Curated Stories June 9, 2010

Google is now allowing you to overlay photos from other users into Street View, giving you a new way to experience places near and far.With this new feature, you can view any available user-contributed photogr…

One of my big regrets in my time in the advertising agency world is that I never seemed to have enough time to figure out a good way to talk to the creatives at my former agency about social med…

Sure, Apple and Google are at war, but that doesn’t mean they can’t help one another out from time to time. Especially with regard to WebKit, the rendering engine that both use in their Safari and Chrome we…

This is the piece I wrote for the 18th Edition of Kleppners. (Kleppners is probably the most respected college-level advertising textbook out there.) Thanks to Ron Lane who asked me to write something for…

Updated: The New York Times, like many newspapers, has been trying to find an online business model that works, including experimenting with iPhone and iPad apps, as well as a pay wall that’s expected to la…

IBM released this week the iPad version of Lotus Notes Traveler, featuring two-way encrypted synchronization of e-mail, calendar and contacts with IBM Lotus Domino servers. The app also features per-message e-m…

Image adapted from from Epkes.com.
BP can’t control its oil leak, but it’s also having a rough time with image control.
The company responsible for the spewing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is attracting m…

Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed — Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military…

It’s been a while since I published my post on why and how you can watermark the images you publish on the web (this helps both for copyright protection and brand awareness).
One of my sites relies on images…

I can tell you from experience that without fail, one of the most common reasons websites suffer from a low conversion rate is because they fail to make a statement. There’s no “push” – no energy…

Have you ever written content that encourages nothing but total silence? You know, content that you thought was so compelling that it would become viral minutes after you post it, yet all you hea…

Morgan Stanley recently released a report detailing a survey it did of 50 Chief Information Officers. We got our hands on the report and found it interesting from a market perspective.

We do not ordinarily fol…

Hoo boy. This is a tough one, isn’t it? In our years at Engadget, we’ve rarely seen such deafening debate and adulation for a pair of devices. In one corner we have the iPhone 4, coming off a few relatively e…

Who do you follow on Twitter? How you derive the most value out of Twitter?

In a roundabout way, this was the exact conversation I just had over lunch with Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, Bite-Sized Edits, BookCa…

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.Displaying your Twitter feed on your website is a wonderful way…

I grew up in an age where some of the most creative and brilliant people in the world went into advertising. It was evidence in the memorable excellence in ads that came out in the 50s. Ad agencies also started…

About a year ago, we wrote about the really troubling concept pushed by a group called Medical Justice, which tries to “protect” doctors from negative reviews online by having them demand that patients hand ove…

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, Gizmodo you to come up with some highly unlikely potential features of the iPhone 3. And, unsurprisingly, not a single one of your ideas actually made it into the phone. Proba…

Twitterific for iPad is nicely done, but I’m psyched by the prospect of Tweetie Twitter for iPad…
Share/E-Mail

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.The tensions between Apple and Google are on the r…

Foursquare Co-Founder Dennis Crowley spoke about experimenting with badge rewards yesterday at the Mashable Media Summit, and today we learned that Bravo TV is one of the first big brands to test the idea with…

As I pointed out in the first part of this series, baseball players typically know by their physical attributes whether they’re a leadoff hitter who can get on base frequently or a slugger who swings for the fe…

New York is a city where something exciting is going on all the time, most of it unsolved.
–Johnny Carson
Elizabeth and I are back from BookExpoAmerica and meeting editors in New York, and solving the mystery…

See a photo of Steve, his bio, Part 1 of this QA, and Part 2.

QA with Steve Krizman, Question 3:

Q: The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media (…

Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Bing search engine announced today the launch of a new social portal that will produce real-time results from both Facebook and Twitter. The site, which will be…

Let’s have a little midweek reality check: Almost all of us have almost no control over our own computing.And for most of us, that fact causes very little mental or emotional distress.Sure, we might raise he…

Apple’s new Safari 5 brings support for browser extensions, which the company plans to showcase on its own gallery in a few months. In the meantime, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorites.

To learn…

The world’s fastest Android phone, the HTC EVO from Sprint, may have been overshadowed by Monday’s iPhone 4 news, but this high-speed 4G powerhouse is worthy of attention.

When it comes to assessing your Facebook privacy risk, the quick and simple ReclaimPrivacy.org outshines the more invasive Secure My Profile.

I’m writing this from a coffeeshop in northern Massachusetts. The nature of my business is such that I can workshift from pretty much anywhere, most of the time, so before we talk about working from an iPad,…

Etouches, a web‐based SaaS provider that caters to event organizers, has raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding from a group of investors led by Greycroft Partners II (the firm started by ic…

Ever been so scared you can’t move?
It’s a common reaction to a really scary situation.
We know we’re in trouble. We know we need to move. But we can’t seem to convince ourselves, so we do nothing.
S…

Is the Real-Time Web making news consumption better or worse? In a Wired magazine article, book author Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet is reducing our ability to comprehend content on the Web. In a separ…

Recently, I posted a list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. Now Im following up by delving into each one of them. This post is about the second belief: My success — and that of my people — depends largely…

New! Improved! Bigger! Biggest! Best! Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger!

Superlatives and dramatic (but ultimately vague, largely unsubstantiated, and often asterisked into oblivion with dis…

Five easy and free steps to ensure a start-up public relations venture is successful.

Public relations – Business – Marketing and Advertising – Associations – Small business

Yesterday, All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka pointed out the possibility that Apple could be limiting Google-acquired mobile ad network AdMob from selling ads on the iPhone and iPad platform. The language was…

You’ve listened, put together a solid strategic plan, spent time selecting the right services, and then worked hard to implement a social media program. But after months of toiling away, the results a…

Two of the most common questions asked when some begins using Twitter are, “Who should I follow? and “What should I look for when doing so?”

There are a couple of schools of thought on the an…

Every day people ask me how they can make money with their blog, so today I wanted to go thru my top ways to make money.
First thing you should know is if you want to make money with your blo…

I’ve written extensively about iAds here and here, and one question I raised has to do with Apple’s policies with regard to third party data and ad networks, in particular AdMob.
As All Things Digital notes…

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
AOL to Hire ‘Hundreds’ of Journalists, Reorganize Content Division — Sites to Be Grouped Into ‘Super Networks’ and Sold to Advertisers — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) —…

I recently spoke at the Creative Freelancer Conference in Denver (part of the How Design Conference) and led a “Lunch and Learn” table discussion. I asked the attendees to write down their burning questions…

The inevitable backlash against social media is under way, and it’s about time. For too long, the concept of social media has been viewed …

As phone accessories go, protruding lens attachments are rarely top of our wishlist, but this one here might just alter our perspective a little bit. Good and EVO have gone to the trouble of obtaining a magnet…

Critics of Apple’s iPhone notification system have new hope for less intrusive alerts now that Rich Dellinger is back with the Cupertino company, notes PreCentral. Dellinger left his User Interface Designer r…

It’s kinda unbelievable that the iPhone still uses modal popups that completely interrupt what you’re doing for notifications. But hope comes in the form of tr…

Food-and-Beverage Giant Partnering With VC Firm to Nurture the Next Big Thing
Advertising Age, June 8, 2010 — Pepsi wants to get in on the ground floor of the next FourSquare. The marketer, which has been…

I write for Allbusiness.com on the topic of social commerce. Its part of my duties as social media director for my client Practical Ecommerce. Heres an excerpt from the latest post, written in response to a Wal…

Ever wondered how to place images inside letters like those old-fashioned postcards? Chris McVeigh shows you how to create cool typography with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

We tend to spend much of our time focused on Google, yet Yahoo has local listings for businesses as well. Just like Google the basic service is free to businesses. Yahoo! Local Listings gives businesses…

If your organization is participating in social media through blogs, Twitter and other social networks –and even if you’re not — it’s only a matter of time before someone rants, makes a…

To anyone presenting digital marketing – How to add live web pages to a PPT slide – http://bit.ly/9qt1bc (via @makeuseof)

If you haven’t read about Google’s new indexing system, Caffeine: You should have a look – http://bit.ly/cvUfAi

Useful information – Google v. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements – http://bit.ly/d5gy1I (via @SEOmoz)

If you have to park your car in a huge lot, a side street, or elsewhere it might be hard to locate later, you can use Google Maps’ “Starred Items” to pin it do…

This week is Internet Week in New York.
On Tuesday, Boulder Digital Works (I’m lucky enough to be on the Advisory Board there) hosted an evening at the Art Director’s Club called ‘Evolve!’ at which the…

This diagram helps illustrate what Sources Go Direct is about.

Back in the old days an idea had to run a gauntlet of middlemen and profiteers before it could reach “targets.”
The PR people introduc…

It’s long-standing wisdom that you shouldn’t eat too close to bed time, or eat the right kinds of foods. One sleep specialist suggests it’s really about how an…

There’s a gulf between hourly work and linchpin
work.
You should pay people by the hour when there are available substitutes. When you rely on freelancers you can put a value on their time based on what the…

Previously, I shared an interesting situation that erupted between Fortune Magazine and TechCrunch. It appeared to me as a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing (essentially, it look…

Filed under: iPadThe iPad app that Steve Jobs supposedly dislikes, New York Times Editor’s Choice, was updated today. The update partially addresses Steve’s primary concern: the app omits a lot of the paper’s d…

Eqentia is a social media startup headquartered in Toronto, Canada. In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Eqentia’s CEO and Founder, William Mougayar, joins Joe Thornley and me fo…

MediaPost Publications, June 8, 2010 — While the Internet and social media are a potential boon to market researchers, theyve also raised concerns and ongoing debate about methodology and the ability to p…

Even though many B2B companies, especially corporate and enterprise level companies, prefer Blackberries as their smart phone of choice, if you are in the social media space, a new iPhone is still news and you…

Like the bonus features after watching a film, social media has become a way of enhancing a person’s visit, Mrs. Lewallen said. The most popular photos on …

An iPad news reader app designed by two college students has taken more than a few breaths away. Developed as part of a class at Stanford University’s Institute of Design, Pulse is everything you’d want out o…

With only a couple of days before the beginning of the World Cup, a new campaign from ESPN [hat tip Fubitz] has murals with the slogan “one game changes everything”. Leaving out Brazil was a big faux-pas, app…

I know a bit about a lot of things but I can’t really claim to be an expert on any level except in the area of stringing words together. Although I have had positions that involved technical work (audio engin…

When I started Vizibility last year, we hired accountants, lawyers and other professionals to help us get the business going. Very few of us choose a lawyer or doctor or Realtor or [fill in the...

Scorchio conditions made us hairless, upright, sweaty
Many of humanity's distinctive features - walking upright, hairlessness, the ability to sweat copiously - arose due to the fact that the place where we evol...

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right detail.... Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

V.S. PRITCHETT

After a long hiatus, I'm back to my podcast. I've just posted part one of "The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening", originally published on Shareable.net.

MP3 Link

Podcast fe...

Sure, social media takes a lot of time, but probably not as much time as you think. Too many companies and organizations are reinventing the content wheel for every social outpost they maintain. A b...

Foursquare is a very hot social networking tool that posts updates to users friends about where they are. It also incorporates a game where users can earn badges for certain things. Users can also b...

Social media marketing is steadily increasing, and marketers are beginning to see opportunities to generate quality leads and position themselves as thought leaders in their industries.

Bef...

Christopher Schanck / Design By Gravity:
ATT Learns Exactly The Wrong Thing About Data Usage — ATT says that 65% of its users use less 200 megabytes per month; a whopping 98% use less than 2 gigabytes. ...

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed…PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around. They’re still going to have a lot of value. Bu...

This morning, my colleague Jason Kincaid wrote a very good and very level-headed post about the new iPhone (and the new iOS 4 software) from the perspective of an Android user. I’m going to come at it from t...

Did Facebook doom Chris Kelly’s run for Attorney General of California?
According to early results, Kamala Harris won the Democratic primaries on Tuesday night, leaving the former Chief Privacy Officer in sec...

Several months ago, Gail and I were sitting in the den after a quiet dinner. I had been traveling extensively, and this was the first evening I had been home in days. I said to her, “I don’t know what it is...

Edward Harrison submits:Right now, we are watching what I believe is a game changing power struggle in the technology world as we move to a cloud computing, platform-independent world. It pits Google (GOOG) and...

Let’s start things off with a disclaimer – I love Android phones. Last year I left the iPhone and switched to Android largely because of the amazing usefulness of Google Voice, and only Android devices trul...

What does Open Web mean?
What does Ajax mean? Is it AJAX or Ajax?
Remember those discussions? We had the arguments … the purists who would shout and scream if you said something was Ajax and didn’t use XHR...

The thing we like most about Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends presentation is it’s just packed with data. The charts are sometimes *too* intense, in fact, carrying too much data. But it’s always revea...

As Twitter makes the transition from profitless startup to revenue-generating business, the massive number of links that are shared on its service on a daily basis represent valuable currency. Given this, Twitt...

Companies are investing more in both people and technology in order to make more sense of the web analytics data they gather, with almost half of firms plan to increase the number of employees in this area over...

Need a Caffeine boost? After much anticipation and discussion, Google's latest 'big update' is officially here.
Unlike many major Google updates, which include alterations to the
factors Google uses to rank pag...

Yesterday I sat in the stands at my son’s graduation, smack at what would be the face-off line of the covered ice hockey rink, counting the rows of chairs on the floor below and trying to work out which morta...

Today, Twitter has expanded the testing of its own URL shortner — which is now using the t.co domain. The expansion (which will eventually be available to all Twitter users) is interesting in terms of what it...

Twitter's URL shortening service, t.co, is being advertised as a way to avoid stumbling into phishing scam. Shorteners make it easier to microblog, but they also make it easier for grifters to blind their onlin...

Just as many smartphones added tethering support and enough great features that we wanted to use the hell out of our data plans, many carriers are moving to me…

Apple has reinstated the popular iPad news-reading application Pulse, with The New York Times still as preloaded default feed. Apple’s move seems to overturn a decision earlier Tuesday to remove the app beca…

Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web con…

Apple released an update to its Safari web browser Monday afternoon. We’ve been testing it for close to a full day, and we’ve found that Safari 5 performs as advertised: It’s faster, more capable and wel…

Twitter is to introduce its own automatic URL shortening service, a move that may kill off many of the URL shortening companies that currently provide these services to Twitter users.
Under the changes, Twitte…

Most of a year ago we asked “Will Google’s Caffeine Update Really Change Search Results?” At that time, Google had announced a beta launch of a new indexing system for their search results. It took a while to r…

Some very cool stuff already. Not bad for a day.

★

Entrepreneurs are spending too much time on online social media and have unrealistic expectations about results, says Ivan Misner, …

A podcast interview with Chris Treadaway, co author of Facebook Marketing an Hour a Day.
The timing of this podcast interview is terrific. At the time of this blog post and podcast I am putting…

Display advertising may be the red headed stepchild of digital advertising, but brands and marketers are bullish that it is poised to grow in the next few years.
According to the panelists at Fixing Advertisin…

I recently wrote an article on the three industries that the Apple iPad threatens to change forever.
That was March .. it is now June.. it is time to check the numbers because since then the iPad has been rele…

Last month, Google launched an encrypted version of its Web search, allowing users to enable a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection to encrypt their information. Like several other Google products that feature…

As an iPhone user for two and a half years who switched to the Nexus One back in January, I think I have a decent amount of end user perspective on Google’s Android Market. Essentially, it needs work. And whi…

Nice showcase of ‘about’ pages – the good bad – http://bit.ly/c6yCfJ (via @UXbooth)

Think Zappos.com and you think not only of happy customers and happy employees, but also of an e-commerce site that’s the poster child of a successful web business.
The architect of all this happiness and suc…

Today, I spoke to Clay Shirky, who teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, is the bestselling author of Here Comes Everybody, and the author of Cognitive…

I think I “get” Foursquare. I really do.
I understand there could be significant business benefits and opportunities to build customer loyalty.
But I really wonder if Foursquare can reach critical mass t…

Any of Facebook’s over 400 million users will immediately recognize some new features on popular Twitter photo-sharing service Twitpic today as users can now tag people in their photos. In a blog post this morn…

Last week during Steve Jobs’ interviews at D8 an audience member asked him about ATT’s network. iPhone users are deeply familiar with the issues—dead connections, dropped calls, bad coverage, and intermit…

One item Steve Jobs didn’t mention during his presentation at WWDC on Monday is Apple Safari 5’s prominent ad-blocking feature, which strips advertisements and other design elements from any web page that…

When I began doing social media for Southwest Airlines in 2006, it was just me and my buddy Brian Lusk trying to find time to manage a corporate blog in …

One of the challenges that bloggers face, compared to ‘real’ journalists, is that we’re not conditioned to churn out stories, no matter what. And so with a deadline looming for this post, I wondered what…

Steve Jobs has already been busted for exaggerating the resolution of a new iPhone screen the Apple CEO unveiled yesterday. It’s only the latest in a series of misleading videos, pictures and claims desi…