Curated Stories June 14, 2010

Geo-location is a hot ticket item right now, with companies large and small getting into the social check-in game. But the gaming features of are only one aspect of geo-location. According to the founders of Go…

Thomas Fuchs on how he and Amy Hoy made this nifty timezone web app for the iPad.

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Wikipedia will roll out the latest changes to its editing policy later tonight, called Pending Changes. The constant struggle to find a way to limit vandalism without a chilling effect on legitimate editing wi…

The tales surrounding the launch of the EVO 4G have been intriguing, to say the least. On June 4th, the device launched. By June 7th, Sprint was touting the phone’s sales as mammoth, claiming that it had bro…

Google is unleashing a new version of Google Earth, version 5.2, today. It’s the biggest update since Earth 5.0 added the oceans and Mars in February of 2009–and while it’s not that big, it’s got one m…

Google’s unemployment index creates an interesting lens on year-over-year changes in searches related to job losses. While we’re falling from high levels, the level of activity in such searches (i.e., unemp…

Back in January, I wrote about a new QA service called Formspring.me that allowed users to have their friends “ask them anything”: sign up for a profile, and anyone can submit a question that you can choose…

A few readers have emailed me commenting on the clarity of our screencasts and asking about the software that I use, so I thought I’d outline my setup and provide some hints and tips for producing easy-to-und…

In general, Apple iPad apps cost almost four times as much as iPhone apps. But when it comes to the most expensive apps, the iPhone is still beating its larger cousin.
While you can spend $1,000 in one pop on a…

Yahoo has just released some statistics for what they’re seeing from people doing searches with Yahoo on the iPad. The results are a little humorous.
According to this post, “the top searches over the last…

Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Hunch, formerly of Yahoo, discusses the finer points of Hunch.com with Wired magazine senior editor Jason Tanz at Wireds Disruptive By Design conference (Photo: Larry Busacc…

NEW YORK — Clay Shirky believes LOL Cats serve an important purpose in society: they help people cross the gulf between doing nothing and doing something.
“Whoever’s made a LOL cat has already crossed tha…

Starbucks today announced that it will provide free wireless access in all U.S. company-operated locations starting July 1. And this fall it will launch the Starbucks Digital Network, a partnership with Yahoo t…

Read It Later, the nifty service that allows you to store blog posts, articles and web pages to read at a later date, has announced the availability of an iPad app, which includes the debut of a “Digest”…

Cnet’s Marguerite Reardon explains why developers may need to worry more about ATT’s new, no-longer-unlimited smartphone data plans than consumers will.
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Mark Zuckerberg recently bought an iPhone. But the mobile phone is not very mobile, and not much of a phone, the Facebook CEO says. In a post to his Facebook wall, Zuckerberg explained that, within one week of…

The loci method, a millenia-old mnemonic strategy, uses the visualization of familiar locations to memorize a series of items, whether it be a grocery list or…

Companies have been trying different ways to use crowdsourcing even before the word was first used in 2006. Last year saw the rise of it as a marketing tool, with some spectacular failures. Two memorable exampl…

In the latest report from our Business Social Media Benchmarking Study research, “Engaging Small Business Decision Makers Through Social Media,” we address a key question on the minds of companies m…

I recently got a great post comment from @mikescheiner that I thought was extremely well put. He wrote:

“What most brands fail to understand is the perception you produce internally is reflec…

Interactions hold steady
eMarketer, June 14, 2010 — Many social site users make good use of the voice that the medium provides them to talk about brands, products and services. An April 2010 study by ROI R…

UX Magazine focused on user experience magazine takes a look at how customers handle a real-world point-of-sale credit card reader system that uses the iPhone and iPad. Yes, bigger (er, screen size) is better i…

The Real Results 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 comp…

Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) CEO Bob Bowman stopped by our Startup 2010 event to chat for 20 minutes. Here’s our full conversation, including one of the best synopses we’ve ever heard about what…

What journalists who blog think “blogging” is. Lizzie Skurnick (pseudonymous author of the literary blog the Old Hag) almost got called up to the Show – the New York Times actually asked her to write. But un…

Sometime in the last decade I realized that most people weren’t reading my stuff.
I don’t mean this in the obvious way. There are 6 billion people on the planet and perhaps 0.00001 percent have even heard o…

Have you ever started some new project, some new challenge — all excited to make an impact — and then feel overwhelmed? A friend of mine was describing her first few days in a new leadership role. She starte…

One surefire way to know that a service is doing well is when you see their buttons start appearing all over the web. We’ve seen it with Facebook, we’ve seen it with Twitter (Tweetmeme buttons), and now we�…

We are really good at identifying and engaging influencers. So good that I often open up a client presentation with that thought. I believe strongly in the discipline of Influence Planning which is …

Your company probably won’t suffer global-scale collapse and be investigated by federal auditors. Still, if you want to avoid looking bad, and leaving your bos…

Now that we’ve defined our KPI’s and configured our analytics, it’s time to put together a client/management facing report that is both actionable and comprehensive. Reporting can be tricky. Everyone ha…

NPR always has among the most popular news apps in the iTunes Store. Its latest iPad app has been downloaded 350,000 times, according to CEO Vivian Schiller, who spoke this morning at Wired’s Business Confe…

Geolocation game Foursquare has teamed up with the Wall Street Journal in an initiative that rolled out today, appending stories about restaurants or other “cultural coverage” with a not-very-obtrusive “…

Looking to beef up your Mac with a few great—and free—apps that cover a whole lot of your productivity and computing needs? Our annual Lifehacker Pack for…

This Innovation Series is supported by Lexus.I live in a somewhat futuristic home. I have robots to help me with chores, computers to control my environment and entertainment, and a large and growing number of…

It’s the second exciting installment of our new Graphic Novel Comix Adventure, Ayn Rand’s Adventures In Wonderland. (Last week’s episode is here in case you missed it because you were too busy “Goin’…

There are two things named Twitter: One is a company. The other is the service , Twitter, that, for anyone reading this who has lived the past couple of years under a rock, allows any user to send short messag…

Image courtesy of PMP Partners
NEW YORK — The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself…

Windows: If you like the convienience of automatic updates but not the irritation of Windows nagging you to reboot your machine, Leave Me Alone! is a simple wo…

Good all-encompassing story by Wade Roush of Xconomy about Siri, the cool iPhone personal assistant app that’s now owned by Apple…
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News Corp. has just announced that it has acquired e-reader Skiff from Hearst and made an investment in Journalism Online, news monetization venture founded by Leo Hindery, Steve Brill, and Gordon Crovitz. The…

With the recent launch of the HTC Evo and (more importantly) the announcement of the iPhone 4 — both of which include front-facing cameras and video calling software — lots of people are now asking (yet again…

Steve Spalding, who calls himself “chief storyteller” at his firm, initially caught my eye because he’s based in one of my all-time favorite cities, Gainesville, FL, where I met my husband, married him,…

Directing customers to a nearby physical location is getting more sophisticated, thanks to mobile devices and emerging technologies known to marketers as location-based services, or simply LBS.
There’s no need…

A note from Danny Lyu, who just founded InBundles.com…
I’ve founded a new restaurant deal website called InBundles.com. It works like this: every few days, we email our readers a review of one of our favori…

This Innovation Series post is brought to you by Lexus

Every day, one of the big web search engines seems to have an “innovative” new feature or gimmick. But here’s something new and impr…

Quantcast released its North American mobile OS market share report for May 2010 today and the results are indicative of a trend we have seen from other sources: The iPhone is still the market leader, but Andr…

There’s no clear end in sight to the Adobe-Apple conflict. But the guy who gave us the Spirit iPhone and iPad jailbreaks has just produced a real live example…

I was not optimistic about the future of the iPad prior to its release. It seemed a unicorn among horses in the tech world, something precious and therefore expensive, but without any real tangible benefit over…

Extension: Invisible Status Bar Author: Daniel Bergey | Website | Download Requires: Safari 5.0+ with Extensions enabled Description: This has got to be my favorite extension so far. Chrome browser introduced t…

One of our Apple sources let us know about an Apple-created application for the iPhone and iPad…

Eat Drink and Be Social was an event by Dialogue Consulting. Thank you Tyson Goodridge for asking me to moderate Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare and CEO of Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski.

Big thanks…

Expect insurance and wellness companies to monitor social data, then reward –and penalize member actions.
Companies Want Accurate Customer Data and Social Data Promises a Gold Mine
In our recent research repo…

It’s no secret that digital media is making commerce cheaper. A digital presence levels the playing field between organizations and individuals. Online, you can set up a site fairly quickly, include the opt…

So I know you’ve heard me talking a lot about our new site design and it’s FINALLY live at Chess Media Group.com thanks to our friends over at Blue Sail Creative. We were anticipating that it would take u…

I’ve never met a freelance writer who wasn’t at least a little bit of an injo-junkie. Whether it’s jotting down names and numbers in the line at the supermarket when you find someone who…

Uh oh: on top of reports that the EVO 4G suffers screen-detachment issues, we’re also starting to hear that the touchscreen sensor is inconsistent, particularly when the phone isn’t grounded. We’ve seen more…

dcblogs writes “In 1939, Albert Einstein sent ‘F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States,’ a letter with a warning about Germany’s interest in a new type of energy with potential for use as a powerful bomb…

“Your old road is rapidly aging,” Bob Dylan proclaimed to the powers that be in 1964. “Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand.” Recent experiences have left me thinking often of that now-ic…

Note: This post was originally published on OPEN Forum.
Apple’s iPad is a quick hit: With 2 million units sold in less than two months, it has become a fixture in coffee shops and airports.
But do you need one…

In a subtle yet significant change for Facebook Page owners, the original creator of Pages can now be removed as an administrator by any other of the administrators of that Page. This was a serious issue for a…

Be prepared for strong initial sales on the iPhone 4, with Apple seemingly in talks to widen distribution in most territories while consumer trade-ins of previous model iPhones hit new records as users prepare…

Filed under: iPad
Square has already made a big splash with its launch — the company, founded by Jim McKelvey, Jack Dorsey (formerly of Twitter), and Tristan O’Tierney, has created a system for accepting credi…

The rumbling debate over whether technology helps or hurts us — and our kids — is growing louder. The ever articulate writer, Nicholas Carr, stoked debate with his new book, “The Shallows.” (Yes, he believes…

I’ve noticed that whenever we mention Twitter on this site, we inevitably get some snarky comment from someone about how useless Twitter is. It often seems to come from someone with a “been there/done that” at…

You know those Apple (AAPL) videos where Apple employees in black t-shirts talk in reverent tones about their own products? The synth music and the shallow depth of field?
Well, Apple just made another one of t…

Businesses and marketers continue to misunderstand how to effectively leverage the web for increasing returns on traffic and leads month over month. They place too much emphasis on a limited amount of static…

In the days right after the BP oil spill, the CEO of BP blamed the builders of the well. In fact, it’s taken nearly a month for the company to announce anything even resembling a taking of responsibility. …

Happy Flag Day, everybody! Have you ever wondered why flags are flown at half-staff in times of mourning? What length of time is appropriate? How’d the tradition get started? All your half-staff questions ar…

I’ve been interviewing fellow copywriters about their writing specialty. Their responses have been so fun, I wanted to get in on the action.
So James at Men With Pens conducted an interview with me about my…

There Are No More Blind DatesThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
The socially powered Web has become the tool of choice to find business and personal information about the people, products, services, and com…

There has been a lot of discussion about the iPhone 4 Retina display lately. Forget about it and look at the amazing resolution in this extreme close ups. Comp…

Thanks to a range of factors, including increased customer expectations, as well as behavioural factors such as comparison shopping, basket and checkout abandonment rates are rising.
A recent Forrester survey…

In the past six months, my view on quantity versus quality when it comes to fans, followers, and customers has drastically changed. I’ve written before on the perception of having a large net…

Each week as I read blogs, view online videos and presentations in my areas of interest (especially social media), I come across some that are worth sharing.
This week I have 5 selections you may enjoy. In p…

I recently discovered a Web service called TwtPick.in. It allows you to create a list, twitter it to your followers, and allow them to vote each item up or down. It even allows your followers to add new items t…

Social media monitoring firm Trackur has revamped its website and package offerings and now offers complete white-labeling, custom domain names and direct client logins with their Ultimate platf…

What follows is an edited excerpt from Engage!
Anyone who has ever worked in corporate marketing, advertising, and branding is more than familiar with a brand style guide. It’s how we ensured that the brand…

Any carpenters or architects reading this? Leave your measuring tape at home and download the Advanced Ruler Pro app on your Android phone, which measures the…

Wireless operators around the globe are moving to tiered data pricing, which will likely cause developers to think differently about how they use network resources when creating apps.

It used to be the only time youd notice a bar code was at a store, maybe when a cashier scanned your groceries. But lately bar codes are showing up in more places around town – and getting more sophisticated….

“Can Tim Armstrong make AOL king of content by 2010?” – Blog headline
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly” – Macbeth
There’s something about the idea of “Ne…

I’ve made a fair amount of progress on that mega series about SEO and hyperlocal blogs, and can now see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Hopefully that will see the light of day soon.
In the mea…

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Exclusive first look at location-based service, Placebook — Its not everyday that you get to reveal a new company to the world for the first time. This is one of those case…

There are few people I would get up to meet on a Sunday morning after spending five weeks on the road and mired in China-to-SFO jet lag. There are also few people I would believe when they said they were build…

Yesterday, Robert Scoble wrote a post about “Foursquare’s Yelp problem.” It’s an interesting read, with some good thoughts about how Foursquare can withstand feature-copying from a much larger rival. He…

Are you ready to let everyone know the expert you are? Start by answering questions on Twitter using Replyz, a new service built on top of the Twitter API. It looks for common question phrases and extracts thos…

(Psssst. I’m leaving …)
Yelp co-founder and CTO Russel Simmons, pictured here (left) with fellow co-founder and chief exec Jeremy Stoppelman, is leaving the company. Simmons will be transitioning to an adv…

Tools help improve our business. We go from being able to make something, to being able to make it better, faster, with a little less effort. I watched Kat decorate our kitchen chairs in various unique ways, a…

As we all know by now, comments on the Internet are a fascinating thing. My favorite involve the word “fanboy.” Generally speaking, it means you write (stories, tweets, whatever) about a certain topic with…

You know what there’s a lack of? Advice on the fly.
In the shuffle to become more politically correct, we’ve child-proofed the world instead of world-proofing the child (so to speak) and se…

Who is your marketing or your product or your effort trying to please?Every campaign that I’ve ever seen fail has failed for precisely the same reason: it pleases the wrong person. Think about it… it wouldn’t…

San Mateo, CA-based BrightEdge is today taking the wraps of its enterprise-class, on-demand SEO platform, after hammering on it for the past couple of years along with some early adopting key customers such as…

Beliefs. Tenets. Base assumptions. Even though they affect everything we say and do, we don’t stop very often, if ever, to really examine them. But they’re there.
We’ve each lived so long with our beliefs…

As you know by now, Rupert Murdoch’s The Times (of London) has kicked off its paywall experiment, with an editor there claiming that news publications that don’t put up a paywall will go out of business. Perha…

Chris Winberry recently built a node-htmlparser library that we posted on. Now we know why he built that library. He has released JSonduit.com:

Any data, anywhere.
JSonduit is a service that can turn practical…

An interesting post led to an even more interesting discussion. On Thoughtwrestling, Rebecca posted “Zen and the Road Trip Book,” her take on Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM…

Extension: Instapaper Greystyled Author: Elastic Threads | website | download Description: If you find that Instapaper’s black on white type is a bit too jarring, or you just like to be different, this simple…

Extension: Instapaper Article Tools Author: ElasticThreads | website | download Description: Adds a simple toolbar to the left margin of the Instapaper text view. Toolbar functions are: Go back Archive and retu…

Microsoft has just introduced Kinect with the help of Cirque du Soleil in Los Angeles at E3. Formerly known s Project Natal, Kinect is a technology based on a camera that can capture color and depth informatio…

In a conversation with John Seely Brown and Erick B this past week at a party in Westwood hosted by the Deloitte Center for the Edge, we talked about creating value at the edges of networks, where the flow of i…

We can talk community. We can talk loyalty. We can talk brand value. We can talk 30-second spots. We can talk Social Media. All of that is fine and dandy, but for Marketing to truly be respected, it’s going to…

Should publishers like Facebook’s new Like button? I recently wrote
about some of things publishers might not like about it.One commenter who is a fan of the Like button took issue with them.
He asked, “…al…

Matt Isaacs is Founding Partner of Essence, which picked up Econsultancy’s 2009 Most Innovative Digital Agency award.
I’ve been talking to Matt about what innovation in digital, and how to foster this innovati…

About six months ago, I threw together a blog post based on a bunch of social media infographics. At the time, they were surprisingly difficult to root out, but it seems that more are emerging, given the conti…

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.It seems like social media is ever…

My husband and I love baseball and we’ve always wanted to have season tickets. So during the Arizona Diamondbacks Spring Fan Fest we decided to take the plunge and buy a weekend ticket package.
We were excit…

A year ago, we covered the global mapping of social networks by Vincenzo Cosenza, a public relations specialists and former Microsoft Italy marketer.

Almost a year to the day later, Cosenza remapped the globa…

Nowadays there are many things a successful small business owner or entrepreneur needs but a physical storefront or office outside your home isnt necessarily one of them. Sure, there are some businesses that ca…

Marketing matters. You may think its the quality of your product or service, the connections of your investors or your partners, even the size of your budget. These all may be important at some critical phase i…

Check out the new additions to this list of contests, competitions and awards for small businesses, brought to you every other week as a community service by and Smallbiztechnology.com. – Pitch your idea for a…

Last month, Google announced the advent of “Tags.” For $25 monthly, businesses can leverage these yellow symbols to communicate additional information. Tags rolled out initially on a trial basis in 11 cities. A…

Editor’s Note: This post is written by Dave Schappell, Founder and CEO of TeachStreet. In it, he talks about his company’s transition from a free to a paid service, and shares five tips that may help other…

We’ve seen how Unvarnished is setting out to create a kind of “Yelp for people” where you get reviewed as a person whether you like it or not. Now a new startup has appreared hoping to do something similar, bu…

It’s always possible to keep your shoes smelling like the day you bought them. If your shoes are starting to give your nose a double take, how-to site eHow sug…

Potential bad news for EVO owners: we’re seeing plenty of reports from folks having issues with the lower portions of their screens. Conspiracy theories say that the adhesive holding the glass is failing, cau…

Let’s face it, when it comes to getting things done, most people want to do it either quick or easy (ok, sometimes both).

If you have a strategy in place and take the time to build some semblance of (loyalty)…

By PAUL LEVY Two items about social media. 1) I often get the question in interviews, How much time do you spend on your blog and other social media? I often answer, You wouldnt think of asking me how much…

An anonymous reader writes “The NSA (the secretive intelligence agency that brought you wholesale warrantless wiretapping) has produced a public relations video about its polygraph screening program titled ‘The…

A few years ago, when a couple told me they first met one-another through comments they posted on this blog, I was dumbfounded for two reasons: 1. Because this is more a “personal” blog than a “topic…