Curated Stories June 10, 2010

Earlier this week Marty Weintraub had a fantastic article on Search Engine Land called How To Turn Your Social Media Averse Boss Into Your Champion. In his post, Marty outlined five different strategies to help…

After Apple basically decided to boot AdMob and Google out of the iPhone ad economy, AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui wrote that it would hurt developers relying on AdMob for ad revenue.
We’ve talked to a few developers a…

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha revealed to Reuters today that the company’s Android-powered mobile devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured. Verizon has had similar experiences with the Droid Incred…

Microsoft rolled out its free Office Web Apps earlier this week, introducing a free, basic Office suite for the web. How does it compare to Google’s own Docs o…

Filed under: SoftwareApple today released iTunes Connect Mobile, an iPhone (and iPod touch) app for allowing developers to view statistics about their products on the App Store. There are over 250,000 apps on t…

uTest’s Checkin Challenge report looked at checkin applications and found that Foursquare had the least amount of reported bugs and ranked highest in terms of ease of use, while Gowalla won in the location a…

Googles AdMob served far more ads to Apple iOS devices than to Google Android devices in April, the last month for which it released numbers (chart courtesy of AdMob).
Apple has invited the ad networks of the w…

Whiteboards are like Grand Central Station for ideas at Adaptive Path. They’re a thoroughfare for all the planning and thinking that goes into not only our client work, but also for the daily life of our comp…

This series is supported by Ben Jerry’s Joe, Ben Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.Color is a design tool that sets the tone, theme, and mood of a…

Facebook is a great tool for communicating with friends, family, and even business contacts, but it’s also a great tool for rapidly spreading myths and rumors. We regularly get emails about myths and rumors,…

One of the keys to Twitter is that on the face of it, it’s very simple to use. You just type in 140 characters or less, hit “Tweet,” and you’re done. But actually it’s a bit more complicated if you wa…

I’m not the only one that one that thinks most agencies still don’t get the social media.
“My personal experience is that most agencies are social media posers. They do not embrace social media for t…

Social Media is a relentless taskmaster. Once you begin participating in a social media marketing or thought leadership effort, it is hard to stop posting — even for a moment. It is a cognitive tread…

Qiq connected insole

The number of mobile devices using integrated wireless broadband is expected to top 2 billion by 2014, according to research firm In-Stat. That forecast represents an 11 percent cumulative…

Looking for directions on how to create a simple map within an application can be challenging. Sometimes the simplest of typos or a missed step in the process can become very frustrating. Many of the examples s…

How many articles can one person read about another newer version of the Apple iPhone?

Apple head honcho Steve Jobs launched the iPhone 4G this week in San Francisco at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conferen…

Twitter just announced the acquisition of Smallthought Systems, an analytics startup that helped the microblogging site create its online internal network based off of DabbleDB. Terms of the deal were not discl…

Safari 5 adds a number of flashy features. But for many people, the capability to reopen a tab you accidentally closed may be the most welcome.

AppsFire, a startup that helps you find new apps based on the apps you and your friends already like, whose funding we already covered, is pissed off at Apple.
Version 2 of the AppsFire app for iPhone hasn’t be…

Iced tea is a refreshing summertime drink that takes a bit of time to prepare and let cool. Today’s National Iced Tea Day, so let’s whip up a batch of quick-pr…

If you’re an early adopter, you’ve not doubt heard of (and probably even use) mobile “check-in” applications. Popular location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl, TriOut, Loopt and other…

Joyce’s Ulysses Banned Again—by Apple, Not the Government. According to Sarah Weinman at the Daily Finance; she says that a Webcomic adaptation of the book, Rob Berry and Josh Levitas’ Ulysses Seen, (previous…

Local business listings began with a basic business directory more than a decade ago. Chances are, your business has a local listing wherever you have a physical address location. Check it out — go to Goog…

Yesterday we noticed a new prompt that Facebook was using to promote their events box which is at the top of the user’s homepage sidebar. As any web optimization professional knows, this is significant real-…

Kevin Nakao is the Chief Operating Officer for WhitePages, a Top 40 Web and Mobile Publisher. You can find him on Twitter, and on the Whitepages Blog where he writes about mobile, local, and social media.Ever…

Google is making a few changes with web alerts this week. The search giant is retiring web alerts and replacing it with an ‘everything’ option.’
Google says that they are retiring web alerts because they…

Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Web Alerts No Longer Available — Google will no longer offer alerts for web search results and will replace them with comprehensive alerts that include resul…

Google has irritated a lot of users today by promoting its new background image feature on its normally minimalist home page.
Last week, Google announced that it was giving users the option of adding a backgrou…

Twitter has acquired Smallthought Systems, makers of Dabble DB and Trendly, an analytics dashboard that appears to have inspired the acquisition.With the acquisition, Twitter will bring the Smallthought team i…

In my last article I talked about how freelancers, in an effort to save money, often fall prey to those all-in-one el-cheapo DIY Website solution packages. These sites often end up costing more…

Earlier this week Marty Weintraub had a fantastic article on Search Engine Land called How To Turn Your Social Media Averse Boss Into Your Champion. In his post, Marty outlined five different strategies to hel…

Reuters – Social networking isn’t only for the under 40s. More than 25 percent of Americans 50 years and older stay connected using sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, according to new research.

Apple released the latest major version of its Web browser, Safari 5, earlier this week. Along with several new features—one of them somewhat controversial—the update was said to pack a…

What the hell is in a Twinkie? About 37 ingredients, it turns out. And photographer Dwight Eschliman has taken them all and photographed them separately. Who’s…

Brian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam.WordPress is the fastest growing CMS platforms…

Cloud-based storage and collaboration platform Box.net is launching Box Sync for Business, a new tool that will make it easy for businesses and organizations to keep their files on the desktop always in line w…

After launching the research report ‘Social Marketing Analytics‘ (also embedded below), my co analyst (also from Forrester) John Lovett and I recorded this webinar yesterday that had over 800 registrants an…

Seems like everybody wants to produce content that goes viral. Speaking from experience, you should be careful about what you wish for!
Last week I followed with tradition and posted something light and ente…

Normally there is an RSS icon in the right side of the address field, this is not the case when you’re on something like a blog. Instead, Safari 5 will display the Reader button.

To get to an RSS feed on a pag…

In the first-ever academic study of “passive” face time — when workers are seen in the office without any interaction — University of North Carolina professor Dan Cable and University of California Davi…

Job-seekers looking to land a position might want to consider an off-the-wall approach, according to a new study.

A lot of small business owners feel that there’s a cringe-factor associated with marketing; some resistance, avoidance and dread. It is possible, though, to create buzz-worthy promotional events around you…

Twitter COO Dick Costolo who was speaking at the Conversational Media Summit in New York City, offered up that Twitter is now attracting 190 million visitors per month and generating 65 million Tw…

I may be looking to hard for hopeful signs but I think we may be at the threshold of a reformation in advertising, which will mean larger changes in the communications world overall. Here are two of…

Almost every time I do an interview about blogging I’m asked some variation of this question:
What tips would you give a beginner wanting to make money blogging?
It’s always an interesting question to answe…

Back in October, 2006 I posted Newspapers 2.o, listing ten “hopefully helpful clues” for papers hoping to adapt to a world that would only get more and more of its news online. I ran the same list in August…

It must be “beat up on Apple” week. Not only has the company come under fire for new license terms in the iPhone OS that appear to block Google’s AdMob service, but some are crying foul over a new featu…

Today is the official launch date for a pair of mobile software applications from Phone.com aimed at giving users of Android handsets, iPhones and other smartphones sophisticated telephone and VOiP calling feat…

Google is testing a new feature in Gmail, in which a phone icon opens a special Gmail chat window consisting of a dialpad, contact search, credit balance and a call button. The feature is not yet publicly avai…

Facebook’s recent privacy moves — and the company’s response to the ensuing criticism — plug in to much larger issues. Specifically, the changing perspectives on privacy and the give-and-take between user dat…

Google’s been really quiet with its future plans for its Google Voice service, which remains invite-only at the moment, but it looks like full internet telepho…

Do you own your home city?
What do I mean? Let’s say you’re a business. Wherever you’re based, somewhere you are a local business. You might be in Baltimore, Cedar Rapids, Topeka, Portland, San Francisco,…

Crowdcast has raised $6 million from Menlo Ventures in a deal that bodes well for a new generation of companies with crowdsourcing and business intelligence offerings.

Crowdcast is also receiving a follow on i…

The New York Times tried this week to get Apple to remove a news reader iPad app from its online store, and Apple seems to have rightly told the Times that it’s being idiotic.
On the same day that Steve Jobs…

Clay Shirky’s second book, The
Cognitive Surplus, picks up where his stellar debut, Here
Comes Everybody left off: explaining how the net’s lowered costs for
group activity allow us to be creative and even ge…

The legendary UCLA basketball coach offers important lessons about good management.

Every copywriter should know how to write a guarantee. It’s a powerful marketing tool.
A solid guarantee provides tangible proof that a business is reputable and helps lower the perceived risk prospects feel…

Many expect that search engines will eventually incorporate signals from the realm of social media into the SERPs. There’s good reason to believe this: both Google and Microsoft have, for instance, already sign…

It started as a curiosity of mine. As a young discipline, comparatively-speaking, marketing continues to be
in a constant state of flux. It is so especially as social media is considered
a good way to en…

There are many intersections between earned media and organic search engine rankings, so it makes sense that they would work well together. The PR industry is in an interesting situation right now with so much…

We said it was the “best Android phone you can buy on Verizon” when we reviewed it, but if you insist on rooting it—nows your time, courtesy of the guys at Unrevoked. [Unrevoked - Thanks, Max!]…

Safari 5 has emerged as the leading HTML5-standards-compatible browser, at least for now.A website dedicated to browser performance tests has introduced new tests for support for the stndard, designed to show…

In the movie, The Matrix, Neo (played by sad Keanu Reeves) finds out that he’s living in this fake world that’s nothing more than a program designed to keep humans entertained while big systems suck their…

The Incredible wait is finally at an end — HTC’s finest handset on Verizon had proven quite the tough nut to crack, but at long last it has succumbed to the efforts of some industrious root-hungry coders. You…

Sometimes I forget how stimulating our office is compared to the cube farms that I’ve worked in previously. It’s no accident. Making an inspiring, appealing environment for creative work is a team effort, a…

In April, Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake wrote a provocatively titled blog post: “Want to be an entrepreneur? Drop out of college.” Her arguments were on my mind when I met Jay Rodrigues in early May…

Emotional, awe-inspiring stories are more likely to be shared online, says John
Tierney of the New York Times. In his column Will You Be
E-mailing This Column? Its Awesome, Tierney cites a study done at th…

Twitter recently announced what developers have been expecting since at least its Chirp conference. Links posted to Twitter will soon be passed through the company’s own link shortener, t.co. It could be bad…

Alongside this morning’s launch of Symbaloo in the US, I prepared a list of 50 top startups that I am watching. Challenged to rank the 50 from one to fifty in terms of both interest and viability, it proved to…

Obviously, companies copy one another’s ideas all the time. If something is working, sometimes it just makes a lot of sense. But sometimes it’s just a little pathetic. Tonight, we’re seeing a bit of that…

[Update: Google has changed the default back to no background image] Last week, Google enabled an interesting feature: custom backgrounds for its search page. Now the feature is available internationally, and…

People have the habit of complaining about products and services online. When the complaints are relevant and an apology is needed, company representatives often post them on the blog where the…

One way to do indispensable work is to show up more hours than everyone else. Excessive face time and candle-burning effort is sort of rare, and it’s possible to leverage it into a kind of success.But if you’re…

Steve Jobs promised that the iPhone 4′s Glass would be much stronger than the iPhones before it, but is it strong enough to take a fall onto a hard surface?
On just the third drop, the fine folks at iFixYouri…

Man, I love me some Instapaper.

★

Should etailers think about designing apps or special versions of their websites for the iPad, or will the existing websites do the job?
Whether these sites need to adapt for the iPad or produce apps is debat…

Apple’s rise to the top of the tech world has been marked just as much
by controversy as it has by success in the mobile market. The company’s
desire for control has made it a target for critics, and potentiall…

The Kno seeks to replace a backpack full of textbooks with a double-screen device that combines laptop, tablet and e-reader.

The post I wrote last week on 13 Truths about Social Media Measurement did well, and I thought it would be interesting to look at some stats around it in detail. As of today, it’s in the top 10 po…

Mashable’s Spark of Genius series is made possible by Microsoft Bizspark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microso…

Perhaps not the best timing with the ATT security breach (Including Rahm Emanuels name), but today, the Washington Post details the use of the iPad at the White House, which seems to be spreading like wildf…

Personal branding is a relatively new concept and is thought to have emerged in 1997 after a ground breaking article was published on the Fast Company website by Tom Peters.
We are in the age of the ‘knowled…

Ben Patterson – Monday’s keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference was nirvana for anyone focused on the iPad or the iPhone. But whither the Mac? Is Apple ignoring its old bread and butter? That’s what…

Ron Levi, a vice president at Thefind,com, explains on May 12 why his companys product search engine didnt dig deep into Facebook users accounts. Credit: Ryan Singel/ Wired.com
In the first meeting, the word �…

This week, Josh tells us how to weasel out of a mobile phone contract, what to do with an old phone, and how to connect an XBox to a PC with a crossover cable. Plus, we road test keyboard goo!

“Does Apple’s iPhone 4 Signal The Death of the Macintosh?” via Newsweek: Is Apple ignoring its signature line of computers and laptops? Yup.

During an on-stage interview at yesterday’s Mashable Media Summit, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley revealed the new concept of “badge rewards,” his company’s latest growth milestones, and the social netw…

Android-based handset owners in the U.S. are now clicking on more mobile ads than those with iPhones, according to Smaato, a mobile ad measurement firm. During the month of May, Smaato measured a U.S. Click Thr…

Below is the presentation I gave at the Web Content 2010 conference, the leading US conference covering the art and discipline of content strategy.

First, how do we develop a higher purpose for our com…

While the print magazine industry is hanging its hopes on the iPad to lead it to the digital promised land where people actually pay for digital editions, it is still stuck with adapting a product designed for…

Last week in Santa Clara, California, luminaries from the augmented reality industry gathered for Augmented Reality Event 2010 – a conference focused on the business of AR. The two-day event was a great success…

Earlier this week, Steve Jobs estimated that Apple’s iAd network would handle 48% of all mobile advertising in the second half of 2010. That number may seem high, but it looks like Jobs is pulling out all the s…