Curated Stories July 28, 2010

It seems that all Kindle orders have been frozen and, it seems, that Jeff Bezos is hanging around New York right now and will speak on Charlie Rose tonight. While I seriously doubt that Bezos will whip out the…

Twitter has begun testing User Streams, a new Streaming API that will finally give Twitter desktop apps real-time capabilities and streams.According to Twitter Developer Advocate Taylor Singletary, Users Stream…

As we invariably move more and more into a mobile computing world questions need to be asked about just how secure our information that we are sharing all over the place really is. The need for serious mobile…

More women than men across the world visit social networking sites and spend 30% more time per month using them.As such, in the “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet” report, comScore conclu…

One of the most difficult things about protecting your content on the Web is finding ways to encourage legitimate sharing of content without encouraging less desired use. We almost all want people to Tweet,…

AP – Your smart phone applications are watching you — much more closely than you might like.

GetGlue, an iPhone app and Web site that lets you tell your friends what you’re reading or watching and also promises on-target recommendations, has a new deal with HBO.

Watch out Meebo, there’s a new kid on the block. Israeli startup Wibiya, which publicly launched its web-based, customizable toolbar to publishers in January of this year, is seeing impressive traffic for a…

Kevin Kelly has posted a list of what he believes are the best magazine articles ever.

Very cool find! I just heard about it. “131 Visual Studio 2010 Code Snippets for use with jQuery” http://jquerysnippets.codeplex.com/ -Marc

From Wikipedia articles to visual recognition and translation with Google Goggles, Google is constantly working to rebuild the Tower of Babel and enable frictionless multi-lingual communication.

Its latest eff…

It’s becoming clear that Google is getting ready to launch a social networking platform to challenge Facebook. Most recently, The Wall Street Journal reported last night that the big social gaming companies th…

Just because Google gives away its Android operating system, doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a big business, says Eric Schmidt.
In an interview with the WSJ, he says he thinks it can be a $10 billion business…

Today we are happy to announce the Zoho Affiliate Program. The Zoho Affiliate Program allows publishers, bloggers and site owners in general to make money by referring customers to Zoho.Becoming a Zoho Affiliat…

Apple on Wednesday launched a program for iPhone developers to advertise their own apps via the iAd network.

An anonymous reader writes “In the past, I’ve seen my pictures used by big commercial companies despite the Creative Commons license that clearly limits them to non-commercial use. I just let it slide because a…

PC World – CRM (customer relationship management) software has established a significant foothold on Google’s Apps Marketplace since its launch in March, according to an official blog post this week.

Thanks to the popularity of Evo, Sprint gained 111,000 net subscribers in the second quarter, the first time the company has seen net subscriber growth in thre…

Mobile advertising is currently a billion dollar market and we’ve witnessed tech giants like Google and Apple move into the space with the acquisitions of mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless, respec…

When SCVNGR CEO and founder Seth Priebatsch dropped out of Princeton to pursue his startup full time, he spent the first year of operations going after enterprise clientele. Thursday, those behind-the-scenes ef…

The leaders in the social media space talk about creating community, engaging consumers, and being transparent and trust oriented. Absolutely. This type of communication requires a thoughtful a…

The sheer volume of social media marketing and search engine optimization advice posted online can make it difficult for companies to make sense out what direction they should take. There are many models and ap…

Okay, maybe that’s going too far. I don’t really recommend firing your marketing manager. I do however believe that most companies will eventually need to hire or contract with a community manager, if they have…

The breast cancer rate is 10% higher on people’s left side than right. Why? Some researchers think it’s because people tend to sleep on their right side, and t…

Do you need a few more ways to smile on Facebook? A few more ways to express yourself? Maybe you just want to add a cute smiling animal to your post. This round up of various Emoticons will have all your Facebo…

Many an article is written on the topic of focus. People tell you that in order to meet your goals, you must push everything away that can distract you. You must focus on that one thing, until…

This week two deals were announced. Game Stop bought Kongregate and Disney acquired Playdom.
Add to that the shopping lists that major game companies brought with them to the Casual Connect conference and the p…

Facebook is reportedly in “late stage negotiations” to acquire New York-based startup Hot Potato, which launched with promise late last year but hasn’t attracted a big following.
If true, this is a smart little…

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…

Last week a clever, duplicitous fifteen-year-old got Apple to approve an iPhone flashlight app which contained a secret tethering utility. A few days later, Citi told users of its iPhone mobile banking app t…

Verizon smartphone owners may ultimately use more data than their supposedly more aggressive iPhone-using counterparts at ATT, Validas discovered. Despite stereotypes, those with Droids and other Verizon devic…

I doubt there has ever been a cartoonist who combined sick, twisted and funny as well as John Callahan. Callahan – quadriplegic and alcoholic – was totally without fear when it came to finding humor in a s…

… is about Wikileaks. Not the war. But not oddly.
All stories have three elements:
1) A character. A protagonist. The main human subject. Sometimes it’s a cause, but it requires personification. In sports i…

The Wall Street Journal has added fuel to recent reports that Google is working on a gaming-based social network as a way of competing with Facebook. Word first leaked out about the project — reportedly cod…

Over the weekend we alerted users to the return of profile spy, a tool that promises to let users see who’s viewing their profile. As we said last week, the tool is fake, however it isn’t preventing thousa…

A few weeks before Christmas, Eutisha Rennix, a pregnant restaurant worker, collapsed while working. She started having a seizure and her co-workers were screaming for help.
There were two EMT workers in line…

One of the great things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running w…

This has been linked around quite a bit in the last week, but it’s worth a look if you haven’t read it and like Bill Murray at all. According to the article, this is only the fourth or fifth time that Murray ha…

In our popular Facebook for Business Superguide we included a section on Facebook Groups and Pages.
But, with Facebook’s new “like” feature and the growing popularity of Facebook Pages as…

“What am I doing wrong?” I whispered to the computer screen.
A part of me wanted nothing more than to go to bed and forget about blogging forever.
And yet, there I was, hunched over the co…

Thanks to the rise of massive social networks, namely Facebook, and a
multi-billion dollar virtual currency market, social gaming has become
one of the hottest spaces on the consumer internet.But there’s anothe…

Motorola’s officially not pulling any punches, with a full-page Droid X ad in the NY Times today making it clear that their phone don’t need no stinking bumper. If their last ad was a jab, this one’s a full-…

Heres a crazy idea: A location-based mobile app with points that actually lead to a tangible prize.
Foursquare caught the drift launching a free coffee deal with Starbucks, and now location-based app SCVNGR i…

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technol…

Last week I was privileged to speak with Paul Tarini, team director of the Pioneer Portfolio at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Our full interview is available in the associated podcast. Topics and questio…

This is Frank Eliason‘s last week at Comcast. The poster boy for leveraging social media for customer service and, in the process, turning around a struggling company’s image, will no longer…

The Grateful Dead frequently threw their support behind causes and ideas they believed in, especially anything related to improving life in their home base of San Francisco. This is an idea we discuss in chapt…

One of the best new resources for those wanting to make money from blogging is a new eBook (and available as a ‘real’ book is How to Build a Successful Blog Business by Collis Ta’eed.
I had the opportunit…

5 old sales tricks made new again
Anyone ever take one of the old sales trainings from back in the day – Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, etc.? There were tons of interesting tips and tricks for sales folks from a ti…

Fresh off the heels of launching a slew of new products yesterday, Apple this morning debuted Safari 5.0.1, switching the flip on Safari Extensions and formally introducing the Safari Extensions Gallery, a dir…

Have you ever walked into an airport, seen that there is nobody in line at the check-in counter, but still made a bee-line for the self-service kiosk? Better yet, have you ever waited in line for an ATM machin…

Users have just a 50-50 chance of finding what they want from a website’s site search function, which suggests that there is much room for improvement.
Econsultancy’s Site Search Report, published in associat…

Liam Fitzpatrick wrote a controversial post earlier this month, saying that he thought writing skills are over-rated for communicators:
“To be honest I don’t think being a good writer mat…

Up to one-third of workplace conversation involve some form of deception. Unsurprisingly, the most common work-place lie is faking a “sickie”.
Body language and facial expressions can give away signs that…

When my cousin was a little over one year of age, her parents discovered that she couldn’t walk. An otherwise bright and happy child, she was facing a life of physical therapy aimed at treating symptoms. E…

Social Media is greater than the sum of its parts, but it is these parts that define the socialization of business. Today consumers are interacting with peers, brands, and influencers in social networks at var…

Facebook is pushing further into the credits business, promoting other ways that users can earn them through real-world and virtual transactions.

The Facebook Credits page yesterday posted this update: “Besi…

While the depth of our humanity has a great deal to do with the strength of our influence it is also the leading cause of most of our blunders. On our way to contribute to the greater good, we often trip over…

Here’s another hole for you to fill, Twitter. While users of the popular status message website can easily block spammy members, there’s no way to find a list of accounts that you have blocked. No way, that…

Created by Jason Baptiste, PadPressed is a WordPress plugin that makes any WordPress blog look like a native iPad app when accessed from iPad. PadPressed bestows upon your humble blog the iPad fea…

We’re hearing from sources close to the deal that Facebook is in late stage negotiations to buy Hot Potato, the social activity service. The deal is not yet finalized from what we’re hearing, but could be a…

Newspaper circulation could soon jump wildly, thanks to new standards the industry recommended for itself.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations announced major changes to the way it counts digital readership toda…

You know those YouTube videos with that manly Old Spice guy and his hilarious responses to Twitter fans? Of course you do. So does everybody, it seems, because Old Spice body wash sales have increased 107% in t…

Imagine a hospital that could respond to medical emergencies armed with real-time information about exactly where all its doctors were located. Inside the hospital, which cardio specialist is closest to the 4t…

Amy Webb wasn’t planning on starting another business. But two years ago, as revenue-strapped newspapers began closing down or laying off staff, the former reporter and editor turned digital media consultant…

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story about author William Rosen appearing on The Daily Show hyping his new book about the steam engine, where he claims that the industrial revolution happened because…

Dear Foursquare,Whether it’s a fad, or a trend, or the next generation of the world’s currency, location based services are much-discussed these days, and there is no argument that you are in the driver’s seat….

By this point everyone and their mother knows that Google is trying to create a Facebook-type social networking service. It’s been confirmed by Quora’s Adam D’ Angelo, given an ETA by a source internal to…

What is the point when a CRM application becomes a collaboration service? And when does a collaboration service become a CRM application?

These are question we ask ourselves when we see the range of services w…

WordPress themes should not go out of their way to tie us to their use.
Take Thesis, for example.* Over the course of a few months with Thesis, you may have hundreds of posts which make use of Thesis-specific f…

I had a call the other day with Mario Sundar and two other LinkedIn employees (Wasn’t sure I had permission to name you both). We were talking about my recent post about LinkedIn and sharing. Here’s why Ma…

The cost of being first is higher than it’s ever been…It’s entirely possible that you’re racing.Racing to the market with a new product or a news story or a decision or an innovation. The race keeps getting f…

Even TV execs aren’t too myopic to see the changes wrought by social media
MediaPost Publications, July 27, 2010 — Interesting look at the positive impact that social media is having on TV.
Read | Link…

While scaling and monetizing e-commerce is still an issue for many of the top retailers in the world, those merchants should also keep an eye out on virtual goods.

News came down this week that the Executive D…

I wrote about Facebook for Public Relations back in January and provided a few suggestions for how public relations professionals can use Facebook as part of the PR tool set. Facebook must hav…

Now here is a headline that grabs the attention of any social media marketer: “Study: Most brands still irrelevant on Twitter.”
Only problem is the headline, which appeared in the digital version of Advert…

Are you addicted to the internet? Or perhaps Facebook, or email? If you say ‘yes’, you’re one of a growing number of people who feels compelled to interact with technology on a regular basis.
This is a trend th…

While Twitter has consistently struggled to make a monetisation strategy
stick, third party developers may have hit on a solution: haggling.
With paid
tweets and trending topics, Twitter has flirted with the…

Seth Godin is perhaps one of the most widely read marketers in the world, and with good reason. His long string of best-sellers have been pushing the envelope in marketing for decades.
Today we…

We’ve talked in the past about helping vs. selling, and that the former approach takes you a lot further in the realm of social media and word of mouth marketing.When I discuss this concept with companies, ho…

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the case of the time-management tool Chrometa and the startup’s self-described “failed” launch. In its blog, Chrometa explained some of the steps it took to keep pushing pro…

I have been running SocialMediaJobs.com.au as a free site for a couple of years now. The aim was to “connect the connectors” – to bring those with jobs to those who want them. When I started there was on…

When mobile augmented reality experiences started popping up on smartphones in the last year, the majority of the apps helped people find businesses and other points-of-interest. Now as the social Web becomes i…

Good friends and family do more than make life worth living. These relationships can actually add years to your life.

I have recently upgraded my blog and added new features as part of a continual optimization of the platform. Optimizing is a journey and not a destination and adding new features such as Retweet buttons and Fac…

According to Forrester Research, a service is only as powerful as its reach. And considering that only 4% of U.S. online adults have used location-based mobile apps, marketers should keep away.
Even if these s…

Mashable – Another rad browser plugin called Google Alarm hit the Internets this week, which alerts you every time your personal info is sent to Google’s servers. How? Via notifications, a running tally of dan…

“I saw that you checked in there on Foursquare,” said the stranger calling the restaurant where Shea Sylvia was dining. He suggested they “hang out,” adding, “…