Facebook page dev…

Facebook’s new head of mobile products, Eric Tseng, spoke today at MobileBeat 2010, introducing a new approach to the company’s OpenGraph.

“Where we’re going from here is a platform strategy. We’re going away…

Bravo. The Court of Appeals has struck down the FCC’s indecency rule — specifically, its fines for “fleeting expletives” — as “unconstitutionally vague.”
No shit.
Fox is the official victor here…

I just don’t understand Columbia University’s apparent obsession with handing over portions of the press to government subsidy, giving up on the free market. I haven’t given up on it. Have you?
The lates…

In a move certain to please small and medium business owners, social media management platform HootSuite announced today the addition of new features to help users learn more about their Twitter followers.

Usi…

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series…

Curation is increasingly crucial for finding the most important and relevant information on the Web. It’s used to point out insights which would not have ordinarily been discovered in the wash of data that over…

Earlier today, we first spotted Twitter’s new name search results feature on twitter.com. At first glance, it looks to be a brilliant tool for new user discovery — especially among celebrities whose names w…

We have really messed ourselves up, haven’t we? It used to be that we could expect correspondence from two (at most three) ways: phone, mail, face to face. Look at us now. Have we really improved the world?…

Most of the time, we think of our job as a set of tasks that take place in a — [box] —.It turns out, though, that if we go upstream and alter the stuff that comes to us, its a lot easier to do great work. A…

These past few days, I’ve sat here and watched as the iPhone 4 antenna hoopla has swept the nation (and I assume the world, though I’m not hearing much from abroad). Don’t get me wrong, the issue is very…

Link building while trying to leverage the authority of Wikipedia is one of the biggest frustrations to SEO’s industry-wide – and it’s pretty easy to see why.
Which reason do you typically go with? High ran…

It’d be an understatement to say that this has been a terrible week for Apple, and we haven’t even reached the halfway point.On Monday, Consumer Reports dealt a devastating blow to the iPhone 4 when it decl…

James Dempsey has updated his tutorial on how to create your own fancy stationery in mail.app for Snow Leopard.
First posted in 2007, he has updated it to make sure that nothing got broken in the last two year…

In the discount world, lowest price is king.

In the online discount coupon world, Groupon hopes to be king via customer service.

Since launching in November 2008, the Chicago-based deal-a-day websi…

Business cards may seem extremely outdated in today’s technology-driven world. However, they are actually an important part of your brand. Think of business cards as a portable version of you…

You’re faced with an “old” brand (which interestingly – to me at any rate – was originally created for women in 1937) launched in 1938. It’s a brand with a lot of baggage, particularly in a world…

This is one I’m being asked a lot at the moment, so worth a blog in the hope that it will help others.
We’ve already talked in the past about adding FBML to your Facebook Page in order to m…

Guest post by Mike Cassidy, a non-profit Senior Executive Director specializing in membership development, engagement and retention. His ramblings can be found at www.membershipjedi.comThis post is a compilati…

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. And when
it comes to email, you only have a couple of seconds to make a good
impression.That’s according to Litmus, a provider of email marketing a…

Author: Ben Shaw (@BenShaw), Strategist, BBH London

Iron Man 2 transmedia marketing
Dan Light’s profile description on Twitter (@danlight) reads: “Interactive marketer (and maker) of movies”. Although t…

There are hundreds of statistical guides
showing the beneficial effects of having a presence on Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn and any number of other networks, but the despite all
the buzz there still seems to…

In today’s Start Me Up we hear from Heikki Haldre, CEO of Fits.me, a
unique company utilising biorobotics to help transform the online
clothing retail market.
If you run a B2C focussed start-up and would l…

Updated: Squarespace, a hosted content service that competes with companies such as WordPress (see disclosure below) has closed a $38-million financing round from two leading technology VCs — Accel Partners…

darthcamaro writes SugarCRM markets itself as a professional open source company and this week released version 6 of its Sugar platform. But the main new feature is a new user interface that isnt available to u…

Going back a few years, the Internet was not considered a credible media source. That changed, but it’s changing again.

In the early days of online publishing (even pre-Blogging) the simple fact that any one i…

Back in May, I attended Google’s I|O conference at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It was an eminently worthwhile event, but wireless connectivity issues were a persistent problem–demos during both of the…

I bet you can’t name one student over the age of 18 that doesn’t own a highlighter…
That’s because highlighting is often an important part of note taking, reading and studying – especially in colleg…

Twitter has rolled out a number of new monetization models in recent weeks and a change to the search results page tonight may be the next one we’ll see. Last Friday Peter Kafka published a report on AllThings…

For some time now, Flickr users have been able to use Picnik to edit photos in-stream without leaving the app. Now that Picnik is a Google property, Picasa users will have roughly the same advantage.As of today…

Yanko, the design blog we highlight occasionally, shows us a device design by Antonia Haaf meant to automatically detect melanoma, called Black Skin Cancer.
Details are vague, as they usually are with concept d…

Twitter has just made it a lot easier to find other users with the integration of people within search results.Twitter has had people search for years now — it’s a useful tool to find friend or brands that…

There is a growing gap in credit scores. What a polarized market means for you.

Webapp Food on the Table creates weekly meal plans and grocery lists based on food you (and your family) enjoy, then hooks into your local grocery stores to fi…

This past weekend, Calvin Klein Jeans replaced three of its billboards — two in downtown New York and one on Sunset Boulevard in LA — not with another racy montage of scantily clad models, but with a bright…

Appolicious – As the app universe evolves from the hundreds of thousands available today to several million in the very near future, consumers will demand a smarter and more social way to discover apps, predict…

Microsoft has announced the release of Microsoft Outlook Social Connector, which will bring friends data from Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace into users Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010. Before anyone says Buzz an…

Minda Zetlin recently wrote an article here at the Inc Technology website about keeping tabs on your mobile workforce. She mentioned a mobile technology application that can tell managers exactly where workers…

By now, you have undoubtedly heard that Consumer Reports has flipped its position on the iPhone 4 antenna. At first, the publication said that the signal woes weren’t as serious as the Inter…

Here’s a neat trick that let’s you re-program one key fob to unlock all your cars. It’s like a universal remote, but for your car. More »

Alexander B. Howard (@digiphile) is the Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics. He will share open source technology news…

The mission of TED (Technology Education Design) is to promote “ideas worth spreading.” And as such, there is plenty of material that entrepreneurs – folks definitely interested in spreading their ideas – can f…

I Tweeted this this morning.

I immediately got about 100 or so retweets saying “right on!” or “Hell yes!” or similar.
Now as you all know, I’m pretty much the most approachable person in like, the hi…

Admit it, 99% of your Twitter searches are for vanity purposes. You do it, I do it, we all do it. And such a search revealed a potentially very useful and powerful new feature today. Twitter is now injecting n…