Curated Stories October 11, 2010

Social media contests are a great way to connect with consumers in the ever evolving web. Social networks are natural venues for users to share information quickly. Since I am a big fan of giving real world e…

What is Mind Mapping?
Mind Mapping means graphically representing words, ideas, concepts, tasks in the form of a diagram – it is thus outlining some structural knowledge around some core word or concept.
Min…

This guest post is by Johnny B. Truant, of JohnnyBTruant.com.
When I was in high school, I witnessed the most impressive sales job I have ever seen.
One afternoon, the entire student body was called to the aud…

This post originally appeared on My Life Scoop, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about using social media and technology for a more connected life.Death is a fact of life. When someone dies, they�…

Walter Jon Williams is a successful science fiction novelist who’s been cleaning out the tax records in his garage – and writing an amusing (and informative) series of posts about the money he made (or didn…

About 160 million people use Twitter, which may explain the signal to noise ratio.
Ever feel like you’re talking to a brick wall on Twitter? That might be because 71 percent of tweets get absolutely no respo…

If you’re either a power WordPress user, a security-conscious blogger or simply a control freak, then the new SMS features offered by WordPress are going to be right up your alley.

From alerting you to changes…

Why, you may ask, would Zappos–which you probably know as that online shoe store with the great return policy–need an API, much less a developer platform? Well, Zappos doesn’t just sell shoes these days…

Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics Group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer, thinks the world has a big problem with big data and that problem is only going to get bigger. Jonas arrived at IBM a…

The Future of Social Media Series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, stat…

MediaWeek, under its new boss, Michael Wolff, asked a bunch of us what we’d advise the New York Times Magazines’ new boss to do. Here was my full answer:
Their Q: The New York Times Magazine has a new edito…

This November, you won’t even have to leave Facebook to get your coverage of the US midterm election.
ABC News has teamed up with Facebook for live-streaming its election night coverage and for interaction wi…

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley just gave a shoutout to the most amusing app built on top of Foursquare we’ve seen yet: GeoPollster, an app that does realtime political polling based on check-ins.
It’s a very sim…

I imagine most people are aware of the recent fuss over The Gap’s redesign of its logo. Yes, it’s lame. (Helvetica should be seen only as you descend underground in New York City. And don’t get me started…

A few weeks ago I announced I was going on vacation and had lined up guest posts for Build a Better Blog and Biz Tips Blog from some of my esteemed colleagues. In case you missed an article or two, here’s a rou…

Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7, in a press release headlined “Windows Phone 7: A Fresh Start for the Smartphone: The Phone Delivers a New User Experience by Integrating the Things Users Really Want to Do…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Groups a “fundamental building block of the social web,” and as I discuss this week at GigaOM Pro, the feature could have a big impact on communications and identity ma…

Does this sound familiar?
You’re sitting in front of your laptop, staring at a blank screen.
The deadline for the article you need to write is approaching, and you’re struggling to get started when you sh…

Most people have some passing familiarity with Norse mythology and legend. Even the days of our modern week are named after its gods and goddesses. But there is a dark side to the Nordic mythos that few peopl…

Of all the aspects of applying storytelling to job search/career, the two that don’t quite gel for me are the elevator speech/story and the personal-branding story.

Last month, my friend Trey Pennington wro…

Some interesting stuff from the Center for Excellence in Service (PDF) at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business about how small-businessess are using social media marketing.
The fir…

Eager for a piece of WP7?
Here are the top phones you should consider, broken down by US carrier.
You’re welcome.Click here to see all the WP7 handsets just announced →Join the conversation about this story…

Are Your Doing Something HeroicThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
The ultimate quest of any organization or cause is to develop an army of committed fans, customers, employees, volunteers, or contributors….

Companies need an executive responsible for integrating the enterprise — a Chief Collaboration Officer (CCO). Increasingly, companies are embracing collaboration as part of their strategy to grow, by cross-se…

What concerns you more – that your team properly follows templates, formats and processes or they are passionate, express their creativity and results-driven? This is the difference between being a bureaucr…

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.Did you know you can use Google Map…

Back in August I broke the news that Apple was lining up a component purchase of several million chipsets from Qualcomm for a CDMA-powered Verizon iPhone due in January. Last week, over two months later, the W…

If you work from home now, congratulate yourself: chances are, you’ll be managing the web workers of tomorrow (if you aren’t already). As businesses move more of their workers out of central offices and emb…

Yelp is worth over $500 million, and is on pace to pull in over $100 million in revenue by 2012, according to a new analyst report from Next Up Research, and published by SharesPost.
The report values the local…

One thing you’ll notice about this crop of Windows Phone 7 handsets is the power of the processor. Each one – almost ten in all – run 1GHz+ Snapdragon processors. With the average desktop or laptop proce…

Traveling through Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, a unique process caught my attention. As a colleague and I entered the terminal, we noted each of our bags being swabbed and tested for explosives. Nor…

This is the third in a series of conversations on personal productivity between Bob Pozen, chairman emeritus of MFS Investment and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and Justin Fox, editorial director…

Do you know how to use a Facebook Page to get sales and new business? We’ve seen (and helped) a number of Fortune 1000 companies use a process that works. We’ve proven it also works for medium sized busin…

Last week, Econsultancy published a new report in association with digital consultancy Blue Latitude, The Impact of Digital Beyond Sales and Marketing: How Digital is Transforming Organisations. The report e…

Today’s going to be a big day for Microsoft, and Steve Ballmer’s kicking it off early. Showing up on the Today show, Samsung Cetus in-hand, he let loose a humble smile and spent a little time showing off a tri…

I don’t know if you have noticed, the way we talk about customers inside organizations, which is then refected at marketing events, can use some rethinking.
Many are still looking for easy transference of the…

Facebook announced a new platform for Facebook Groups recently. Rather than jump into the fray to share my immediate reactions, I opted to instead allow the news and its promise settle.
Like many, my initial r…

Hang out in airports, coffee shops, or other laptop-friendly spots for a while, and youll find Free Public Wi-Fi. It never gets you through to the actual web,…

Where, precisely, do you go in order to get permission to make a dent in the universe?The accepted state is to be a cog. The preferred career is to follow the well-worn path, to read the instructions, to do wha…

Michael T. Snyder submits: If you work in the mortgage industry or for a title insurer, you might not want to make any plans for the next six months. Foreclosuregate is about to explode.It is being alleged…

It started with a dream: Steaks and brews to butter up Chris Brogan. It turned out to be a slushie bar with booze and two hours of the best friends and fun you could ask for.
Now, it’s a tradi…

As Google continues to enhance it’s algorithm, we’re beginning to see large ranking shifts based on factors that never existed a few years ago. One of the more notable recent additions to the ranking algori…

PC Magazine – Facebook is expected to hit 600 million users early next year, and it will likely only continue to grow from there.

by Steven H. Rudolph, MDI live in New York. Last week my daughter in Chicago called to say that a five dollar charge had been refused at a local coffee shop. My credit card company had identified an unusual p…

Remember when Apple was thought to be irrelevant in the corporate market because it made “consumer” devices and because Microsoft, IBM, et al, had a lock on the enterprise?
That was before the iPhone and iPad….

These days, almost everyone is cutting back to compensate for the loss of revenue brought about by the economy. Projects are delayed indefinitely, vendors are squeezed, and employees are asked to do more with l…

I recently wrote about how intelligence is different, and much more valuable, than data for the B2B sales professional. I described intelligence as going far beyond the basic facts and figures about companies,…

It used to be that great marketing was the difference that made a good book a bestseller. As a publisher, all you had to do was demand sufficient shelf space in the bookstore, get your author on some big-time m…

COMPUTERWORLD: Forget the old myth that Apple isn’t big in the corporate and enterprise sectors. It isn’t true. Last week a hugely corporate gathering of senior corporate treasurers from round the world saw…

Remember when your high school summer reading list included Atticus, Fiesta, and The Last Man in Europe? You will once you see what these books were renamed before they hit bookshelves.
1. F. Scott Fitzgeral…

“I want a party with roomfuls of laughter / Ten thousand tons of ice cream / And if I don’t get the things I am after / I’m going to scream”
- Veruca Salt
On Friday, the New York times published an asto…

I was on the road this past week, so blogging slowed down — but it goes without saying that hyperlocal news didn’t slow down at the same time. Couple articles below about local coupons and hyperlocal web si…

I’m grateful to Elizabeth for allowing me to be a guest here on Mystery Writing is Murder. And I’m grateful to readers! I love my work, and I’d be nowhere without you. Leave a comment here, and your name…

Consuming APIs is something most developers–and even some non-developers–are doing most of the time. It’s becoming more common to build an API, in addition to using them. For all of those of you who are j…

Tumbl.in, a project started at our TechCrunch Hackathon during TC Disrupt, is a like a StumbleUpon for Twitter, allowing you to “stumble across” links shared in your Twitter timeline, your Twitter favorites…

Beth Snyder Bulik / AdAge:
Boomers — Yes, Boomers — Spend the Most on Tech — Due to Broad Demographic Grouping Problems, Biggest Misconception About Group Is That Theyre All the Same — YORK, P…

One of the leading trends this year has been check-in apps. Typically mobile apps, they allow you to announce that youre at a place or doing something. The excitement started with the location check-in apps: B…

I have fond memories of the old days of dial-up AOL (and no, not just because they’ve acquired us now). I remember thinking how stalkerishly awesome it was that I could see if another AOL user had read the e…

The technology of storytelling is changing. Why? History shows us shifts in communication technology from hieroglyphs to the oral tradition, from print to digital. At first glance, the shift s…

Prior to the launch of the iPad, many magazine publishers hoped that the
iPad might do for them what the iPod and iTunes did for digital music:
provided a viable marketplace for them to sell their wares. Oper…

Owing to the lack of KPIs for social media channels, businesses have struggled to define the metrics to measure return on investment. Although, measuring ROI of any communications effort is relative to the aims…

Ever wondered what happens to frustrated novelists and screenwriters?
They become copywriters.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Having been there, done that and been all three, at times concurrently, i…

I’ve been asked about my perspective on Malcom Gladwell’s article, “Small change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” My take on it may surprise you … and provide uncomfortable reading if…

ONE IN A SERIES…
One of the ways GameChangers defines a ‘Scene’—no matter what its duration, could be minutes, could be months—is with a classic three-act structure. We label these acts Connect, Ada…

We’d be the first to admit using Apple’s iPad isn’t exactly rocket science, and we will also admit that Apple is at the top of its game when it comes to easy-to-use products.But if you didn’t take the t…

by Dennis GraceThe last time I visited my physician for an epidural injection, as the doctor’s assistant was situating me under the fluoroscope, the doctor was feverishly dictating notes on his previous pat…